The tug of war that has led to the trouncing of similar reactionary measures in Palm Bay and Avon Park, Florida, and the massive working-class actions in the spring that shelved the House bill that would have criminalized all the undocumented, show that those who want to turn millions of immigrant workers into social outcasts to fatten the bosses’ profits won’t get their way easily.

The first-ever U.S. nationwide political strike on May Day, when millions declared, “We are workers, not criminals!” showed that immigration has permanently and irreversibly strengthened the working class.

The recent new immigration waves are transforming the United States and other imperialist countries. All the wealth of finance capital is produced by the exploitation of labor. In addition to exporting capital in order to capture markets and exploit lower-wage labor around the world, the propertied families have come to rely more and more on sucking labor power into the metropolitan centers themselves. This global expansion of capitalism’s reserve army of labor is replenished by peasants and workers driven off the land and fleeing urban slums in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in search of jobs and livable conditions for themselves and their families.

The U.S. capitalist economy would stagnate if the bosses had to rely solely on the exploitation of U.S.-born workers, whatever their skin tone. All the hue and cry about “illegal aliens” by many among the U.S. rulers has to do with the changes in the working class at home. Immigrants are not meek, suffering victims. They are fellow workers who bring their class-struggle experiences, help broaden the horizons of co-workers, and in the process themselves shed anti-Black and other prejudices.

We stand with the thousands of working people and others who took to the streets this month across the United States to demand amnesty, permanent residency, and an end to discrimination and persecution of any kind.

At the same time, the size and scope of the recent actions for immigrants’ rights show there is a conjunctural slowdown in the struggle. The de facto decision of the U.S. Congress to take off the table the “guest worker” bill the Senate passed in May, and put off decision until next year, is a factor. Working people are now bombarded by “friends of immigrants,” largely liberal politicians and their middle-class radical hangers-on, that the important issue is to get Democrats elected in November—detrimental advice given how bipartisan is the assault on working people, including on the rights of immigrants.

Class-conscious workers need to recognize this reality in order to shed false expectations and stay the course. Act on the fact that the composition of the working class puts us on a stronger footing, a new plateau, for the coming battles against the employers—for the fight to transform the unions into revolutionary instruments capable of waging such battles.
 
 
Related articles:
5,000 rally in Washington: ‘Legalize all immigrants!’
Pennsylvania town passes new, harsher anti-immigrant law
Republicans take ‘guest worker’ bill off table and push for tighter border
Socialist candidate for governor of Florida: ‘Immediate, unconditional legalization for all!’  
 
 
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