Eighty-seven percent of Americans support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The DACA program protects nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. During September of last year, Donald Trump announced he was rescinding DACA, declaring that he was doing so as part of his “America First” agenda. Now Congress has to act to preserve the program, or DACA recipients, commonly called Dreamers, will begin losing their protected status on March 5, 2018.
This continuing advancement of anti-immigrant debates and policies represent the immoral and fascist nature of ruling class ideas and politics, the new political reality in America today. The ruling class is unleashing the full power of the corporate State, which includes both ruling class political parties, against all workers by concentrating its attacks on immigrant workers.
Even though the anti-immigrant movement in America does not represent the majority view of the American people, it is a major expression of American fascism today. It is being used by the ruling class to cultivate a fascist mass base by appealing to American superiority, laced with white supremacy. For example, take Trump’s comments opposing immigrants from so-called “shit hole countries,” saying he favored the U.S. getting more immigrants from countries like Norway. The anti-immigration debate is designed to pit American workers against each other, and against the workers of other countries. American workers have common class interests with workers of all countries, and Dreamers are workers in America.
Trump’s January State of the Union address is another example. The address contained not only “America First” rhetoric throughout, but also policy proposals along those nationalist lines as well. Central to his “America First” theme was his so-called four pillars on “immigration reform,” which he opened up saying, “Americans are dreamers too.” The first three pillars include a $25 billion U.S.-Mexican border wall; restricting green card family immigration visas to only the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens; and replacing the current green card diversity-based lottery system with a skills and merit based system. The fourth pillar – a legal status framework for DACA recipients and other DACA eligible immigrants – is conditional, requiring that elements of the first three pillars be included in any “immigration reform” legislation.
With the expiration deadline for the DACA program fast approaching, the Senate failed in mid-February to pass three different immigration legislative bills, including a DACA program and Dreamer protections. As we go to press, the Senate has adjourned and gone on a weeklong recess. It is due to return with only one week remaining before the March 5 DACA expiration date.
Immigrants in the U.S. are part of the American working class. Why do we even allow debates about breaking up families, or even discuss whether young workers and children who have been in the U.S. for years, should be deported? Such debates and discussions are immoral from the start. The majority of Americans are moral people. With an overwhelming majority of Americans supporting the Dreamers, it is nonsense for American workers to allow the two ruling class political parties to frame the debate on immigration reform.
Congress and the corporate mass media are using these anti-immigration debates to get a section of the U.S. working class to unite with a ruling class fascist program. It is part of its strategy to divide the workers, to build a mass base for fascism in America. Working class unity based on our common class interests is the only weapon we have to defeat the ongoing ruling class fascist offensive. U.S. working class interests can only be politically represented by a working class political party, with a working class political program. As workers, we cannot win unless we begin to do it.
March/April 2018 Vol28.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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