The big-business media made a big fuss about the break up of an "alien-smuggling hiring ring" that brought Mexican workers to garment shops in Georgia and Alabama. The chief of the border patrol in El Paso, Texas, piously denounced the "sophistication of smugglers" who are "eager to supply American companies with low-wage workers," the New York Times reported. "They [smugglers] are involved in the business of exploitation," the border chief proclaimed.
That describes all industry under capitalism and free enterprise. The denial of rights to a layer of the working class dubbed "illegal" helps the bosses to superexploit those workers in particular and hold down wages for all.
Working people should demand equal rights for all immigrants, the release of those detained, and no deportations. The labor movement should fight for solidarity with those from other countries, not scapegoating immigrants.
Protectionist campaigns like the recent rallies organized by officials of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees against sweatshops in other countries hurt working-class solidarity, as does blaming the North American Free Trade Agreement for "illegal immigration."
These America First campaigns, increasingly championed by the labor skates, escort workers right into the fascist trap of ultrarightists like Patrick Buchanan, who nods his agreement with AFL-CIO president John Sweeney "on the issue of protecting the wages of our workers and keeping manufacturing at home." This propaganda is similar to the "Buy American" campaigns promoted by the union officials in the 1930s as the U.S. government prepared for entry into World War II.
As the competition between Washington and its imperialist rivals grow sharper, the clamor to protect U.S. business interests will ring louder and rightist scapegoating of immigrants, oppressed nationalities, and women will intensify.
Workers around the world will need to struggle against this course, which breaks down resistance to reactionary nationalism. Building international working-class solidarity is the watchword. The only road forward out of the crisis of this dog-eat-dog system is for fighters to join the fight for workers and farmers governments around the world and become a part of the revolutionary socialist movement.