I am currently trying to brainstorm all of the connections between the peace movement and the immigrant rights movement. Comments will be appreciated. I would like to tweak it a bit, then get it out there for the peace movement to see.

Here is a partial list:
1) Racism; both the war and the legislation deeming immigrants felons is racist:

The imperialism that drives the war is racist and is evident is that (in) famous philosopher's statement that while all those who are "civilized" are deserving of liberty, those who are not, are deserving of despotic rule. Of course, this was John Stuart Mill writing a treatise titled "On Liberty" while he served a the colonial Administrator for India on behalf of the British Empire. It seems we took J.S. Mill seriously as a country in that we have, indeed, set about making sure that many countries in the world receive despotic rule. One of the ways that the racist historical arguments have been couched is that those with the power are educated, civilized, superior, while those they rule are the opposite. We have busily set about making sure that, initially, Iraq received a former CIA agent (an interesting form of despot) as their leader. Who knows what manipulations are in place now to make sure that "despotic rule" continues for Iraq.

The legislation that deems immigrants illegal, felons, or even "guest workers" is racist and is evident in the comments being made about "those people." I heard Lou Dobbs on CNN claiming that "those people" bring in cocaine and heroine, neither of which is true, of course. Any time we lump a group of people together, separate them out and designate them as "those people" rather than part of us, we are falling into a racist trap. That is, identifying people as "the other" is one of the steps of racism.

Then, there is the fact that the people that are being singled out are persons of color. It is a matter of fact that we do not do INS raids on white Europeans who have overstayed their Visas! However, there have been violent raids on Latino/a communities. One of those raids resulted in rounding everyone up, emblazoning black numbers on their arms, jamming them into trucks that were manure smeared, and carting them off to INS jails. This should sound familiar... One can read more about this type of treatment of immigrants in Christian Parenti's book, "Lockdown America." Some may recall that Hitler used blue triangles for immigrants, pink triangles for gay people, the star for Jewish people...

Exploiting people through war or through deeming them illegal immigrants has to stop!

Threating people's lives, or killing them, through war and through labelling them illegal immigrant "felons" is unconscionable.

2) Economic exploitation; both the war in Iraq and the attack on immigrants is in order to gain profit for the ruling class.

The war in Iraq is rather obviously towards ensuring wealth and power for those who are already wealthy and wield power. Besides making sure that the U.S. gains some control of the oil, we immediately rushed to have Allawi (our man from the CIA) sign Iraq on to an IMF loan. This means that we can control Iraq's economy, lend money to the Iraqis at high interest rates, which then requires that they send large sums of money back to Western banks. Convenient, because we can turn that money around that we get from the Iraqis, using their own money for "buying their oil." Clever and insidious.

The attack on immigrants works similarly in that the constantly shifting rules about their entry into the country are related to adjusting numbers to the corporate need for how many people they would like to exploit, at low wages, working at jobs that have unsafe conditions. When that need is met, we are so inclined to deport. Of course, an "illegal" work force that cannot join a union, be out in the open, and that has no constitutional rights, is very helpful to corporations in their project of maximizing exploitation. Perhaps the story of the workers at a company in California is instructive: All of the workers were granted legal status at some point; when that occurred they immediately walked off of their super-exploitative job and went to get a better job (see Christian Parenti's Lockdown America). This is why corporations, generally, prefer to keep them illegal, off-balance, and without rights.

3) The U.S. has created the conditions of poverty by following Mill's edict that people outside of the ruling Western nation should have a dictator (or a puppet government, or a corrupt government that is controlled by the U.S.); these cooperative dictators plunder the wealth, receive a lion's share for themselves and their "friends," and send the bulk of their country's wealth off to the U.S. Of course, the people we have just impoverished have little other choice than to follow the money/plunder, if they are not to starve. They follow the tribute their corrupt government pays in an ongoing way to the U.S. The money we plunder, and the people desperately needing some of it, land on our nation's doorstep. Then, we victimize them once again by either deporting them or exploiting them, depending on what serves the profit-mongers at the time.

When we realize that the U.S. government is creating the conditions of impoverishment, war, and despair, all around the globe, it becomes more clear why we ALL should support each other in an effort towards peace and economic justice. We cannot have peace without economic justice and we cannot have economic justice without peace. That is, the peace movement needs to work with the "economic justice" movement (in this case, the immigrant labor rights movement), and the "economic justice" movement needs to work with the peace movement, in order for either one of them to be successful.

Perhaps we should begin by working out points of unity!

Linda Warren