The U.S. government is taking measures to eliminate federal programs that could lead to deportation of more than a million immigrant workers and youth, many who have lived in the U.S. for decades.
Over the last couple months, the Department of Homeland Security has announced that over the next 18 months it will end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.
In November President Donald Trump announced phasing out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which prevents deportation of some 800,000 youth.
The White House is using these moves as bargaining chips to win a bipartisan “reform” that would tighten control of the inflow of immigrant labor.
Deportations are not popular in the working class. U.S.- and foreign-born workers toil together in the same factories, mines and other workplaces. We live on the same streets. And we confront the same attacks by the bosses and their government against our jobs, wages and working conditions.
Democratic and Republican administrations alike turn immigration and deportations on and off to meet the needs of the employing class. They always maintain a section of workers without legal papers, to intimidate them, increase competition for jobs and drive down the wages for allworkers.
As part of their divide-and-rule strategy the propertied rulers pit those with papers against those without, employed against unemployed, men against women, Black against Latino against Caucasian against Asian.
The Socialist Workers Party campaigns for workers to fight for “Amnesty for immigrants now! No more deportations!” Not just those with Temporary Protected Status, or for “dreamers,” but for all immigrants living here today.
This is a life-and-death question for uniting the working class and building strong, effective unions, to defend our class interests and opening the road to fight to take power out of the hands of the capitalist class.