By Abby Sewell

Portland State University students picketed outside the Rose Garden early on June 17 to protest the choice of Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) as this year’s graduation keynote speaker. The students, organized by the Student Immigrant Solidarity Coalition, objected to DeFazio’s yes vote on a piece of immigration legislation that would have made undocumented immigrants into felons and could potentially have applied “smuggling” laws to social service workers and religious organizations who provide aid to undocumented workers.

About twenty picketers stood outside the Rose Garden handing out literature to incoming graduates and families. Inside the ceremony, many students wore white hat-toppers on their caps to symbolize their solidarity with the sentiments of the protesters.

“We told people we wanted them to go ahead and enjoy their commencement, so instead of coming outside to join us, we asked them to wear the white hat toppers,” said Angie Mejia, a PSU graduate student and one of the protest organizers. She estimated that about ten percent of the people inside the auditorium were wearing hat toppers distributed by the protesters.

Mejia said the protesters hoped to change people’s perceptions of immigrants. “The face of immigration is not just the face the media portrays of the person who works for two dollars an hour. There are also students who are undocumented who work really hard, and there are students whose families are undocumented,” she said.

After PSU President Daniel Bernstein announced in February that DeFazio was to speak at the commencement, seven student activists met with the president to ask him to rescind the invitation. When Bernstein refused this request, the students sent a letter to DeFazio in which they asked him to denounce his vote. They gave him until June 2 to do so, or face protesters at his graduation day speech.

“Please consider the effects that this vote has had - a pointed attack on families and working class people across the country,” the letter urged.

In his response, printed in the PSU student paper the Vanguard, DeFazio said that he has never supported making undocumented immigrants into felons - a provision that he expected to be removed in the final version of the bill.
“My principle reason for supporting the bill despite its faults is the strong penalties against employers who take advantage of undocumented workers,” DeFazio wrote.

The bill, HR4437, which passed the House last December, proposed not only to criminalize undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens who provide aid to them. It would have set up new, more stringent requirements for employers verifying their employees’ legal status and harsher penalties for those who employ undocumented workers. The bill also called for heightened border security, including the construction of a 700-mile wall on the U.S./Mexico border.

Following a series of mass mobilizations against the bill by immigrants and allies, a softened version passed in the Senate. The revised version removed some of the more controversial points from the House bill, and included a path to citizenship for some undocumented workers. The Senate bill also contains a “guest worker” program that would allow temporary work permits to other immigrants; however, it still includes most of the border security provisions, including the border wall.

On June 20, House Republican leaders announced that they would not negotiate a final version of the bill until they carry out a series of public hearings on immigration around the country, which will run through the month of August. Republican House representatives have been vocal in their opposition to the Senate bill’s guest worker program and proposed path to citizenship for undocumented workers already living in the United States.

When contacted for comment, DeFazio said, “I’ve always approached this issue from a labor perspective. Before 9.11, Bush was all for open borders, because he wanted to break the unions.”

DeFazio also said that he opposes the guest worker program, although for different reasons than the Republicans. “The most pressure applied on this issue is not from immigration advocates but from the business roundtable, Fortune 500 companies - they want access to cheap, exploitable labor.”

In fact, activists like Mejia share some common ground with him there, although unlike DeFazio, they support a path to citizenship for undocumented workers already living in the United States.

“We don’t believe in a guest worker program. We want an overall immigration program that will legalize the people who are already here and help reunify families,” Mejia said.

As of press time, it appears unlikely that Congress will agree on a final version of the bill before the November 2006 elections.

Abby Sewell is a local writer and member of the Back-to-Back Collective.