Join the protests! Demand amnesty!

The Militant urges our readers to join the ongoing protests against President Donald Trump’s executive orders barring entry to the U.S. from seven majority-Muslim countries and preparing to increase the criminalization and deportation of workers without acceptable papers who are already here.

Bring signs demanding, “Amnesty for all undocumented workers in the U.S.!” Join Socialist Workers Party candidates and members at these actions explaining why fighting for amnesty is necessary to unite the working class and to chart a course to take political power. Join the SWP in speaking out against any sort of religious test for entry into the U.S. or discrimination based on country of origin.

The ruling class, aided by their government in Washington, depends on the superexploited status of workers they criminalize and call “illegal.” This is key to their ability to maintain sharp divisions in the working class — to drive down wages and deepen the exploitation of millions. They try to pit us against one another in competition for jobs and to take our focus off our common enemy — the propertied capitalist class.

The rulers count on workers without legal status to stay in the shadows, accept their lot and refrain from fighting to join unions to raise wages and defend their conditions on the job. The constant fear of deportation is a powerful weapon in the rulers’ arsenal.

The fight for amnesty is a life-and-death question for the labor movement. It’s essential to build the unity, self-confidence and class-consciousness working people need to overthrow the dog-eat-dog capitalist system and take political power.

This, unfortunately, is not the aim of those organizing the demonstrations today. Their intent is to try to delegitimize and take down the Trump administration, and rebuild a more “progressive” Democratic Party, the other party of U.S. imperialist rule. They cry crocodile tears over Trump’s decrees, while avoiding any mention of the anti-working-class record of the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations. Many call Trump a “fascist” and disdain those who voted for him as racist, xenophobic “deplorables.”

But workers — Caucasian, Black or foreign-born — who voted for Trump, or who voted for Sanders or Clinton or none-of-the-above, are searching for a break from the economic carnage and endless imperialist wars we all face. The Socialist Workers Party gets a hearing from all of them today.

To the young people, workers and others who are outraged at the White House’s attacks on immigrants and refugees, the Socialist Workers Party says, “Let’s fight together for amnesty, to organize unions. Most important, join us to build a party that can make a revolution.”

Related articles:
Protests continue against gov’t attack on immigrants
SWP: Join protests, demand amnesty!
Yemeni bodega owners close shops, rally against travel ban

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