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Anti-Immigrant Bill, PATROTIC Act
Our Next Struggle

Commentary: National Immigrant Solidarity Network
January, 2006

Unfortunately, despite strong protest from immigrant, human rights, labor and civil liberty groups the U.S. House passed the disgraceful anti-immigrant H.R. 4437 -- the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" by House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.).

It's clear that President Bush, along with the Congress, is again spinning rhetoric to blame immigrants for causing all the world's problems.

It's also clear that the President, right wing Republicans and even many Democrats will use immigrants as scapegoats for the Nov 2006 mid-term elections. They will use any possible means to secure conservative/right wing votes by focusing on blaming people of color and immigrants, and by attacking abortion rights and the rights of LGBT people.

Our struggle will be long and hard, but that doesn't mean we should have no hope. While the House vision of the Bill has passed, we still can mount a strong opposition against the upcoming Senate version, which will be introduced and debated sometime in February, 2006.

Now that we have finished the holiday season, we should gear up our fighting spirit to build multi-ethnic community actions against the final passage of the Senate bill early next year.

Unity is very important! This is NOT only about immigrant rights, it is also about human rights for everyone. An injury to one is an injury to all!

Activists and organizers have a particular responsibility to point out the links between Katrina's impact, immigrant rights, civil liberties, labor rights and the U.S. war in Iraq . Understanding the connections between our individual conditions of life and the lives of people everywhere in the world allows us to come together and organize across all borders. We need to make the connections between wars in Africa, south America, Asia, Iraq, Palestine and Korea, and sweatshops in Asia as well as in Los Angeles and in New York; international arms sales and the WTO, FTAA, NAFTA & CAFTA with AIDS, hunger, child labor and child soldiers; multinational corporations and economic exploitation with racism and poverty at home--then we can win the struggle.

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