The Democrat's "Plan B" for immigration reform: same old shell game

Sen. Bob Menendez and some others have floated trial balloons saying the Democrats "Plan B"  for some sort of concession to the immigrant rights movement in the Reconciliation Bill is updating the "Registry Date." 

'Registry' allows immigrants to get legal status 

The "Registry Date" was the mechanism used 100 years ago to straighten out the immigration papers of European immigrants. Basically it said if you had been here since before a given date, you should go tell the attorney general so he could just recognize you as being a permanent resident and give you a green card.

The measure was adopted in 1929, and it was meant to be, and essentially was, a statute of limitation on undocumented status. And over the decades, the date was updated several times ... until it stopped benefitting mostly Europeans.

So the last time the date was moved was as part of the misnamed Reagan "amnesty"  of the mid-1980s; and to this day it remains set in 1972, a half-century ago.

The proposal being floated now is for making 2010 the cutoff. That would in theory benefit a majority of the undocumented, but would not begin to redress the harm of the two-decade bipartisan persecution and  criminalization of immigrants.

There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of families that have been divided by the Bush-Obama-Trump and now --let's be honest-- Biden criminalization and deportation madness. A registry date change simply ignores the reality of the need to redress that damage.

So welcome as legalization of some --even many-- among the undocumented would be, it is no substitute for a real change in policy.

The Democrat's somewhat disingenuous argument for saying a registry date change fits in a budget reconciliation bill would be that it just updates a deadline for filing a petition for adjusting your status, a mere technicality but --oh happy coincidence!-- it would mean gizillions of dollars flowing into the government because of the filing fee for that petition. So, you see, this is mostly a budgetary measure to raise funds for the feds, like, say, increasing the luxury tax on imported perfume.

The obvious retort is that although disguised as a mere technical change in a deadline, this is in fact a humongous shift in immigration policy. So nice try, but no cigar.

What else should be noted is that the option of updating the registry date has been open since forever to supposedly pro-immigrant Democrats (and yes, to Republicans, too, when there were still some pretending to be pro-immigrant), and they never seriously considered putting it into any piece of must-pass legislation until now, when --oh so conveniently-- the Democrats can shift the blame for it being thrown out on an obscure, unelected official, the Senate parliamentarian. 

So until they prove otherwise, my response to the "Plan B" is that this is just one more three-card-monte con job and I say to Biden, Schumer, Pelosi and their ilk: you bastards, that is one more you owe us.

On the results of the DSA convention: exhilarating but a little frustrating

This is what the future looks like: a convention of millennials committed to transforming the United States.

Some 1,000 delegates and I'm not sure how many volunteers and other members met in Atlanta August 2-4 for the biannual convention of the Democratic Socialists of America.

On the daily radio show I co-host, I said that as a delegate I found the convention incredibly exhilarating although at times frustrating -- and, ironically, for the same reason.

The DSA has grown explosively over the past few years and is now more than ten times the size it was when the Bernie phenomenon first exploded in the summer of 2015. That growth shaped the convention.

For a life-long socialist who first read the Communist Manifesto in high school more than half a century ago, and after a few years of radical upsurge had to live through decades of retreats, it was just incredible seeing this completely new generation of fighters grappling with how to advance a movement now looked to by literally tens of millions of people in this country.

Especially because this is a totally new generation, overwhelmingly without experience in the socialist or any other movement not weighed down by the mistakes of 20th century socialism. But this freshness also showed in so much time consumed by procedural wrangling, instead of political discussion. Yet the way the DSA is today, that was inevitable.

The main contested issue at the convention as I saw it was between a layer of comrades that wanted to foster greater decentralization by taking financial resources away from the National Office and giving them to local organizations. I think the claim to help especially the smaller Locals is legitimate and many delegates su[ported them. But the main resolutions proposed went beyond that, promoting a dis-empowering of the DSA as a national organization. But a more cautious resolution on the same issue (also by an Atlanta delegate) was approved.

The decentralizers lost by around a 55 to 45 margin on their resolutions, although I did not keep a close tabs on the exact count, and the margin might have been a little bigger. But a more cautious resolution on the same question (by one of our Atlanta delegates, by the way) was approved.

Dues sharing may seem like a strange main issue. But there was overwhelming consensus at the convention on the practical tasks and priorities for the DSA, things like medicare for all, an ecosocialist green new deal, tenant justice, immigrant and refugee rights, and, of course, backing Bernie -- to name just a few causes that DSA'ers are involved with.

On the resolutions I felt most strongly about, the one I wrote on orienting to the Latinx community starting with a Spanish-language web site, received the highest vote (88%) on the "consent agenda," a list of resolutions with so much support in a pre-convention delegate poll that they are voted and ratified as a group at the beginning of the convention.

The second-highest vote on that "consent agenda" was for an immigration resolution calling for open borders, which I also supported even though I would have changed some of the wording.

Another resolution also approved on that list was a resolution I co-authored on immigration work. It said, in part, "The National Immigrant Rights Working Group shall approach immigrant rights organizations ... to help to organize national-scale mobilizations" against Trump's immigration policies, and indeed the steering committee of the working group has already met and started to aggressively implement this provision.

A third resolution from Atlanta approved on the consent agenda was by City of South Fulton councilman khalid, demanding presidential candidates support reparations for Black people.

I did run for the national leadership but was not elected, nor did I expect to be. As the convention drew closer I realized that I wanted to focus on how the way I view things is very different from most other comrades, and on explaining why.

So among other things I wrote extensive comments on the Open Borders resolution, dealing with imperialism and Latino identity even though those were side issues and I supported and voted for the resolution.

I explained my overall priorities for changes in the DSA in a piece I published here and as a campaign leaflet that was distributed at the convention. That stressed the DSA needed to focus on the Latinx and Black communities, not mainly as a question of organizational resources but a political orientation. I also insisted this meant focusing on the South, and the real situation on the ground in these and other Republican-dominated areas needed to be taken into account in our national projects.
ts

Language justice and the DSA's internal culture in relation to the Latinx community were central topics in a blog post also published on an internal forum. The piece explained why I was refusing to sign a "motherhood and apple pie" transparency pledge that was backed by almost all other NPC candidates. My explanation also had an extensive polemic against the factionalism that was being promoted by the way most caucuses were functioning (and still are).

This may seem like a Quixotic campaign. But my original motivation in running for the NPC was to make sure that the Spanish-language web site and immigration resolutions were implemented if approved.

With the overwhelming support they received and seeing a number of millennial Latinx comrades who are strongly involved in the fight for immigrant rights running, and some were sure to be on the incoming NPC, that was no longer a big issue. So I decided to switch to a propaganda campaign that I hope started to raise some issues I care deeply about and I think will be important for the DSA going forward.

A discussion on a proposed 'Open Borders' resolution for the DSA convention

[Today I received the link to a "Resolution on Open Borders" posted on Medium that is being proposed for the DSA Convention. As I explain in the comment below that I posted to Medium, while I share the sentiment behind the proposal, I think presenting open borders as a demand, rather than as an aspiration, is a mistake.

[It should not be demanded of countries that are victims of imperialism because abolition of their border controls and defenses would facilitate attacks against them, primarily from the United States. Yet viewed solely as a demand on the U.S. government, it not only would  be impractical but also lead to victimization of refugees and other immigrants in Europe who likely would be expelled and deported to the United States. And in the fight for immigrant and refugee rights, it would take the focus away from the fight for legalization of the undocumented and accepting Central American refugees.]

I very much agree with the sentiment and much of what this resolution says, but I think it suffers from a one-sidedness and lack of precision that would be very unfortunate for the organization to apply -- even though, again, I completely agree with the sentiment.

What do I mean by "one-sidedness?" I think this captures it:

Whereas border and immigration enforcement are tools of white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism

What is wrong with that?

• Well, are Cuba's borders a tool of "imperialism" or rather a barrier to imperialism? 
• Should Venezuela not have enforced its borders against the "aid caravan" that Washington was pushing to legitimize "President" Juan Guaidó? 
• Are we really for Iran not defending its borders against American Imperialism's Fifth Fleet and CentCom troops? 
• Do we think Yemen would really be better off if the savagely barbarous medieval family dictatorship of the Sauds were allowed to invade and take over the country?

I know the comrades will answer, "that's not what we meant." Of course not. But it's what the text says:

Be it resolved that DSA supports the demand for open borders
Be it resolved that DSA supports the the uninhibited transnational free movement of people....
Be it resolved that DSA recognizes and reflects our support for open borders in our evaluations and endorsement of political campaigns.

Some comrades will respond, "C'mon José, we're in the United States, nobody will think we're talking about some other country's borders."

But if that what was meant, that is what should have been said, if for no other reason that to avoid distracting polemics. (And even then, applied only to the United States, I don't think it is right, as I will explain further down).

But first, as to what "nobody will think," that's strictly from the perspective of an "American" (i.e., someone who indentifies solely as being "United Statesian," to use what would be the English equivalent of the Spanish word "estadounidense.")

But there are tens of millions of us born in or descended from Latin America who have a very different set of lenses through which we look at the world.

As Latinos in the United States we demand we be treated as "Americans," that our undiminished human, civil and political rights as members of U.S. society be respected.

Yet at the same time many of us identify with the sentiments expressed by Malcolm X in his famous 1964 speech, "The ballot or the bullet."

No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. 

And then, as in this clip from the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards, we all sing together the song by Los Tigres del Norte, "And if we look at the centuries, we are more American than the children of the Anglo-Saxons."

So Latinos --especially immigrants-- will look at this demand very differently than most Anglos would.

But there is also a more immediate reason. This is not a demand raised by the immigrant rights movement, not even the Latino immigrant-based left wing of the movement. And it takes the focus away from where it should be, which is on the most immediate victims of U.S. policy: the undocumented already in the country and their families, as well as the refugees at our southern border.

Another immediate reason not to adopt the wording in this resolution is the election campaign. Obviously, given what I've said, I'm not for injecting this demand into electoral politics.

Although I think the way he has argued for his position is narrow and even reactionary, I agree with Bernie Sanders in not calling for open borders.

The U.S. unilaterally abolishing all immigration restrictions would simply be an invitation to the European imperialist countries to forcibly deport to the United States all refugees and even non-immigrants their Trumpites don't want, i.e., facilitate a generalized "ethnic cleansing" that, without a vastly broader transformation of U.S. society, would be impossible to handle and further victimize those expelled from Europe.

You might say, well, we won't accept people who are being forced to come to the United States but that implies border controls, not open borders.

And more practically, it is simply not a demand that American working people, including most of the tens of millions who view themselves as sympathetic to socialist ideas, can possibly understand. Trump uses this to demagogically claim that his critics want to flood the country with cartel hit men, human traffickers and drug dealers, and the way to counter that is to point to the thousands of refugees, minors and families, who are in fact arriving at the border.

While I agree with the sentiment of "open borders," I think it is better expressed as a desire for no borders, as in "for a world without borders."

I think it was a weakness of my resolution that it did not deal with the issue, and have actually drafted an addition to it but have not added it yet because I had already circulated the resolution for signatures without it. I am hoping after the June 2 deadline for submitting resolutions and verifying the signatures there will be some guidance on whether you can refine your own resolution and how.

That addition would be a new point IV under "Therefore be it resolved" and would say:

The Democratic Socialists of America reaffirm that the aspiration of the socialist movement is a world without borders, while recognizing that slogans that point to this ideal, such as “Open Borders,” are not current demands of the immigrant rights movement.

It might seem very modest but I actually think it is important to add it, because I very much agree with the idea in the "open  borders" resolution that

DSA develops political education resources to be shared with chapters across the country to deepen and broaden the understanding of the demand for open borders and how to fight for it. 

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the comrades who worked on this resolution because I think it is very important to have an open but comradely discussion on these sorts of issues and I believe that the end result in this and many other cases will be converging towards a more balanced and nuanced position, and even if not, a better understanding of the differing points of view in the organization.