Two types of political protest have periodically erupted on the streets of American cities of late. Both mobilize thousands of people, but they couldn?t look more different from each other. One is a sea of rippling American flags, slashing the air to chants of ?USA! USA!? In the other, the only American flags in sight are dramatically altered (corporate logos replace the stars) or mercilessly mocked (as they flow from the shoulders of grinning figures with enormous shiny prosthetic penises, strutting alongside a shambling figure in a clownish Bush mask).

The flag-waving marchers, who are they? Largely non-Americans, mostly illegal immigrants, marching for the right to US citizenship as only a fair return for the labour that sustains the American economy. And the others, the ?Embarrassed Patriots? as some posters have it, milling around bitterly distorted symbols of American sovereignty? Mostly American citizens, of various types of political opinion, from Quakers to communists, demanding an immediate end to US aggression in west Asia and to related government policies from domestic surveillance to Guantanamo.

At first sight, these would appear to be political sentiments made for each other, each challenging the might of the American state in different ways. And indeed, some groups and individuals are common to both; several pro-immigrant posters bob among the anti-war ones. A slogan in rousing and rhythmic Spanish goes (in prosaic English) ? ?Bush! Get out! Open the Borders!/ Bush! Get out! No to War!?

But as political activists in the US recognize only too well, in the present political conjuncture, the one is ripe to be played off against the other. The contrasting status of the American flag in the two kinds of rallies is an indicator that the task of building alliances is a complex and delicate one.

The immigrant rallies are meant to put pressure on the government to adopt a bill stalled in the Senate that would grant legal status over time, to millions of illegal immigrants. The alternative is a bill in the House of Representatives that would tighten border security and criminalize illegal immigrants as well as those who aid them in any way. Both bills have provisions for expanded detention and deportation of illegal immigrants.

(?No Human Being,? says one of the protest posters, ?Is Illegal.?)

Support for the relatively pro-immigrant Senate bill comes from surprising quarters ? many Republicans support it. Small business-people are pro-immigrant, affluent middle classes are pro-immigrant, President Bush, bless his soul, is pro-immigrant. For to be pro-immigrant rights in the United States of America today is not necessarily to be critical of narrow jingoism or to be mindful of the US?s history as a nation built by immigrants. Quite simply, immigrants provide cheap labour. They do, as Bush put it, ?the jobs Americans will not do?.

Such as, for example, helping to conduct the wars launched by the US? Ever since the end of military draft, the armed forces have been dependent on falling voluntary recruitment. And re-introduction of the draft could produce the kind of mass insubordination in the armed forces that happened during the Vietnam war, as the recent film Sir! No Sir! so strikingly documents. One of the promising sources, therefore, for new volunteers, is the ranks of immigrants desperate to get citizenship. Consider this ? a leading role in organizing immigrant protests is played by the Service Employees International Union, led by Andrew Stern, who suggests, in a book, United We Serve (2003), that a two-year commitment to military service could be a legal route to citizenship. Pending in Congress is the DREAM Act, which would grant young illegal immigrants legal residency in return for two years of military service. Better still, why not make enlistment a mandatory requirement for all immigration? A spokesperson for the Council on Foreign Relations, a top US government think-tank, put it quite clearly, ?It would make it easier for the US armed forces to fill their ranks if the recruiting pool were expanded from 295 million Americans to 6.5 billion earthlings.?

(Of whom how many hundreds of thousands would be Indians, ready to kill for US interests in foreign lands, in return for a green card? Not that India is very hospitable to immigrants ? witness the relentless harassment of Bangladeshis seeking work in our country. In our context, the provision might seem almost humane.)

The difference in media attitudes to the two kinds of protests is revealing ?? immigrant rallies get the national front-page coverage they deserve. When thousands of protesters recited the Pledge of Allegiance it was ?enough to provoke tears?, editorialized The New York Times.

Anti-war rallies are a different matter. Take for instance, a recent one of about a hundred thousand people in New York. Under the banner of United for Peace and Justice, a characteristic mix of organizations ? Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Green Party, labour unions, churches, National Organization of Women, an