https://socialistaction.org/2018/11/12/solidarity-with-the-migrant-caravan/
Solidarity with the migrant caravan!
/ 34 mins ago
Nov. 28 Migrants (AP)
Immigrants from the main caravan enter a shelter in Mexico City, Nov. 4.
(AP)
By LISA LUINENBURG
Over the last few weeks, eyes across the world have been following the
human drama of the caravan of migrants making its way through Mexico
toward the U.S. border. The caravan is made up of mostly young people
from Central America, the majority from Honduras, who are trying to
escape the grinding poverty and gang violence in their home countries
that are the result of brutal military and economic interventions
perpetrated by the U.S. ruling class in the region for centuries.
According to some media sources in early November, there were four
migrant caravans traveling through Mexico, that had swelled to contain
12,000 people as more migrants continued to cross into Mexico from
Guatemala. While estimates of the caravan’s size varied, it is clear
that the Mexican government has already processed thousands of asylum
claims for the migrants passing through their country, which caused the
numbers to dwindle.
While the U.S. has urged Mexico to stop the caravan before it reaches
the border, the response of the Mexican state towards the caravan seems
to have been mixed. Some towns have welcomed and tried to help the
migrants while Mexican police and immigration agents have made some
arrests, deportations, and repression.
In the United States, tensions rose greatly as President Trump continued
to vilify and attack undocumented immigrants in his cross-country
campaigning for the Republican Party in the lead-up to the November
elections. According to The New York Times, “his [Trump’s] renewed
emphasis on the issue reflects the belief by strategists in both parties
that Republican candidates often benefit if they can link illegal
immigration to crime, economic insecurity and terrorism—all resonant
concerns with swing voters, especially women—and portray Democrats as
too spineless to tackle the problem.”
Trump accused his Democratic Party opponents of funding the caravan in a
bid to hurt the Republican election campaign. In a recent Tweet, the
president wrote, “If the Democrats would stop being obstructionists and
come together, we could write up and agree to new immigration laws in
less than one hour. Look at the needless pain and suffering that they
are causing. Look at the horrors taking place on the Border. Chuck &
Nancy, call me!”
Yet, it is Trump himself who has been an obstructionist regarding the
plight of undocumented immigrants. One cannot fail to notice the
hypocrisy in his statement. While Trump’s housing monopoly undoubtedly
profits off of the labor of undocumented workers here in the U.S., Trump
continues to use reactionary language to describe the migrants winding
their way towards the U.S. He has shouted since day one of his
presidential campaign that migrants are all criminals, rapists, and gang
members, coming to the U.S. to steal white people’s jobs and run amok in
“our” country.
Trump has threatened to close the border to the approaching migrants and
deny them the right to seek asylum, and has also threatened to deploy as
many as 15,000 Army troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. These troops would
reinforce the roughly 2000 National Guard troops that have been deployed
at the border since April of this year. Trump has also proposed to
abrogate the language of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in
order to deny children of undocumented immigrants born in the United
States their fundamental right to citizenship.
This strategy is meant to divide the working class over the questions of
race and immigration. It denies the fact that migration has been taking
place throughout human history, and the fact that it was the United
States who created the various crises in Central America and Mexico that
are pushing people to flee the horrific conditions in their own
countries to seek a better life for their families in the so-called land
of opportunity.
And let’s not forget that Obama has deported more immigrants than all
former U.S. presidents combined. In 2014, his administration housed 7000
unaccompanied migrant children on U.S. military bases. From June 2006 to
July 2008 and from June 2010 to September 2011, former Presidents George
W. Bush and President Barak Obama dispatched National Guard troops to
the U.S.-Mexico border, at a total cost of $1.35 billion.
What the working class needs now more than ever is solidarity with
undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. and with the caravans
working their way through Mexico. We must remember that migration is a
human right, and it doesn’t matter if the Democrats or Republicans are
in power—the ruling class will always find a way to profit from the
super-exploitation of immigrant workers and to use fear-mongering among
the U.S. population as a way to control public opinion and gain support
for their xenophobic plans to further repress immigrants.
Immigrants are our neighbors, our co-workers; they are members of our
unions, and their children play with ours at school. Immigrants have
shown they have the power to rise up against reactionary policies, as we
saw in 2006 when some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history
occurred against the Sensenbrenner laws. And we also saw earlier this
year the power of the U.S. population to rise up in solidarity with
undocumented immigrants when their children were literally being ripped
from their arms.
We also need solidarity with and support to organizations in border
areas that are planning for the arrival of the first migrant caravan in
the coming weeks. Solidarity knows no borders.
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November 12, 2018 in Immigration, Latin America.
Related posts
The caravan that defies borders
The rise of right-wing violence in Trump’s America
Stop inhumane policies against migrants!
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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
