Migrant crisis? Build working-class solidarity!

Regarding his immigration program, President Joe Biden — candidate Joe Biden — is attacking the interests of all working people. His latest policies harm workers who have rights to remain and work in the U.S. and threaten the very existence of workers and their families who are migrating. 

Biden’s steps mimic his predecessor’s program — without the gratuitous xenophobic and racist comments. It’s Donald Trump lite.

For the working class and all oppressed peoples, the key issue regarding how the state power treats migrants is solidarity, at home and abroad. The working class and its organizations should strive to win policies that will build solidarity between migrant workers and workers who already have legal rights to remain and work within the country’s borders. 

Building solidarity must be the primary goal. It is no easy task. What makes it difficult is that the U.S. imperialist ruling class — and the organizations and media that serve that wealthy class — have targeted migrant workers, especially those from the Global South, making them the scapegoat of every ill of U.S. capitalist society. Like every “Big Lie,” it is repetition that convinces many people to believe it.

In reality, bosses do everything to lower wages. See how they howl with pleasure when a union loses an election for recognition. But the dominant propaganda they pay for blames low wages on migrants, not on union busting, not on outsourcing.

It’s capitalism and its crises that make jobs precarious. The propaganda blames the danger of job loss on migrants. 

Migrant workers pay full taxes, yet they are most often unable to enjoy benefits paid for with these taxes. The propaganda blames lack of funds for social services on migrants.

The ultraright and all Republicans scapegoat migrants, and most Democrats join the slander and buttress the Big Lie. They even try to blame migrants for crime. And now Biden, with his administration and his presidential campaign team, instead of fighting to smash that Big Lie, is introducing policies that harm the lives of migrants and destroy working-class solidarity.

Biden has set a limit on asylum applications for migrants at the southern border at 2,500 daily. Migrants will be issued deportation orders even if the authorities deny them a chance to seek asylum without a legal reason. That will expose them to criminal prosecution if they try again and ban them for several years from legally entering the country.

Organizations that defend the rights of migrants have challenged Biden’s new rules. Already, however, the reactionary Supreme Court upheld federal government policy and shot down a challenge by three migrants regarding the refusal of the immigration officials to provide notice of date and time of deportation hearings to migrants.

Workers’ organizations, to build solidarity, must join any challenge made by migrants to Biden’s reactionary rules. Working-class solidarity must have no boundaries, even if workers’ organizations and parties have to deal with the reality that capitalist states have imposed borders on human movement where no natural obstacle exists.

Fight to expose anti-migrant lies! Build working-class solidarity! The struggle knows no borders!