OUT AND SHOUT INTO THE STREETS:

STUDENTS, RAISE HIGH AND LOUD OUR ANTI-IMPERIALIST PRO-IMMIGRANT VOICES ON APRIL 15 AND MAY 1!

Through the Sensenbrenner Act and other racist bills, the Bush regime has sought to ram down on the immigrant peoples an immigration policy that criminalizes undocumented immigrants and their supporters, and plows in billions of dollars into further turning the country into a garrison state supposedly against so-called terrorists and job-grabbers from Mexico and other poor countries of the world.

But since the Bush regime passed HR 4437 in the House of Representatives, it has dismally failed in its attempt to completely railroad its racist-fascist juggernaut. Instead, it has reaped a people’s storm never before seen in the history of the United States. Gigantic rallies, the most massive of which has been the more than one-million-strong Gran Marcha in Los Angeles on March 25, 2006, have filled streets in many cities from San Diego to Chicago to Milwaukee to Dallas to Denver to Phoenix to New York City to Washington D.C.

A moving highlight of the protest storm has been the series of high school student walkout-marches, including 40,000 in Los Angeles in March 27, 2006. Inspiring them has been the example of the 1968 East L.A. walkouts spearheaded by Filipino-Mexican-American student Paula Crisostomo. This mass action also revived memories of the 1965 great farm workers strike and grape boycotts sparked by Filipino-American unionists Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz and Mexican-American organizers Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

The racist-fascist crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their supporters is only the second part of a two-part imperialist injustice and oppression of Filipinos, Latinos and other third world peoples.

Further abetted by the “neoliberal globalization” policies of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, imperialist corporations and banks impoverish, exploit, plunder and subjugate the Philippines and other poor countries by crushing local industries with their overpriced exports, and monopolizing, extracting and buying at extremely underpriced terms their raw materials.

Studies reveal that this imperialism bleeds the Philippines. Latin America and other poor economies dry by siphoning off at least two-thirds of their true income as super profits.

Through military aid administered by the Pentagon and State Department, the U.S. government sponsors police-states, martial-law regimes and banana republics that crack down on dissent and unleash death squads and other terrorist human rights violations on unarmed civilians in the Philippines, Latin America and the rest of the third world.

It is the abject impoverishment, destruction of decent job and professional opportunities that has driven over 4 million Filipinos to migrate to the United States in search of decent-paying and secure jobs denied to them in their homeland. Until now, 3,000 Filipinos migrate daily, and from one to two million of them undocumented. Filipinos and other third-world migrants bring to the United States their skills developed in their homelands.

When third-world migrants reach the United States, imperialist corporations and the Bush regime subject them to the indignity and cultural imperialism of being racially-profiled as “national security risks.” In spite of the fact that through their labor, immigrants contribute greatly to the strength and stability of the U.S. economy, they are still targeted as scapegoats for the capitalist job insecurity. And yet, it is the Bush regime's "neoliberal globalization" policies that punish American workers further by causing their real wages to fall even lower.

Even when the imperialist corporations and governments trumpet and enforce the free flow of goods and super profits under the banner of “borderless economies”, they restrict and degrade the flow of people, specifically third-world migrant peoples. This is part and parcel of an imperialism that values profits over people.

And to top it all, while European-Americans were freely allowed to migrate in their millions from the late 1800s to the 1930s, the imperialist corporations and the Bush regime and its Minutemen minions preach and practice racist bigotry, discrimination and persecution against Latino and Asian-American migrants.

Instead of spending for the welfare of the poor and for better public services, including health-care, education and housing for the poor, just as they have criminally neglected and abandoned the black poor victims of Katrina, they would rather enrich the business and corporate cronies of the Bush regime such as Halliburton with the building of a Gestapo-type of garrison wall along the border of Mexico and pursuing imperialist war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We in the Coalition of Filipino-American Students for Justice and Peace are one with the immigrant and justice-loving American people in fighting against the imperialist, racist anti-immigrant bills led by HR 4733 and for a truly just and pro-immigrant policy.

Let our anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-fascist voices ring out loud and strong on April 15, the National Day of Pro-Immigrant Student Protest and on May 1, Workers’ Day. Let us fight against all attempts to shackle us from joining the protests through school lockdowns, intimidation and other fascist measures. Let us support and forge an invincible anti-imperialist solidarity with the working people and migrant peoples of the United States!

Fight for full immigrant rights!

Onward with the anti-imperialist pro-immigrant student struggles and protest movement!!

Onward with the anti-imperialist solidarity of students with the working people and immigrant American peoples!!

Onward with the building of an anti-imperialist student movement!

Out and shout into the streets on April 15 and May 1!!

COALITION OF FILIPINO-AMERICAN STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE