https://themilitant.com/2018/11/17/amnesty-for-all-immigrants-in-us-cancel-honduran-debt-to-us-banks/
Amnesty for all immigrants in US, cancel Honduran debt to US banks
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 82/No. 44
November 26, 2018
After a month on the road, more than 5,000 workers and farmers from
Honduras and some from other parts of Central America have left Mexico
City, heading for the U.S. border.
Many workers in the U.S. have mixed feelings about the caravan. They
sympathize with those fleeing death threats or victims of gang and
government violence and understand others’ desire to escape the effects
of imperialist pillage and today’s crisis of capitalist production and
trade.
But many also have concerns about the effects of a big wave of new
immigration and sense that the groups leading the trek have organized a
dangerous and risky adventure, raising false hopes of easy passage
across the border. The organizers are using the desperation of many
working people in Honduras to score points for the opposition capitalist
party there and against Donald Trump.
More than 2,600 have abandoned the caravan, accepting the Mexican
government’s offer to apply for permanent residency. Hundreds have
returned home.
Others vow to continue. “In the U.S. we can earn more and give something
to our family,” Nubia Morazan, 28, told The Associated Press.
Using the caravan as a pretext — which Trump demagogically calls an
“invasion” — the president signed an executive order saying that asylum
applicants have to go to one of the 26 official ports of entry. In
Tijuana — where caravanistas have been told by their organizers they’ll
get better treatment — the backlog is so great that it takes up to five
weeks to get an application.
Trump sent 5,600 soldiers to the border with Mexico in a symbolic show
of force. By law, unlike border agents, they are forbidden to detain
immigrants.
The cynical abuse of these workers by middle-class leftists and
liberals, and their calls for the U.S. to “open the border,” are all
aimed at advancing their “resistance” to the Trump presidency.
No fundamental shift in U.S. policy
Despite Trump’s rhetoric, White House policy does not represent a
radical shift in U.S. immigration policy.
The president’s goal is not to seal the border, much less deport all the
millions of workers without papers already here. Like the Bush, Clinton
and Obama administrations before it, the White House seeks to increase
control over the flow of immigrant labor, to turn off and on as the
bosses’ need.
This can be seen in the huge expansion of the so-called guest worker
program in agriculture. In May, at Trump’s request, the Departments of
State, Agriculture, Labor and Homeland Security agreed to “streamline”
rules to let more workers in as bosses face a labor shortage in the
current upturn in capitalist production.
The number of workers given work permits under the H-2A visa program
increased by nearly 50 percent this harvest season compared to last
year, reaching triple the number from five years ago. This will continue
until the capitalist economy inevitably crashes.
From the bosses’ viewpoint these “guest” workers are as exploitable as
those without any recognized documents. If they go on strike or quit
their job they become deportable.
The constant migration of workers from semicolonial countries to better
off imperialist centers is a permanent feature of capitalism. U.S.
imperialism depends on superexploited immigrant labor to bolster its
competitive advantage against rival capitalists. And it uses low-wage
workers without papers to try and divide and drive down the wages of all
workers.
Working people here need to demand amnesty for the more than 11 million
immigrant workers in the U.S. so that they can join unions and fights
for better wages and working conditions and more without fear of
deportation. And to defend the right of political asylum of all those
fleeing death threats and threats of torture and violence.
Honduras is under the boot of U.S. imperialism. Two U.S. corporations
monopolize the production of bananas, one of the country’s main exports.
The foreign debt of Honduras to U.S. banks and bondholders is $8.6 billion.
There is a heated class struggle in Honduras, from the recent 77-day
strike by banana workers to decadeslong struggles for land by poor
peasant farmers. But workers there face the same challenges as workers
in the U.S. — lack of a class-struggle working-class leadership to
organize an effective fight against capitalist exploitation and abuse.
There is a powerful example in revolutionary Cuba, where Fidel Castro
and the July 26 Movement united and led workers and peasants to
overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and take
power themselves. They’ve been in power for 65 years, offering
solidarity to others worldwide.
Workers here should organize to do all in our power to aid the struggles
of working people in Honduras. Demand cancellation of the country’s
crushing foreign debt.
Strengthening the struggles of workers here to take on the bosses, their
government and political parties on a course to take political power in
the U.S. is the most important thing we can do.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Solidarity, struggle is road to unite the working class
•Marriott strike makes gains, picketing goes on at 19 hotels
•Saudi, Tehran fueled war in Yemen brings death, famine
•Amnesty for all immigrants in US, cancel Honduran debt to US banks
•Messages protest Florida prison censorship against the ‘Militant’
Feature Articles •‘Greatest crisis of bourgeois order in our lifetimes’
Also In This Issue •Are acts of Jew-hatred on the rise in the US today?
•Coal miners in Ukraine occupy mine to demand unpaid wages
•Islamic State targeted Christians to terrorize and divide Iraq working
people
•Music, art part of revival of life in Mosul after defeat of IS
•Fall 2018 Militant Subscription Campaign (week 5)
•Socialist Workers Party 2018 Fall Fund Drive (week 5)
Editorials •US troops out of Korea, Middle East, Afghanistan!
Books of the Month •‘Uncle Sam is all over the world, but won’t act for
our rights here’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
