Hundreds of immigrant workers die every year trying to cross the border from Mexico, just as many Haitians drown trying to get to U.S. shores. In countries plundered by imperialist rule--from Mexico to Pakistan--millions of workers and peasants continue to be driven off the land and into the cities, often to the United States, in search of a livelihood.

This is the result of the normal functioning of capitalism, which pushes small farmers to ruin and into the ranks of the working class as U.S. capital draws labor from around the world to work in its fields and factories.

The U.S. employers and their government seek to maintain a permanent category of workers with minimal rights who can be more easily superexploited. That is the role of the immigration cops, the hated migra, who carry out factory raids and mass deportations to intimidate workers born abroad. Under the Clinton administration in particular, Washington has boosted the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into the largest federal cop agency, has built miles of high metal fences along the border, and has increased the military presence on the border. As a result, workers crossing the border have been driven toward remote border crossings that expose them to extreme desert conditions. The bipartisan anti-immigrant scapegoating campaign also gives the green light to vicious attacks on immigrants by right-wing ranchers and other vigilantes.

Despite the efforts by the U.S. employer class to portray workers born abroad as criminals, or at best as tearful victims, immigrant workers are becoming increasingly confident to speak up, organize, and defend their dignity and rights, whether they have documents or not. From the day laborers in Long Island, New York, asserting their right to find work in the face of attacks by rightist thugs, to workers in California demanding the right to a driver’s license, to meat packers in Minnesota defending their union, these fellow workers strengthen our class. That is what the employers are afraid of.

The labor movement and its allies must condemn the attacks on immigrants taking place at the border, in the workplace, and elsewhere. We must join with these fellow workers to demand an end to all deportations and equal rights for all workers.
 
 
Related article:
National actions to protest death of immigrants  
 
 
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