By Margarito Diaz

In June, Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican from Texas, and 53 cosigners introduced the toughest anti-immigrant legislation in more than two centuries in Congress. Known as the “Legal Workforce Act” or H.R. 2164, this legislation, if it becomes law, will force every worker to have their legal status verified where they work through the E-Verify system, forcing employers to fire everyone that Social Security says is using a false ID.

The United States is going through one of its most perverse waves of anti-immigrant and anti-worker sentiment – a wave that can only be compared to those in the early 19th and 20th centuries, when capitalist propaganda also injected anti-immigrant fear into people’s minds.

The ultimate goal of American capitalists – then and now – has been to divide and control workers in America, to make sure working people do not unite to demand the end of the exploitation of immigrant workers, the end of declining pay and lengthening workdays, the end of the capitalist system itself.

It is in this context that we must understand the bar fight going on between the Democratic and Republican parties over who can hammer on immigrants the most.

In the late 1700’s, as the migration of politically active workers from France and Germany increased, capitalists in this country saw an urgent need to demonize, dehumanize, control these new workers – and to reduce their influence on American workers.

Out of this, American nativism was born to pit one worker against another. The propagandists of capital injected the idea that different ethnic groups should be considered hostile or alien to the native culture and therefore should not be considered equals.

Based on American nativism, the capitalist-controlled federal government passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The new laws gave the president of that time arbitrary powers to exclude or deport foreigners deemed dangerous and to prosecute anyone who criticized the government.

Throughout the 1800’s, Irish immigrants among others, suffered racism, humiliations, job discrimination, and even beatings. Job postings in newspapers and help-wanted signs, both reading “Help Wanted No Irish Need Apply,” publicly humiliated the Irish and encouraged “native-born” workers to think themselves superior. Today, the corporate and financial capitalists control both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Their control of the mainstream media is also absolute. And once again they have revived American nativism to divide workers at a time when our unity is our survival.

The rich in this country want to exploit immigrants even more than they are doing already. They are driving immigrants into the “underground economy,” where they are workers without rights, easily exploited, and with the ultimate goal of driving wages down for all workers in this country.

Knowing this, we can understand why the Democratic Obama administration is forcing so many immigrants out of their jobs through the increasing number of “silent raids” – the I-9 audits. And we can understand why Republican politicians are trying to pass federal legislation to do pretty much the same thing through E-Verify and the Social Security no-match letters that compare workers’ papers to federal records.

But we must also understand that this divide-and-conquer attack is directed at native-born American workers as well as immigrants.

Immigrants have a right to work, and they need to be protected and remain protected by U.S. labor laws. Only by protecting those rights will the rights of all workers be maintained.

And only by avoiding another dark period of racism, job discrimination, and the exploitation of immigrants will the entire American workforce take control of its future.

One for all, and all for one!