Immigration here ♦
Pictured: Rally against detention of immigrant worker activists, Tacoma, Washington (USA)
USA: Solidarity in Growing Mass Struggle–Answer Fascist Deportations by Organizing for a Communist World Without Borders
LOS ANGELES (USA), April 1— “For big problems, big solutions,” said a garment worker as he was leaving the factory. We talked about the Trump administration’s current racist deportations as he gladly took Red Flag.
Another worker from the same factory stopped and started reading the front page of the newspaper. It showed demonstrations of high school students against deportations. “Are those street protests any good?” she asked.
“Sure thing, they’re a great lesson. Those boys and girls are future workers and soldiers. Their leadership will be key to a communist future,” we responded.
“I’ll take it to my daughter,” she said.
There is uncertainty and fear but also anger and openness to discussing the need for a new world.
Apart from the students’ actions, there have been other actions at the national level against these bosses’ attacks.
The recent arrest of Alfredo “Lelo” Juárez, a pro-farm worker and union activist in Washington State, has sparked new demonstrations against deportations. Lelo is a member of the Mixteca indigenous community (Mexico). He has been an activist since he was fourteen years old, when farmworkers in his area went on strike over the death of a farmworker due to mistreatment and intense heat.
Also, Lewelyn Dixon, Washington State University worker of Filipino origin, was arrested. She has legal residency and has lived in the US for fifty years.
These arrests have mobilized many workers to protest and stand in solidarity with undocumented and documented immigrant workers.
At the same time, arrests of people with visas or permanent residency who have been anti-genocide activists have attracted attention. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student, was arrested for co-authoring a school newspaper article that called for withdrawing investments from Israel and for the university administration to oppose Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Activist Mahmoud Khalil and others have also been arrested by ICE because they oppose the genocide in Gaza.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department has revoked about three hundred visas and threatened to do so with more foreign student activists.
There is also the threat of deportation of 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who have work permits. Tens of thousands of Marias and Josés have been deported and are not mentioned in the bosses’ press.
This means returning thousands of families to poverty and war created by the capitalist system itself.
The capitalists, led by the Trump administration, want to create division and terror throughout the working class.
After the Russian revolution, thousands of immigrants from Europe, trade union activists, communists and anarchists, were arrested in the US and deported. The US bosses wanted to stop the labor struggles against the super-exploitation of that time, fearing a workers’ revolution. That only increased the union struggle. Unfortunately, the then Communist Party USA concentrated on forming unions, not on the struggle for communism. Today the ICWP is fighting directly for communism.
Capitalism has always been violent and murderous. It has never been benevolent to workers. US capitalism, from its inception, was founded on the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans. The current attacks are part of fascism in the desperate fight of US imperialists to regain their place as the number one imperialist, in the face of the Chinese and Russian imperialists.
Student demonstrations, workers’ protests, and neighborhood defense groups are clear examples of the working class not standing idly by. They show that much bigger struggles are coming.
But the main thing, as the first worker mentioned above said, is that we need big solutions. Stopping some deportations or reforming the immigration system will not solve the problem. What we need is a world without exploitation, without borders: a communist world.
Communism will eliminate exploitation, creating conditions in which people will not have to risk their lives in long and dangerous journeys. Nor will they have to separate from their families. Now is the time to fight for this new communist world without borders.
ICWP calls on members, friends, and other Red Flag readers to participate in demonstrations, walkouts, strikes, and other protests against ICE terror. Let’s aggressively seek out contacts among the antifascist masses and build communist relationships with them. Comrades who have already made contact with young demonstrators are now building the communist relationships necessary to recruit them to the Party.
Pictured: Somerville, Massachusetts (USA)
Read our pamphlet:
Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner, here