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.

The DSA's AFROSOC Caucus channels Stalin

The official Afro-Socialist and People of Color caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America succeeded in forcing the cancellation of an online forum co-sponsored by the Lower Manhattan and Philadelphia units of the organization because it didn't like what the speaker was going to say.

That speaker was to be Adolph Reed, a Black Academic, holding forth on "Dangers of Disparity Ideology," which, as best as I understand it, is that the questions of the race (and unstated but implicit, ethnicity/nationality) of Covid-19 victims should be ignored so at to not to obscure the issue of class.

If I can be forgiven for being so old, Reed's theses is the sort of idiocy I've been hearing since I was in high school and sneaking into Students for a Democratic Society meetings at the University of Miami in 1969 where adherents of the Maoist Progressive Labor Party's "Workers-Student Alliance" Caucus sang the praises of the strategy, "Black and white, unite and fight," i.e., putting aside issues of race.

But the truth is that this idea --and especially grey versions of it, not quite so starkly Black-and-white as I painted it above-- have a huge amount of currency in the new socialist movement that has arisen in the United States in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and Sanders 2016 and 2020.

Yet the statement put out by AFROSOC demanding Reed's scheduled webinar be turned into a debate (with whom? we were never told!) says quite clearly that all the comrades who are inclined to agree with him should be driven out of the DSA: "It is a reactionary and class reductionist form of politics that should have no place in DSA."

Read it again: "should have no place in the DSA." In this way, the statement makes clear no debate was wanted or intended.

Inside the AFROSOC/POC Caucus, the trick that was used to impose this Stalinist notion was to present for a vote two options: demand that the event be cancelled or that it be turned into a debate.

The point was to make it seem like demanding the debate was something other than censoring Reed and preventing him from having his say.

But "demanding a debate" --especially under current Covid-19 circumstances-- the day before an event is not a serious demand.

The word "debate' was just a way of provoking enough of a ruckus so that the event would be cancelled. And the result was that the lead sponsor, a Lower Manhattan DSA branch committee, did cancel it, supposedly because Reed decided to withdraw, some said, but who knows.

So let's not bullshit each other: the effect was exactly what was intended. Reed's viewpoint is simply verboten, not allowed, beyond the pale: "a reactionary and class reductionist form of politics that should have no place in DSA."

This idealist, moralistic way of posing the question, a "form of politics that should have no place in DSA" brings out sharply what it wrong with it: right now, it does, in fact, have a place within the DSA. That is material reality. The actual truth of the DSA as it exists: not a statement of what I wish would be true, but, on the contrary, simply a statement of the facts on the ground.

Let me repeat: it is a fact the those ideas are in the DSA, shared to a greater or lesser degree by many members.  Hence the importance of a real discussion, and even debate, and thus the attraction of the debate demand. The Caucus rejected demanding that the event be cancelled but through the 11th-hour debate demand, in practice, on the ground, in the real world, it led exactly to that outcome: cancellation. That is what was wanted by the instigators: "should have no place in DSA."

But if you really think you can dictate that people abandon their erroneous opinion, you might want to check how far the Catholic Church got with its campaign against the heretical idea that the earth went around the sun instead of the other way around. You can force someone to recant. But it still moves.

It will take time, discussions, and most of all experience in further struggles for those current DSA members who hold ideas like Reed's to discard them. And some never will. Believe me. Been there. Done that. Despite that some --many-- will be excellent socialist militants, in real life, on the ground.

Yet there may come a time when people with such ideas and those of us who reject them might not be able to coexist in a common organization. But the Afrosoc position paper claims that the moment has already arrived:

Efforts like these have proven to be incapable of building a multiracial working class base for socialist politics. More importantly, events like these undermine the organizing work DSA is doing in Black, Indigenous and people of color communities. DSA already gets smeared for being too white (which it is) as if it’s irredeemably white and that only communicates to BIPOC folks that they shouldn’t join DSA. What do these DSA organizers think they’re saying to their BIPOC comrades by hosting this kind of event? How do they think this event is going to help in our efforts at recruiting a more diverse DSA?

This is preposterous. To think some Black or Latinx activist is going to be held back from joining the Metro Atlanta DSA, my chapter, because in New York a committee from one of a half dozen branches held an online forum that promoted supposedly bad ideas to literally handfuls, if not dozens or even a hundred people, is absurd.

On the contrary, I think a group really grappling with these issues both in theory and its activism would prove immensely attractive to young militants. Those are the sorts of issues that hooked me into getting involved in SDS way back when.

But the same can't be said of a group where you suddenly face peremptory demands coming out of the blue to brand as anathema certain ideas and shut down all discussion of them (and with the supposed moral authority of ALL the "people of color" in the organization, even though fewer than 30 actually voted, out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of POC members).

But the issue of why the DSA has not become a more diverse organization is an immediate and pressing one. And I wish I had a comprehensive formula for solving this, but all I have is a very modest grain of sand.

Delegates to our last DSA convention ratified by an overwhelming margin --the highest of any resolution by far-- a text saying the DSA should orient to Latinx communities beginning with establishing a Spanish-language web site with its own editorial board.

Given the weight that the Afrosoc/POC statement on Reed's forum gives to making sure even a local New York online event "is going to help in our efforts at recruiting a more diverse DSA," one would think a body that is supposed to be the primary expression of oppressed minorities in the DSA in general would have assiduously followed, step by step, the efforts made by the national staff and National Political Committee to implement this convention mandate.

Has the Caucus done that? No it has not. And how do I know that? With apologies to Bernie:

I wrote the damn resolution.

The tremendous concern of those who run this DSA grouping for getting people who are not white anglos to the DSA has been absent in this case even though the resolution specified a goal of 90 days, and we've already tripled that.

And this Caucus has not lifted a finger --nay, not even a toenail-- to push for the implementation of this resolution. Shutting down Adolph Reed from having his say under DSA auspices to literally several if not dozens of comrades who mostly would not agree with him anyways was of overriding importance.

Trying to get the DSA to address the tens of millions of people in this country whose primary language is Spanish ... that can wait. Forever.

What this suggests to me is that this DSA Caucus might be vulnerable to being accused of fraud. Despite the claim that it is representative both of Blacks and other "People of Color," in reality Latinos are officially 18% of the U.S. population, by far the largest nationally oppressed group in the United States, but it does not seem to strike the Caucus leaders that their priorities and actions should conform to that reality.

Which raises the obvious question: if this caucus doesn't work, why not organize a Latine caucus? And the answer is that the DSA has been such a catastrophic failure in attracting Latinx people, and in providing vehicles through which a message like this can reach a large percentage of the membership, that trying would likely be a waste of time.

But if that is so, can the DSA really become the organization so many members want it to be, the political expressions of the multinational/racial U.S. working class?

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.

Why is the DSA so white? Does working for Bernie make it harder to change this?

My friend and comrade, the chair of our Atlanta DSA chapter, just caused a shitstorm on twitter with by saying that the DSA focusing on the Bernie campaign is not good for a lot of chapters, especially in the South, where it gets in the way of important work we needed to be doing to change the group's composition.

I'm not sure I agree with saying that it is getting in the way but I absolutely agree that it does not get us one flea-hop closer to changing the DSA's composition.

And a big part of the reason I don't think it gets in the way is that I don't think the Bernie work is making us look like a Bernie organization. It is a confirmation that we are in fact a Bernie organization. Our saving grace is that we are not just a Bernie organization.

The reality is that the DSA’s composition is disproportionately white, male, millennial and college-educated. Therefore, both comrades and critics say, we must be doing something grievously wrong and must extirpate the toxic white supremacist and patriarchal atmosphere that has led to this result. 

But the DSA’s spectacular growth over the past three years should give us new insight. We say we “recruited” tens of thousands of people, but that’s not true. They joined, and they joined through no fault or merit of our own. 

Their joining had nothing to do with the tenor and culture of the DSA Local in their area. And they are precisely disproportionately college educated white male millennials. That is the composition that social processes much broader than our own internal culture imposed on us.

You might say that makes perfect sense. Bernie is white, male, conforms to gender norms and so we get Bernie Boys. But last June a young Puerto Rican woman, a member of the DSA, pulled the biggest political upset in many a season. A thousand people joined the DSA the next day. Another 9,000 in the month after her victory. Was it a flood from the Latinx community? Not in Atlanta.

Since then the face of democratic socialism has also been the one that graced the cover of TIME magazine a few weeks ago. She has higher name recognition than most of the Democratic presidential candidates. I don’t believe that in recent decades, there has been a political figure from our Latino community that is as well known and popular as she is among us.

Has that made a difference in the composition of those joining?  I think if it were so, we would have certainly heard.

The starting point of our discussion has to be the fact that the composition of the DSA is about American society, not just the DSA.

You might go “Pfew, that’s a relief!” But you shouldn’t.

The problem is exactly the same as if it were completely about the DSA. Only now we know two things.

Thing one: It is mostly not our "fault" because of what we do or don't do. It is much worse than that. We are much more a reflection of our white supremacist, patriarchal, and class-exploitative society than we think. Our current composition has been imposed on us from the outside by powerful social forces over which we have no control.

Thing two: we have to overcome this just the same. Otherwise there is no point to the DSA. And I believe it will be much harder and more painful than we think.

For the DSA convention: Resolution on orienting to Latinx communities

[I drafted the following resolution for submission to the convention of the Democratic Socialists of America to be held in Atlanta Aug. 2-4. DSA convention rules require 50 signatures from members  for the resolution to be considered, so I urge DSA members who agree with it to sign it. The links to the signature form can be found here on the DSA's members-only discussion board.]  

Whereas: The Latinx community is now the largest oppressed minority in the country, with 18% of the country’s population, some 60 million people, and concentrated among young people. One in five millennials is classified as “Hispanic” by the census bureau; among post-millennials, one in four.

Whereas: The United States has the second largest number of Spanish-speaking people in the world after Mexico, some 55 million people over the age of five. Some 41 million are considered native speakers as that is the main language used in their homes, a number comparable to native speakers in Colombia, Argentina and Spain  itself.

Whereas: Due to a common oppression and modern communications and media, as well as language and common cultural elements, this community has developed a common identity as shown by the immigrant rights protests in the spring of 2006. It was the most massive wave of sustained protests ever, anywhere.

Whereas: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a millennial Puerto Rican woman and democratic socialist, has become by far the single most prominent Latinx political figure in the community and media, which presents extraordinary opportunities to increase the presence and influence of our movement in that community.

Whereas: Addressing the Latinx community in the language most people of Latin American origin or descent use at home is not  just a needed practical measure, but a political statement of utmost importance given the size of the DSA and its presence in national politics.

Whereas: A socialist transformation of the United States is impossible without the massive, militant participation of Latinx working people.

Therefore be it resolved:

1. The incoming National Political Committee is instructed to devote all necessary resources and attention to guaranteeing that a Spanish-language web site of our organization is launched within 90 days after the close of this convention.
2. The web site will have both translations and material directly generated for it under the leadership of an editorial board.
3. The incoming National Political Committee is instructed to initiate the organization of this editorial board.
4. The board should include not just Latinx comrades, but as diverse a group as possible of other comrades, especially those who have a working command of the language, even if not fluency, but not precluding the inclusion of others.
5. In collaboration with the National Political Committee, this editorial board shall also have the additional responsibilities of promoting the development of our work with Latinx communities, establishing relations with organizations based in the community, and promoting collaboration and the exchange of information between Locals involved in this work. 
6. These additional responsibilities are not permanent but a transitional step to the creation by the NPC of a working group or other body focused  on work in the Latinx communities and its issues, or some other modality for promoting and coordinating this activity. 

For the DSA convention: Resolution on immigrant and refugee rights

[I drafted the following resolution for submission to the convention of the Democratic Socialists of America to be held in Atlanta Aug. 2-4. DSA convention rules require 50 signatures from members  for the resolution to be considered, so I urge DSA members who agree with it to sign it. The links to the signature form can be found here on the DSA's members-only discussion board.]  

Whereas: The status of undocumented immigrants has been reduced to that of an inferior caste that faces official, legalized discrimination much as Blacks did during the era of Jim Crow.

Whereas: The goal of these laws and the deportation machine is not to remove those the ruling class denigrates as “illegal aliens,” but to keep the big majority here but “illegal” -- bereft of rights so they can more easily be superexploited and used to attack the rights and drive down the wages and standard of living of all working people.

Whereas: Donald Trump has made attacks on immigrants the centerpiece of his electoral messages, administration policies and efforts to develop a nativist and white supremacist movement.

Whereas: Excluding immigrants from programs like Medicare for All or free tuition to public colleges will undermine the programs themselves and turn them into tools for discrimination.

Whereas: The super-exploitation of poor countries by rich countries, especially by the United States, has created crisis throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, leading to wars and failed states. Together with the impact of climate change, this is forcing millions of people to become refugees.

Therefore be it resolved:

The Democratic Socialists of America will make defense of immigrant and refugee rights a top national priority of the organization.

The Democratic Socialists of America commit to internal education on the history and political economy of immigration, and how to argue against right-wing positions and respond to provocations.

The Democratic Socialists of America reaffirm our position that no human being is illegal and that all working and oppressed people are welcome in our organization on an equal basis regardless of immigration or citizenship status.

The Democratic Socialists of America stand for full human and civil rights for all immigrants. We demand:

• The immediate abolition of ICE and an end to the persecution, jailing  and deportation of immigrants.
• Legalization of the undocumented as permanent residents,  the same status other immigrants have, including the right to become citizens if they wish.
• Abolition of all anti-immigrant discriminatory laws including those denying equal access to education and social services.
• An end to the militarization of the U.S. border with México, including tearing down the walls, fences and barriers built under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations as well as those that may be built under Trump.
• Respect for the rights of refugees, especially the principle of non-refoulement, that is, not returning people to places that they are fleeing from.
• An end to the Muslim Ban or other discrimination in the issuance of visas on the basis of the dominant religion, race or ideology of its government.

The Democratic Socialists of America support:

• The struggle of immigrant communities, including around partial, tactical demands such as restoring DACA for “Dreamers” (people brought here when they were minors), as well as against other aspects of their oppression, such as language discrimination.
• The right of immigrants and their communities to lead this struggle and determine its tactics, including in choosing to focus on individual cases, partial demands or specific concessions.
• Diverse initiatives and a multiplicity of tactics, such as moral and material solidarity with refugees on the border, visits to immigration prisoners and help for their families, work in coalitions, as well as militant, direct-action protests and other types of demonstrations.
• Putting pressure on all candidates claiming to oppose Trumpism, especially those who say they speak for working people, to take a firm and unequivocal stance in favor of immigrants, refugees and their communities.