No deportations! Legalize immigrants!

Competition among workers for jobs is a condition of life under capitalism. Anything that increases competition among us, works to the advantage of the bosses who seek to drive down wages and bolster their profits at our expense.

That’s why the capitalist class scapegoats immigrant workers. If they get us to believe that workers without papers are “stealing our jobs” they can undermine the only actions that can counteract competition: Unionizing and organizing the unorganized.

Demanding an end to deportations and calling for immediately legalizing immigrants without papers so they can work and travel without fear are essential to building strong, fighting unions.

That’s why working people need to reject the reactionary rhetoric against Mexicans and Muslims by Donald Trump. Trump talks up a storm — from threatening to build a wall to denying entry to Muslims. Meanwhile President Barack Obama and his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have already built a wall along much of the Mexican border — though they try to pretty it up by calling it a fence. And under Democrats and Republicans alike the U.S. government has beefed up the number of cops on the border and other harsh measures to better regulate the flow of labor to their advantage.

When millions of immigrant workers chanted, “We are workers, not criminals,” during nationwide demonstrations and a May Day strike in 2006 they won the respect of fellow workers, including U.S.-born, from coast to coast.

They demonstrated the capacity of the working class to act in our interests independently of the capitalist parties. It’s only by relying on our own strength — not on executive orders that strengthen the power of the president or on the promises of bourgeois politicians — that we can win over our fellow workers to a common struggle.

The Socialist Workers Party in the U.S., and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, are building parties that fight for this course. Join us!

Related articles:
Obama executive order or not, immigrant workers face fight

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home