The issue of the undocumented immigrant today has to be seen in the context of globalization and capitalism in the age of electronics. The flow of poorer workers to richer countries is an objective part of that process. One out of three people worldwide are migrant workers. The internationalization of capital and the development of a world market demands open borders for immigrant workers.
The world as we knew it is becoming a thing of the past as workers are being uprooted and displaced around the globe. In this country the immigrant worker is an integral part of the process where the “middle class” is being eroded and the workers are being thrown down to the level of the last hired and first fired. They are a part of the growing mass of dispossessed workers. Their demands reflect the common demands of this new class and its dispossessed core — health care, decent housing, education for their children, jobs and a way out of poverty.
The workers, including the undocumented, can’t live without jobs, and the capitalists can’t deliver jobs in an economy based on electronic production, which is systematically eliminating jobs. In this context immigration itself becomes the issue that masks fear over the loss of jobs, housing, etc. The ruling class, which has no real solutions, resorts to scapegoating and divide-and-conquer tactics to control not only the immigrant worker but also the entire class. Their aim is to criminalize a section of the working class in order to prevent its unity as a class.
As such the question of immigration presents a key front in our battle for the hearts and minds of the U.S. working class in general and the Latino and Spanish-speaking section of it in particular. For the larger class as a whole, the immigration question is being used as a major stumbling block to the development of working class unity, and as a veiled attack on the working class in general by the introduction of repressive measures such as Secure Communities, e-Verify, private prisons, heightened repression of the border and the general militarization of U.S. society, and the climate of fear and mistrust that these policies entail.
Even so-called immigration reform is no solution. If we as revolutionaries allow the ruling class to dictate the political terrain, the working class will only wind up fighting one another for the crumbs dispensed by the capitalist class. We wage a fight for human rights and equality for everyone. No one is illegal.
We raise the issue of a new type of society, a cooperative society, where everyone can have what is needed to lead a decent and cultured life. Above all we fight for the unity of the working class and the fight for the political power of that class to achieve their goal of a good life for themselves and their families.
May/June 2013. Vol23.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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