Imperialism Creates Borders and Refugees here ♦ Migrant workers: Fighters for the Whole Working Class here ♦
May 2021 Glasgow, Scotland: Hundreds prevent immigration authorities from taking two migrants
Workers, Unite for Communism Wherever We Are and Wherever We Came From
Imperialism creates borders and refugees
LONDON (UK), December 4—Twenty-seven more migrants died last week desperately trying to cross the English Channel. Both French and British Coast Guards ignored their calls for rescue.
This is by capitalist design. British Home Secretary Priti Patel has declared war at sea against refugees, using everything at Britain’s disposal including the Royal Navy. The British rulers are pushing for NATO to fortify Europe’s borders in the Mediterranean – the same NATO which destroyed Libya and displaced millions!
Migrants are regarded as stateless and nobody’s responsibility. However, the British state deems those who manage to arrive by ‘safe and legal’ means as legal and those who cross the Channel in desperation as ‘illegal’ and criminals.
The British ruling class pushes the narrative that ‘human traffickers’ cause the refugee crisis. It portrays them as wicked gangsters out to extort and exploit willing economic migrants. Of course, many illegal capitalist businesses profit from smuggling people through the borders. And desperate people contract with them to get family or friends through. Like any capitalist enterprise, some are more unscrupulous than others. But it’s the bosses who intentionally make the crossing dangerous, forcing migrants to use mafioso smugglers.
This narrative disguises the real reason for the crisis: the wars unleashed in recent decades by the biggest gangsters: the imperialists. Inter-imperialist rivalries have rained destruction on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia. Their welter of murder and mayhem has led masses to flee. After bombing these countries to bits, the capitalists view those fleeing the carnage as an inconvenience. They refuse to pick up the pieces and instead blame our fellow workers who are suffering.
Imperialism has currently displaced over 82 million people in the last year through its wars and economic terror. Desperate people risk their lives to find somewhere they might eke out an existence under capitalist exploitation. The British and French imperialist capitalists are now at loggerheads as to what to do with the refugees.
National borders imprison us.
The rise of capitalism brought the nation state, which local capitalist classes used to build their industry and commerce. Nations were supposedly based on a common language, culture, tradition and territory but everywhere included minoritized groups.
With the nation came artificial borders that have never been static or fixed and frequently change. Just look at France, Germany or Poland to see how their borders have shifted in the last century.
These borders protected each capitalist class from external competitors and allowed them to lower the value of labour of workers outside their borders as a potential source for super-exploitation.
Workers desperately fleeing poverty, unemployment and persecution at home would (and do) risk great dangers to overcome these fortified borders such as the Mexico/US border. They would then accept work as undocumented workers for lower wages and with little protection from the bosses. In the 20th century, Turkish workers played an enormous role in Germany’s prosperity. This meant more profits for the boss class.
This, however, is not the case in Europe today. The ruling classes are not keen on receiving the large concentration of people displaced by their wars because they don’t see how to profit from their labour. While capitalism has few restrictions and borders for its trade, goods and commerce it is restricting ever more the refugees of its wars.
Britain only takes 1% of the refugees headed to Europe. Those who choose Britain do so mainly for family connections or because they speak English. The ruling class media churns out stories of Britain being a ‘soft touch’ or dishing out generous benefits to refugees who dodge work.
In reality, refugees and asylum seekers are banned from employment and are kept in prison-like detention centres (concentration camps). Those lucky enough to be deemed ‘legal’ are held in dilapidated hotels lacking basic amenities while awaiting a decision of residency.
Britain’s ruling class wants to send those making the dangerous journey across the Channel border to France. The French ruling class, in turn, wants to send them to Britain. Under the European Union ‘Dublin III’ agreement, any state has the right to send migrants back to the member state where they originally arrived. Now that Britain’s ruling class has left the EU, they can’t do this and have got their knickers in a twist.
Overthrow All Capitalists and Their Borders
There is only one way to prevent the displacement, super-exploitation, death and misery that result from imperialist war. It is to unite with all workers in whatever borders they were born within or are trapped behind and organise to overthrow the capitalist class with Communist revolution. Fight for a world with common ownership, equality and equity, and for an end to artificial borders and fortifications!
The capitalists have no borders for themselves, they use them against us, to prevent unity. Workers don’t need their borders or nations! Workers of the world unite!
Migrant Workers: Fighters for the Whole Working Class
December 6— “If they arrest me and the others can continue, I don’t care,” said one of the hundreds of migrants who confronted members of the National Guard and immigration agents who were trying to stop a migrant caravan in the state of Veracruz, Mexico.
With sticks and fists, the migrants managed to break the fence and continued their journey towards the US border.
The massive exodus of Haitian, Cuban, South American and Central American migrants show the collapse of bourgeois institutions and the cruelty of the capitalist system. Meanwhile, we see how a “progressive” capitalist government in Mexico has no qualms about creating and deploying the new National Guard against migrants throughout the whole country and its southern border.
The situation of migrants who manage to reach Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico is serious and extremely cruel. The Mexican government has created a city-jail in Tapachula. The National Institute of Migration does not allow the transit of migrants. It has failed in every attempt to regularize their migratory situation. New caravans that emerge from Tapachula are quickly attacked and disbanded. Few make it through.
In the Tapachula prison-city, Mexican authorities have tried to stop and deport Haitian and other migrants to other countries. Thousands of women, children and men who lack basic services are suffering a health and housing crisis.
Migration has promised to move migrants to other Mexican states to regularize their situation. However, the gravity of the situation should warn us that an escape valve is not enough in the face of a collapse of life produced by the entire system.
The capitalists can no longer offer anything but pain and exploitation to the working class. Migrants are not mere victims. They are fighters looking for a future. That audacity and commitment to survival can and should be channeled to the destruction of the capitalist system.
Communists must fight hard to build the necessary power to create that society where no human being is called illegal or foreigner.
The working class, of which we migrants are an integral part, has the power and potential to make this world a communist world without borders.
-Immigrant Comrade in the US
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