ALIPAC illustrates anti-migrant activists' fascist and white nationalist aims

See also: mimnotes.info's "Minutemen" section.

By an HC, June 25, 2005

Posted on mimnotes.info June 26, 2005

The Center for New Community recently released a report documenting Americans "for Legal Immigration" PAC President William Gheen's "association with some of the most bigoted of the anti-immigrant activists."(1)(2)

Such information is interesting from the viewpoint of looking at how anti-migrant activists organize. Other sources, in addition to the Center for New Community, have said that Federation for American Immigration Reform Western Field Director Rick Oltman, another speaker at last month's "Unite to Fight" summit in Las Vegas, not only has worked with the Council of Conservative Citizens but also is a member of this openly white supremacist group. What??? The CCC believes "that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries . . . We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind" ("A Statement of the Principles of the Council of Conservative Citizens," http://www.cofcc.org/manifest.htm).

What William Gheen himself thinks is important, too. Gheen, like other prominent anti-migrant activists, illustrates where anti-migrant activists' concerns really lie. Open white supremacists aren't the only threat to migrant proletarians.This has got to stop!!! The fact that some of those whom Gheen associates with are open white supremacists is just icing on a foul-tasting cake.

The Center for New Community report, entitled "Americans for Legal Immigration (ALI-PAC): Xenophobia, Nativism and Anti-Immigrant Hysteria," correctly points out that ALIPAC opposes both documented and undocumented migration despite ALIPAC's thin pretense of supporting "legal immigration"; mimnotes.into reported this a while ago. Indeed, ALIPAC puts the interests of Amerikans first and above all else even when it means continued super-exploitation of workers in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Third World.

ALIPAC's opposition to the pending Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005 is also telling. This legislation represents a thoroughly imperialist migration policy--make no mistake about it. The Act would result in beefing up already repressive u.$. borders with personnel and/or technology. The Act would result in further surveillance of both documented and undocumented migrants. And its visa limitations would potentially limit oppressed-nation migrants' upward economic mobility. In fact, the Act's fine requirements target the poorest migrant workers.

But that isn't enough for ALIPAC. Like many other anti-migrant activists, ALIPAC opposes any semblance of amnesty even when the legislation in question would not end the repression of migrant workers. That is, ALIPAC wants even more reactionary imperialist migration policy and even more reactionary imperialist borders. It objects to the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, not because the Act doesn't do enough to "secure the border," but because the Act supposedly legalizes undocumented migrants in the united $tates when it does not. In other words, ALIPAC's activism could have the effect of reinforcing the exploitation of undocumented migrant workers.

The Center for New Community report points out that the Americans "for Legal Immigration" Political Action Committee actually had very little money in 2004. Well, ALIPAC was founded in 2004, but ALIPAC's funding is still somewhat surprising because at the May Unite to Fight Against Illegal Immigration Summit in Las Vegas, ALIPAC President William Gheen proposed withholding donations from candidates who don't support intensifying the repression of migrants. What donations? In May 2005, with all the talk about withholding donations, it were as if ALIPAC had hundreds of thousands of dollars at least.

Through stunts like agitating against the Channel 62 billboards in Los Angeles, ALIPAC seeks to whip up support for the mass deportation of all undocumented migrants inside the united $tates. "We need to block any guest-worker, new and improved, disguised amnesty bill from passing before the next election. . . . They want to lock in the 10 to 20 to 30 million illegal aliens because they're already telling us 'they're not going anywhere.' I say that's an opinion statement. It is an opinion statement." (What precision from a hysterical reactionary. One of those is bound to be right. In fact, the number is closest to 10 million.) During the same speech, Gheen ridiculed migrant workers who were deported during the INS-named Operation Wetback, raising the specter of another buslift.(4)

"Study after study shows that Americans work harder than any other industrialized nation in the world. Don't tell me we don't want to work."

There is a fine line between ALIPAC and many Amerikans who believe that bourgeois myth, which confuses dollar output per hour with "working hard." White nationalism in all its manifestations must be opposed. This vicious movement to heighten the repression of undocumented migrants and would-be migrants must not be allowed to pave the way for even more reactionary imperialist policy toward Latin American and other oppressed-nation migrants.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes

1. "New Report Blasts Americans for Legal Immigration - PAC," 24 June

2. Center for New Community, "Americans for Legal Immigration (ALI-PAC): Xenophobia, Nativism and Anti-Immigrant Hysteria," June 2005,

3. Laura B. Martinez, "Web site sale to help curb illegal immigration," 25 June 2005, http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_mor ... 6_0_10_0_C

4. Juan Ramon García, Operation Wetback : The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).

5. Marianne Love and Shirley Hsu, "Protest around Baldwin Park monument goes smoothly," 25 June 2005, http://www.whittierdailynews.com/Storie ... 46,00.html