NYC May 1 Coalition on
The Hagel-Martinez Bill (S-2611)
What is the Hagel-Martinez Bill?
When millions of immigrant workers and their supporters came out in March, April and May 2006 and against the racist Sensenbrenner-King Bill
The Hagel-Martinez Bill, S2611, is the Senate version of an act that would legitimize racism, apartheid, and lead to the criminalization and deportation of millions of undocumented workers.
What would the Hagel-Martinez Bill do?
- S-2611 would create a three tiered immigration policy which superficially claims to protect immigrants who have lived in the US over 5 years, while creating second and third class immigration regulations for immigrants here less than three years.
- S-2611 would bar a person from staying in the United States who committed what they call an “aggravated felony” under the proposed law--including the use of fake documents or Social Security numbers. Virtually all immigrants without papers have obtained false documents.
- S-2611 would create a guest workers program which would force workers to stay in jobs for five years or risk deportation. If they do not find another job in 60 days they would be criminalized. The US State department calls that “Involuntary servitude” in other countries.
- S-2611 Guest worker program, according to the AFL-CIO would, “turn jobs which are now held by permanent employees with rights and benefits into jobs filled by temporary, contract employees. It basically takes the jobs of millions of people out of the protections of the New Deal, won by workers decades ago.”
- S-2611 would deport more than 2 million people who have come to the U.S. in the last two years--they could apply to return only under the guest-worker program.
- S-2611 would create a border wall over 2000 miles long, profiting companies like Halliburton who already have the contracts for detention centers for undocumented workers.
- S-2611 would deny most immigrants access to the courts to appeal decisions by immigration authorities.
- S-2611 would militarize the US borders: Border Patrol agents would be authorized to arrest, detain and deport immigrants without a hearing before an immigration board or a judge. The bill adds nearly 15,000 new Border Patrol agents over the next six years.
- S-2611 would authorize the indefinite detention of migrants without due process.
- S-2611 would authorize and pay local police to act as immigration agents and to oversee the deportation of those they arrest, effectively adding a permanent quasi-military force of 650,000 for "internal enforcement" of immigration laws.
- S-2611 would make the Department of Homeland Security into a virtual Gestapo agency: it will be allotted ninety days to perform extensive background checks on more than ten million undocumented residents.
- S-2611 would allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct mass raids and racial profiling to eliminate the migrant population. ICE’s Operation Endgame, plans to deport every "deportable" migrant by the year 2012.
- S-2611 would ramp up the enforcement of employer sanctions, making it a crime for undocumented people to hold a job, allowing employers to retaliate against workers who try to enforce labor standards or join unions.
- S-2611 would make the Social Security Administration the immigration police, forcing all workers to carry a new national ID card.
What is the Hagel-Martinez Bill?
- The United States government is planning to spend billions of tax-payer dollars to build detention centers, border fences, provide uniforms, guns, infra-red sensors, electronic equipment for surveillance, planes, helicopters, trucks, jeeps, all to militarize the borders. So, with S-2611, the Military-Industrial and Prison-Industrial Complexes would get even more of peoples’ hard-earned money.
- Congress has just voted over one half a TRILLION dollars for the illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
- It is easier to orchestrate opposition to immigrants than it is to justify these illegal wars.
- Right wing politicians are using the immigration issue to marginalize and demonize millions of workers. Immigrants are not to blame for disappearing pensions, unemployment, high oil prices, lack of affordable health care, lack of funding for schools, parks, and libraries: those are the real problems facing workers. These crises are the result of the collusion between big business and the government.
- The expressions,“ illegal immigration” and “Illegal aliens” are used in all “Immigrant Reform” legislation. These terms make it appear that undocumented people are committing crimes, but they are not. They are coming to the US to work, and crossing the border without papers is not a crime, it is a misdemeanor. S-2611 would change that, legitimizing this hate-campaign.
- S-2611 as HR-4437, and all proposals by both the House and the Senate would create a legal atmosphere of racism and national disunity, while working in the interests of big business.
- The guest worker program will depress wages everywhere. Workers and unions would suffer. Congress just voted against an increase in the minimum wage. When was the last time the US government passed any legislation promoting the “general welfare” of citizens?
- S-2611 will benefit the hate-mongers, scapegoaters, and their corporate friends.
- S-2611 would legalize Ethnic Cleansing for Profit.