April 16— Hundreds march in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA) to protest the brutal cold-blooded police murder of Congolese refugee Patrick Lyoya, the oldest son of a family that fled from the violence-torn Republic of the Congo. A police bullet to the back of his head on April 4 shattered Lyoya’s dream of a safe haven. African immigrants face the same brutality and racism African Americans encounter from the police, as well as racist anti-immigrant policies. We don’t ask for “justice” from the racist capitalist bosses. We fight for a communist world without exploitation, racism, sexism, or national borders.
Capitalism’s Racist Double Standard for Refugees and Immigrants. Fight for a Communist World: No Nations, No Borders
USA, April 14— “While Haitians are being whipped at the US-Mexico border,” exclaimed a comrade, “don’t talk to me about the Ukrainian flag!”
The responses of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world to refugees from the war in Ukraine have exposed their racist hypocrisy. While US/UK/NATO policies provoked this war, they have weaponized the plight of refugees fleeing Russian forces to build support for prolonging the war.
Contrast the Polish government’s open arms to Ukrainian refugees with the water cannons it used in November 2021 to repel mostly Syrian refugees on the Polish-Belarus border.
The US government passed ten thousand Ukrainian refugees across its border with Mexico in two weeks, while those from Mexico and Central America are still waiting. And it has put thousands of Haitian asylum seekers on planes back to Haiti—a country devastated by earthquakes and rent by political violence.
Global Refugee Crisis Makes Communist World More Urgent
A worldwide capitalist crisis of wars, famine, earthquakes, drug-gang violence, hunger, and repression has sent refugees and migrants across oceans, deserts, and jungles in the search of a safe haven. Instead of welcoming them, the capitalist rulers have intentionally forced people fleeing for their lives into a journey which is often just as dangerous as the situation they have left.
What a callous and racist response to this crisis on the part of the imperialist powers whose policies created it and whose ruling elites have profited from it! This makes it ever more urgent to fight for a communist world without nations and borders. A world where no worker will ever be seen as a stranger or a foreigner.
UK Government Sends Refugees to Rwanda
The UK government intentionally made the English Channel a dangerous crossing, trying to scare desperate people from attempting it. At least forty-four died last year in that journey—twenty-seven in November alone. Yet people continue to try.
So the UK government announced this week that the Royal Navy will begin to patrol the channel. It will send asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed. Those accepted “will then be supported to build a new and prosperous life [there].”
Just last year, the UK government was criticizing Rwanda’s human rights record. Now it has decided that Rwanda is the perfect place to “offshore” refugees and asylum seekers. And the Rwandan rulers seem to have turned this into a scam, charging sending governments for the service.
There are already 127,000 refugees from wars in the Central African Republic and Burundi in camps in this overcrowded country. And between 2014 and 2017, Israel sent four thousand asylum seekers there. All but nine left immediately, rejoining the stream of refugees across north Africa, through Libya and across the deadly Mediterranean route to Europe.
Offshoring: Trump’s Policy at the Mexican Border
The US Trump administration put this racist and deceptive policy in place at the US-Mexico border. It signed “safe third country” agreements with the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico for them to accept asylum seekers from other countries in another. That is, people fleeing violence in Honduras might be sent to Guatemala.
The Trump administration threatened countries to coerce them to sign these agreements. For example, Guatemala signed a “safe third country” agreement after the US government threatened it with tariffs, a travel ban, and a tax on remittances.
The Biden administration rescinded those agreements. But its primary message to migrants (except Ukrainians) is “don’t come.” Those migrants are fleeing for their lives because of economic and political conditions that US imperialism largely created to make their homes uninhabitable.
The US policy of “expedited removal” against Central Americans pushes migrant families back to their home countries by denying them access to asylum request hearings. The advocacy group Human Rights First tracked over three thousand cases of asylum seekers and migrants who were kidnapped, raped, or attacked after being blocked or expelled to Mexico during the first five months of the Biden administration.
This May Day we see crises around the world. The working class cannot live in the old way. Neither can the rulers govern as they have before.
Now, more than ever, it is time to build the International Communist Workers’ Party and organize for armed revolution to destroy capitalism, its nations, and its borders. One world, one working class, one international ICWP!
Workers have no nations. Let’s fight for a communist world that welcomes everyone everywhere!
Read our pamphlet “Fight For the Day When No Worker Will be Called Foreigner” here