Texans charge: Bush backs bracero program

By Tim Wheeler

Texans, who know George W. Bush the best, are the first to debunk his "compassionate conservatism" and to warn that if he is elected president, the people will feel the sting of his right-wing whip.

That includes Mexican Americans in the Lone Star State who have borne the brunt of Gov. Bush's lean, mean, pro-corporate, anti-worker policies. On Cinco de Mayo this year, Bush even announced that he favors expansion of a "guest worker" program to bring in immigrant workers to toil in U.S. fields and factories at rock-bottom wages with no benefits.

Hector Arallano, president of the 7,000-member El Paso AFL-CIO Building Trades, told the World that Bush, a major supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has made Texas a right-to-work (for less) state, the "front door" for the export of jobs south of the border and a haven for "cheap labor. "

On Bush's agenda, "business is number one and workers are number two," Arallano said. "A living wage and benefits are 'barriers to free trade' according to Bush. He wants wages as low as possible to make things as good as possible for business."

In the name of "efficiency," Bush pushed through an automated telephone system to handle claims for unemployment benefits and workmen's compensation. In fact, it was a ploy to terminate the jobs of thousands of Texas state employees.

"Now, when an unemployed or injured worker calls, he doesn't speak to a living human being, he talks to a machine," Arallano said. "Many workers are confused, especially non-English speakers. Many simply give up."

That applies doubly to undocumented workers in Texas who toil and pay taxes yet rarely apply for benefits for fear of being deported.

"The system is designed to harass and intimidate injured workers and deny them benefits," said Arallano, who is also president of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 583. "We in the labor movement are working in defense of these workers."

El Paso has lost nearly all its manufacturing jobs and is a shipping and receiving center for goods produced in 250 plants in Juarez across the Rio Grande. "We are working closely with the independent unions in Mexico to organize these maquiladora workers because unionizing them, raising their wages and benefits, is the only way to stop our plants from going south," he said.

Benito Juarez, coordinator of the Houston Immigration and Refugee Coalition told the World, that Bush has been a vigorous advocate of the H2-A guest worker program urged by a coalition of agribusiness growers and Republicans. "This is a program that benefits only the growers," Juarez said. "It does not take account of the rights of the workers. This is like a new bracero program."

He was referring to a guest worker program exposed during the 1960s as a form of peonage in which U.S. agribusiness waxed rich off the labor of their semi-slave immigrant workers.

"It is time for a general amnesty," said Juarez who is of Guatemalan birth. "Many of the undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S. for twenty years or more. Many came here fleeing persecution of death squad governments. (regimes propped up by the CIA and by George W. Bush's father- TW).

"These immigrants have not only made a great economic contribution, they have also enriched the country culturally and socially. They have worked hard and paid their taxes," said Juarez. "Yet they are kept in a legal limbo."

Paul Kerr, an organizer for the Center for Human Rights in Dallas told the World that the AFL-CIO and other human rights groups organized a march in Dallas of 10,000 people April 30 demanding immigrant rights. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez Thompson, herself the daughter of a Texas sharecropper, led the march.

Kerr said that he and other Texans active in the immigrant rights battle travelled to Chicago for one of a series of AFL-CIO initiated hearings on immigrant rights. The last of these hearings is set for the Los Angeles Memorial Arena this Saturday June 10.

Bush gave his answer to these demands in an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune on Cinco de Mayo. "I'm not for a blanket amnesty," Bush said. "I am for reforming the guest worker program to be able to more effectively match employer and employee..." Bush criticized the Clinton Administration for shirking "border enforcement," even as the Border Patrol has ballooned into the largest federal law enforcement agency.

On March 23, Bush snarled at the Clinton Administration for opposing expansion of the guest worker program. "I urge the Clinton-Gore Administration to put the public's interest ahead of union bosses and special interests and....raise the number of H1-B Visas," he said.

Said Kerr, "Bush's positions are consistent with those of Texas Republican Senators Phil Gramm and Kay Hutchinson on expansion of the H1-B guest worker program. If Bush is elected president, expect him to try to nationalize these programs that benefit employers at the expense of workers."

Bush and his GOP cronies in the Texas legislature, Kerr charged, are attempting to ram through a measure to slash benefits under workmen's compensation, already among the lowest in the nation. Again, immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, would be the hardest hit. "We're mobilizing with the AFL-CIO to send people to Austin, June 20th to protest these cuts in workers' compensation." Kerr said.

He contrasted Bush's policies with those of Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore. "Gore was in New Orleans to speak before the AFL-CIO Executive Council when they adopted their immigrant rights resolution," Kerr said. "Gore has consistently supported HR-2722, the Central America Parity Act."

He explained that the measure would grant immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador the same rights of political asylum as those enjoyed by Nicaraguans and Cubans. Gore also spoke at a "Justice for Janitors" rally in Los Angeles recently in which perhaps 50 percent of the crowd were undocumented immigrant workers.

Said Juarez, "We cannot allow a candidate like Bush to speak Spanish as if he understands the plight of our communities when he opposes the policies that meet our needs."