AUCKLAND, New Zealand - In her letter, Pauline Tangiora adds to the article I wrote on a rally for immigrant rights held here April 25 by outlining the speech she gave to the rally. Tangiora says residence in Aotearoa (New Zealand) or any other country is a privilege, not a right, for immigrants.

The rulers in New Zealand, as in the United States, France, and other capitalist countries, want us to accept that immigrants should be unequal. They are moving to restrict the access of immigrants to education, health care, and other social benefits, and to beef up the powers of the cops to harass them.

The bosses and their governments aren't just going after immigrants. Their purpose is to attack the wages, conditions, social entitlements, and democratic rights of all working people. To do this, they target those they consider most vulnerable and seek to divide us, appealing to fears and resentments in the middle class and layers of the working class. When the rulers try to undermine the unity of our class in this way, we should act according to the time-honored slogan of the international workers movement - "An injury to one is an injury to all" - and demand equal rights for immigrants.

The issues Tangiora raises are part of a wider debate taking place in New Zealand in response to a campaign by prominent rightist politician Winston Peters, himself a Maori, who scapegoats immigrants for the lack of jobs and the decline of health and education services. "I go into restaurants where every waiter or waitress is an immigrant, every second taxi driver, [yet] there are thousands of New Zealanders unemployed," he said in a recent speech.

Some Maori spokespeople have specifically counterposed the interests of Maori and immigrants. For example, Bishop Vercoe, the Anglican Bishop of Aotearoa, claims that as immigration increases, Maori become a smaller minority, and therefore are worse off. "The people who are invited here to become citizens and live and invest in New Zealand are people with money. And there is no way we can compete against that," he said recently.

Maori, an oppressed nationality, the big majority of whom are workers and working farmers, have been disproportionately affected by the social and economic crisis of capitalism. The rate of Maori unemployment, for instance, is more than double that of non-Maori. But, as many placards on the April 25 rally proclaimed, "Migrants are not the problem!" It's the bosses, who are downsizing and laying off thousands, who are responsible for joblessness.

As they stake out their position in a world marked by sharpening interimperialist rivalry, the rulers of imperialist nations like New Zealand are drawn into sharper conflicts with their competitors, and ultimately wars. This is what fuels their sharper nationalism today. They seek to demarcate who is part of their New Zealand nation (and who isn't) and get working people to march behind their "Kiwi" flag. Campaigns against "foreigners" and "immigrants," like that waged by Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party, are part of this reactionary drive.

Defining New Zealand as "bi-cultural," meaning Maori and white New Zealanders above others, as Tangiora does, reflects the same nationalist politics.

History shows that the ruling rich are not as non-violent and peace-loving as Tangiora seems prepared to grant. In the late 1800s, a profit-driven band of merchants, financiers, and land- grabbers, the direct forebearers of today's ruling class, forged the New Zealand capitalist state through a bloody war of conquest against the Maori tribes. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed between the British crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, was a cover for their initial colonization, as were similar treaties signed with indigenous peoples in North America, Africa, and elsewhere.

Workers and small farmers of European origin cannot be lumped together with their exploiters, the same gang of robbers who dispossessed the Maori, in an entity called the "treaty partner." Rather, the interests of the working class and the oppressed stand in opposition to the capitalist rulers and can only be advanced through unity against them.

The continuing resistance of working people is the biggest obstacle to the capitalists' offensive against our rights and living standards and their drive to war. Protests last year in opposition to a proposal by the government for a final settlement of Maori claims on land and resources and a series of land occupations by Maori were an important illustration of this resistance. The April 25 rally for immigrant rights was another example of the kind of militant fightback needed. It also demonstrated the fast-growing international character of the working class.

More immigration strengthens, not weakens, the fight for Maori national rights, and the cause of working people generally. This is because the more international our class is, the stronger it is, as new workers come bringing their experiences of how to fight, and make it harder for the rulers to split us along national lines.

- TERRY COGGAN

Terry Coggan is a member of the Meat Workers Union in Auckland.  
 
 
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