SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — “Hundreds of workers here have already lost their jobs,” Lindsay Aime, co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, told John Hawkins and Ned Measel when they visited its office here July 22. Hawkins is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Cincinnati and Measel is the SWP candidate for City Council.
The candidates met warehouse worker Hermione Pierre when they knocked on doors in a large apartment complex here. Like many Haitians, Pierre has the right to live and work in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status program, which is set to last until next February.
“One moment you’re legal and then they take it away,” she said, referring to the government’s moves to cut this program off in September. Following a court ruling, that decision was reversed.
“We need to organize a union-led fight for amnesty for all immigrant workers in this country,” Hawkins said. “This is the road to unifying the working class to fight against the deepening attacks of the bosses and the government.” Pierre agreed, getting a copy of the Militant.
Many workers who are immigrants from Haiti lost legal status and work permits earlier this year when the U.S. government abruptly ended the “Humanitarian Parole” program for 500,000 workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.
Springfield is home to some 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians who settled here in the past few years taking jobs at warehouses, auto parts plants, retail stores, schools and nursing homes.
“The government is trying to make more people deportable, calling us criminals,” Aime told the SWP candidates. “But people have bought houses here, have kids in school and have a culture here.”
“The capitalists need low-paid immigrant workers. These deportations are primarily aimed to divide the working class to more easily dominate us,” Hawkins said. “They try to scapegoat immigrants, blaming them for the problems workers face. But the real problem is capitalism itself. The SWP says the labor movement must take up the fight for our brothers and sisters who are immigrants.”
“Unions are important,” Aime agreed, saying Haitian workers are often mistreated and not told about the rights they have.
“Some fights by immigrant workers are being won,” Measel said. “When working people stand together we can force the government to back off, like in the case of Carol Mayorga in Kennett, Missouri, and Ernesto Manuel-Andres in Bowling Green, Kentucky.” Both won release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after friends, families, neighbors and community organizations mobilized and fought.
Hawkins returned to Springfield July 26 to participate in the second anniversary celebration of the opening of the Rose Goute Creole restaurant. It had become a center of solidarity with immigrants last year when people came from all over Ohio to show support for Haitians after then-presidential candidate Donald Trump slandered them, claiming they were eating their neighbors’ pets.
Owner Rose Goute welcomed the SWP candidate, urging him to stay for lunch and discussion.
“How can we change the situation Haitians face?” asked Claire, who was helping out in the restaurant and requested her last name not be used.
“We can force a change,” Hawkins said. “We can win working people and our unions to mobilize to defend immigrant workers because they’re part of the working class. Organizing them is vital for strengthening the unions.
“It’s bad here, but Haiti is even worse right now,” Claire said.
“The working class in Haiti has organized before and can organize again,” Hawkins said. “The Cuban Revolution showed it is possible to lead a fight to replace capitalist rule with workers power. We need revolutionary parties to lead that fight — in Haiti and in the U.S. That’s what the Socialist Workers Party exists for.”
Amnesty for immigrant workers
In New Jersey, SWP members Nancy Boyasko and Roy Landersen visited Princeton July 27, where 15 immigrants had been picked up in an ICE raid a few days earlier in an area where day laborers gather for work.
They spoke to Kim Beury, a mental health therapist, on her doorstep. She told them she was “horrified with the raids.” ICE agents said they were looking for an individual they claimed was a criminal, Beury pointed out, and then seized 15 workers there.
“What’s needed is an amnesty for all immigrants living and working in the U.S.,” Boyasko said. This would take the wind out of the sails of those who try to scapegoat immigrants, and it is the only way workers can fight shoulder to shoulder for their interests, including building the unions.
Beury asked the SWP campaigners what Joanne Kuniansky, the party’s candidate for governor of New Jersey, would do if she’s elected. Kuniansky would continue doing what she’s doing today, Boyasko said, speaking out against all the assaults on working people and joining workers to fight in our own interests.
“Until workers build a movement of millions that can take power into our own hands,” Landersen said, “we can make no lasting gains.”
To learn more, Beury got a Militant subscription and the books Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism, by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
To find out more about the SWP, check the address nearest you.