With dozens of immigrant workers killed in the derailment of a freight train in Mexico known as the "beast," the numbers of the victims of capitalism have increased. According to a spokesperson for civil protection in Huimanguillo, Mexico, about three hundred undocumented migrants were traveling on the "beast" on the way to the northern border with the aim of reaching the United States.
On the "beast," tragic events happen every day that the news does not publish. They are only known by those who witness such events. Some workers comment that the operators of the "beast" make sudden movements to scare the immigrant travelers. Others who have also lived through the experience say that criminal groups board the train to assault the travelers and rob them of the little that they have. Those who have nothing run the risk of being beaten, raped, or thrown from the train.
This is a reflection of the dog-eatdog ethic of capitalism. But there is another ethic of workers' international solidarity. In several towns along the route of the "beast" there are groups of Mexican workers who bring food, clothes and water to throw to the mainly Central American immigrants on the train. The most famous is the town of La Patrona in the state of Veracruz, where a group of mainly women has been bringing food and solidarity to the people on the train since 1975.
Most workers who travel on this train (grabbing onto the top or sides) come from capitalism's extreme poverty, which forces them to risk their lives. Exhaustion and weakness caused by hunger makes them fall when they go to sleep. Others fall as they try to board the "beast" as it is moving and, if they are lucky, they survive the fall. Those who have families in the US have to pay a lot of money to the smugglers (coyotes) for the trip. All expose their lives to the drug cartels since they are the ones who now control human smuggling. Sometimes they are kidnapped and killed if the families in the US don't pay the ransom. The real beast is capitalism which has created borders worldwide, and also created these criminal groups. These criminals, like the bosses, only seek to obtain maximum profit off the workers. Recently, the son of a friend came from a country in Central America and the experience that he lived through wasn't anything easy. It took him eight months to achieve his objective. He had no money, which is why the trip took so long. He said, "The most difficult thing I experienced was when they left us in the desert waiting for some one to pick us up, but no one wanted to take the risk. Only three of us had saved ourselves from being taken by the Migra.
"When we were still a group of fifteen, we were traveling in a vehicle, and suddenly the police signaled for us to stop, which the driver ignored. She accelerated and took the advantage, and at the right time, every one started to jump from the vehicle even though it was going more than thirty miles an hour. 'If the guide jumped, me too, me too,' I thought. The driver was a very brave woman, which made us brave also."
All these stories that our brothers and sisters recount make us conscious of the need to abolish the borders and to build a communist society: a world without borders, a society in which only one class is working for all our common good. In a communist society, we will move if the collective needs it and we will travel with our families without crossing borders and without having to board a "beast" that puts us at risk because we will have put an end to the capitalist beast.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

These words from "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos" could refer to the migrants who died in the derailment of the "Beast.." But the song is about Mexican workers who died in a plane crash in 1948 as they were being deported from the US. The newspapers published the names of the dead pilots, flight attendant and immigration guard, but just called the 28 dead workers "deportees." This month a monument listing their names was dedicated in the California cemetery where they are buried. Ironically, The New York Times took this opportunity to criticize the Obama administration for deporting nearly two million "day laborers, carwash employees, farm workers and others…who want to work legally and aspire to become full Americans." Its editorial urged Congress to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill and to keep the Obama policy of deferred deportation for "Dreamers," who arrived as children.

Workers' Struggles Have No Borders
Past communists fought for national liberation against imperialism, with slogans like "Free Fatherland or Death." They linked communism to the politics of nationalism, but the ICWP rejects all forms of patriotism. The 20th century Communist Internationals organized separate national communist parties. But we have one party, with members in various countries and eventually we'll extend it all over the world. Communist revolution will abolish national boundaries. The working class will rule wherever we can take power. We won't respect the bosses' borders that separate one group of workers from another. Capitalist immigration laws serve to regulate the racist division of the international working class. Workers from the global South are forced to move north to get a job. Laws that make immigrants "illegal" help the bosses to super-exploit them and separate them from their families. Many immigrants to the US hope a new law will give them a chance to achieve a more stable life. They also hope they'll be able to visit their families on the other side of the border.

Punitive Immigration Bill Hopes to Win Immigrants to Patriotism
But the promised "path to citizenship" will require thirteen years of continuous employment. Workers won't be able to quit their jobs—no matter how they're treated—and will have to put up with anything to keep from being fired. This will mean lower wages, benefits and working conditions for all workers in the US. At the same time, the law will provide a shorter path for "Dreamers," most of whom, because they can't afford to stay in college, will end up in the military. The bosses need immigration reform to provide cheap labor for their war industries. But the main thing they want to do is win immigrants and their children to patriotism. The US ruling class has probably avoided an immediate war in the Middle East, but sooner or later it will go to war with China to try to save its position as numberone imperialist. The Dream Act, always a part of any immigration reform, is crucial to recruiting young immigrants to defend US imperialism. Even more importantly, the bosses hope that a new law will win immigrants to singing "God Bless America" as they send their children off to war.
But immigrant workers are not so easy to fool. Thirteen years on a job you can't quit will pop the bubble of hope that many immigrants have now. And the youth who face racist attacks in the schools and the neighborhoods will be even more open to communist ideas when the bosses send them off to die for imperialism. If we mobilize those soldiers and sailors, as well as immigrant and citizen workers, around Red Flag's communist vision, we can build a new world with no bosses, no nations, no borders and no deportees