http://themilitant.com/2017/8109/810920.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 9 March 6, 2017
(editorial)
Amnesty key for working-class unity
The Socialist Workers Party urges working people to join, build and
organize public meetings and protests calling for “Amnesty now! Stop the
raids and deportations!” Raise these questions in your union, with your
co-workers, at school or at church.
Guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security Feb. 20 give
the immigration cops more leeway for raids, arrests, detentions and
deportations. Coming actions will build on the impressive Feb. 16
mobilization of hundreds of thousands of workers and young people,
closing restaurants, stores, factories and construction sites and taking
to the streets across the country.
As Washington seeks to bar travel from seven majority-Muslim countries,
the Socialist Workers Party says “No to immigration tests based on
religion, nationality or political views!”
The objective of the Trump administration, like those before it, is not
to stop immigration or get rid of immigrants.
In the recently released Pathfinder book Is Socialist Revolution in the
US Possible? A Necessary Debate Among Working People, SWP leader
Mary-Alice Waters explains that the working class in the United States,
including the 11 million who are undocumented, is “the source of the
capitalists’ surplus value, which in turn is the source of their
profits, wealth, social status, and state power. They utterly depend on
this massive pool of exploited and superexploited labor.”
This is the basis for the immigration policy of Washington and all
capitalist governments worldwide.
Waters says, “The battle to win the labor movement and the big majority
of working people to defend the rights of immigrants is inseparable from
the battle to organize the working class as a whole and rebuild the
trade unions.”
“It is an issue that is determining the future of the labor movement and
will continue to do so — much like the fight against Jim Crow
segregation did in the 1950s and 1960s, and as the ongoing fight against
all forms of racism and discrimination still does.”
The capitalist rulers advance the division between undocumented and
native-born workers to prevent us from unifying and fighting for our
common working-class interests. One of the central slogans of the Feb.
16 actions was “We are workers, not criminals.” The fight for amnesty —
decriminalization — is crucial for the working class.
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