“Amnesty” has become one of the dirtiest words in U.S. politics.  Immigration opponents use it to attack any plan — however restrictive and punitive — to regularize the status of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.  Immigration advocates avoid the word, substituting euphemisms like “a path to citizenship.” Amnesty’s big problem […]

David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, Beacon Press, 2008.  Hardcover, 261 pages, $26.95. With the Obama administration reportedly set to push for immigration reform this year, the debate on immigration seems likely to start up again.  If it’s anything like the debate we got from the mainstream media in previous […]

On Tuesday, December 9, the anti-immigrant lobbyists at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) held a press conference in downtown Washington, DC to promote their “Immigration Reform Agenda for the 111th Congress.” The press conference followed the new line that groups like FAIR have adopted since the financial crisis broke out last September.  Undocumented […]

Part of the right wing routinely blames undocumented immigrants for just about everything.  On September 24, nine days after the financial meltdown started in earnest, the National Review Web site carried an article by columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin blaming “illegals” for the crisis and the subsequent bailout of the banks.  “The Mother of All […]

On September 10 the U.S. government acknowledged that its Secure Border Initiative (SBI) was behind schedule and over budget.  Promoted in 2005 as a new way to block unauthorized immigration, the $2.7 billion project was supposed to create a 670-mile physical and “virtual” fence by the end of this year along the 2,000-mile border with […]

The huge meatpacking plant had been cited by government agencies for numerous violations of environmental and labor laws and for “acts of inhumane slaughter” of animals.  New inquiries were under way into allegations of wage violations and the illegal employment of minors.  A large national union was trying to organize the factory’s 970 workers.  But […]

The comic strip adventures of Mr. Block first appeared in 1912 in publications of the Industrial Workers of the World.  With his thick, cubic head, Mr. Block, the creation of IWW cartoonist Ernest Riebe, typified a classic type of US worker: scoffing at the idea of working-class solidarity, Mr. Block always sided with his employers […]