No deportations! Amnesty now!

We urge all working people to speak out against the U.S. government’s decision to eliminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Nicaraguans, and to demand they drop consideration of similar expulsion of Salvadorans and Hondurans. This decision will force tens of thousands of workers to leave the U.S. or face deportation. This attempt to divide and weaken the working class must be opposed.

Join and help build the national rally against these anti-working-class moves Dec. 6 in Washington, D.C.!

TPS, as the status is commonly known, was not granted because of the humanitarian concerns of the ruling class. It was begun in 1990 because the propertied rulers worried that the deportation of thousands to Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras would destabilize U.S.-backed regimes and threaten U.S. capitalist investments in the midst of the severe social and economic crises there.

By making the status temporary, they hoped to keep immigrants under TPS in a precarious position, willing to accept lower wages, wary of joining unions, and to use them along with others without permanent papers to drive down the wages of all. By making the suspension of deportation temporary, but renewable, they hoped to undercut any movement to fight for amnesty.

U.S.- and foreign-born workers work side by side in the same factories today, we send our children to the same schools, and have done so for years. There is less anti-immigrant prejudice in the working class than ever before. We face the same bosses, who push down our wages, speed up the pace of work and cut corners on safety in an effort to boost their profits.

This is a life-and-death question for the working class. We need to unite and speak out, “We don’t care where you were born, what language you speak, what color your skin is. Let’s stand up and fight together!”

Amnesty for immigrant workers in the U.S. now! Stop the deportations!

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