Scrap the Sensenbrenner-King Bill,
Stop Institutionalized Labeling of Undocumented Immigrants and Migrant Workers as Terrorist!
1 April 2006

The Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, a regional migrant workers centre in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions, is one with the struggling immigrants and migrant workers in the United States in their call to immediately scrap the anti-migrant workers and immigrants bill called Sensenbrenner-King Bill or otherwise known as the Border Protection, Anti-Terror and Illegal Immigration Control Bill. We also call for the immediate and unconditional recognition of their rights to acquire permanent residency in the US.

The anti-migrant workers and immigrants bill signifies the growing racist attack by the US government among undocumented migrant workers and immigrants in the US. The bill, if passed in the Senate and signed by US President Bush, will only legalize and institutionalize the US governments’ labeling of undocumented migrant workers and immigrants as terrorists.

Worse, other countries which are known followers of the US and also hosts to thousands of undocumented migrants and immigrants might be encouraged to do the same.

The US government has labeled people with Muslim faith as terrorists. The US is doing this as part of its war on terror. Now, it wants to broaden the labeling to include the undocumented migrant workers and immigrants in their own soil. This is a dangerous move and will only criminalize millions of undocumented migrant workers and immigrants just like the policies being implemented among undocumented migrants in Malaysia, Korea, Japan and Israel, to name the few.

An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants and migrant workers are now in the US. Most of them came from the least developed and underdeveloped countries whose economies are dependent on the hard earned dollar remittances sent by their people working abroad. The institutionalized forced migration in some of these countries are exporting their people to the developed countries and one of its major destinations is the US especially those coming from South America and South East Asia like the Philippines.

As long as the root causes of forced migration remain, people from the poor countries will continue to leave and seek better place in order to survive.

Lastly, we believe that the thousands of undocumented migrant workers and immigrants marching in the streets in different places in the US almost everyday will continue to grow. Their united and organized voice will surely make the proponent of this bill to think twice and will only help expose the real agenda of the US policy on war on terror which is to control and liberalize the economy and natural resources of most countries of the world.#