Revolution #47, May 21, 2006

Bush to Order Troops to the Border

On May 12, the Associated Press reported that the Pentagon has met with Bush officials to discuss deploying as many as 10,000 National Guard troops on the U.S.-Mexico border. Bush is expected to announce this plan as part of a nationally televised talk on immigration on Monday night, May 15. This troop deployment would be a major and very chilling escalation of the U.S. government's militarization of the border.

After millions of immigrants and their allies have poured into the streets in the past few months to protest anti-immigrant attacks and to demand full rights—this is the response of the Bush regime!

The Senate is reportedly set to vote on an immigration bill soon. The Senate bill will then be “reconciled” in negotiations with the fascist Sensenbrenner bill (HR4437) passed by the House of Representatives. There are some sharp divisions within the ruling class over the immigration issue, and it's not clear what the final Senate bill and immigration bill that would come out of Senate-House negotiations will contain. But all these immigration “reform” proposals in the halls of power are bad for the people. (See “Update on the Immigration Bills: They're All No Good,” in Revolution #43) And the political representatives of the ruling class are all in agreement on gearing up border militarization and repression against immigrants. (Revolution will have analysis of these developments in future issues.)

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