The U.S. has a long history of anti-immigrant politics; and they are always aimed at the working class, including the ‘native-born.’

‘Drive on the Foreign-Born’ by A. Jakira from Labor Defender. Vol. 5 No. 4. April, 1930.

AT PRESENT three bills are pending in Congress providing for registration of all aliens residing in this country.

The main provisions of Bill number 1278, introduced by Senator Blease of South Carolina, are: a certificate of admission to the United States shall be furnished to any alien upon application to the Commissioner General of Immigration; this certificate must carry the alien’s photo- graph and signature; it will cost him $3.00; such a certificate shall be prima-facie evidence of lawful entry.

This bill is far reaching. By its provisions any alien without such a certificate will be considered as having entered the country illegally and subject to deportation.

Another bill (H.R. 9147) was introduced by Congressman Cable of Ohio. It provides that every foreign-born individual shall enroll annually under penalty of exclusion from citizenship for not registering.

The most vicious bill is H.R. 9101, introduced in the House by Congress Aswell of Louisiana. It provides in the main that every alien 21 years of age and over must register annually at a fee of $2. The certificate must bear the alien’s photo and signature.

This bill also provides that every alien serve as a spy on his fellow workers “by reporting all arrests or convictions of aliens and the charges upon which such arrests were made or convictions obtained, together with the final disposition of each case or any other information as specified by regulation bearing upon the fitness of such alien for citizenship.”

The bill provides that all changes in name or physical appearance shall be immediately reported to the Commissioner of Naturalization. Every alien “must, on demand at any time exhibit his certificate of registry to any agent of the Department of Labor, to any Federal, State, Territorial or other public police or peace officer.” Violation of the provisions of this proposed measure is considered a serious crime and is punishable upon conviction by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars or by imprisonment of not more than two years, or by both and any alien who fails to register for two consecutive years is subject to deportation.”

There are other bills aiming at the foreign-born workers, such as heavy punishment for those who have ever entered the country after being once deported; a proposal to severely punish all such person who fail to report the presence of such deported workers and others.

The unemployment demonstrations of March 6th have caused the powers to be to renew and to intensify their campaign against the workers generally and especially against the foreign-born workers, who are most affected by the present severe economic crisis. Senator Heflin of Alabama, a well-known Ku Kluxer, on March 12th, introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for a census of all foreign-born workers in the United States with a view of wholesale deportations. He offered this resolution as a remedy “against Communism and unemployment.” Throughout the country the demonstrations were followed by wholesale raids on homes of foreign-born workers and many of the workers are held for deportation. In New York the Chamber of Commerce is considering ways and means of deporting “all radical aliens,” while in Detroit shortly before March 6th the City administration ordered the discharge from city jobs of all workers not citizens of the United States. Against the foreign-born workers are aligned all the reactionary forces beginning with the Ku Kluxer Heflin and ending with Matthew Woll and Green of the A.F. of L.

The strike-breaking bills in Congress and the general attack on the foreign-born workers are aimed not only against the foreign born, but against the native-born workers as well. They are to be used as a weapon with which to club into submission the workers, both native and foreign born, who dare to fight against misery, unemployment and starvation. They are of the same type as the attacks on the workers thru the various criminal syndicalist or sedition laws, thru the anti-red-flag laws and thru the lynching campaign against Negro workers. They must be combatted by all means at our disposal.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Not only were these among the most successful campaigns by Communists, they were among the most important of the period and the urgency and activity is duly reflected in its pages. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1930/v05n04-apr-1930-LD.pdf