The families, co-workers and neighbors of Kilmar Abrego García and other workers who face deportation, along with their unions, are setting an important example. They’re coming together to fight for them to win legal status, to stay in the U.S., as the government is organizing raids aimed at striking fear into wider layers of the working class lacking “proper papers.”
A broad range of workers, in cities and small towns, is getting involved in these fights. Many more can be won. An instructive example is the case of Carol Mayorga, a waitress in Kennett, Missouri, originally from Hong Kong, who was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after her fellow workers, church members, farmers and neighbors came together to campaign for her freedom. “I voted for Donald Trump and so did practically everyone here,” Vanessa Cowart, a member of Mayorga’s church, told the New York Times. “But no one voted to deport moms.” The longer workers of all backgrounds live and work together, bonds of solidarity grow.
Bosses seek to regulate the flow of immigration to satisfy their class needs for a layer of workers — in the millions — reduced to pariah class. Their goal is to superexploit undocumented workers to boost profits, as well as introduce divisions in our class to better attack the wages and conditions of all working people. Divide and conquer is their motto.
Workers have a sharply different class road, to unify ourselves in a common class struggle. Competition among us for jobs is constant under capitalism. The rulers try to sharpen these divisions by scapegoating immigrants and smearing them as dangerous “criminals.” They’re determined to prevent common action by workers of different colors, backgrounds and nationalities, to block us from organizing independently of the bosses and their political parties.
The labor movement must take on and expose all the slanders the employing class and their politicians use to get native-born workers to turn against our foreign-born fellow workers. Unions have the power to organize crucial support for the fight against deportation. They are the largest organizations our class has.
But more lasting steps are needed. Abolishing the second-class status facing millions requires fighting for an amnesty for workers without papers in the U.S.
An amnesty would eliminate the fears and semisecret lives many immigrant workers feel forced to lead, creating better conditions for workers to fight side by side for jobs, with wages sufficient to raise families, and the many other things we need. Winning fellow workers to the need for an amnesty would strengthen consciousness that we’re part of a common class, with common class interests.
Unifying the ranks of the working class is vital as capitalist rulers worldwide have stepped up promoting national chauvinism and patriotism. Their goal is to win workers to subordinate their class interests to “our country” as the crisis of their dog-eat-dog system sharpens conflicts with rivals that will inevitably lead to more wars.
It’s vital to see all political questions as class questions. Along that road working people can advance our own line of march to replace capitalist rule with workers power.
The best step in this direction today is to join the Socialist Workers Party.