The question of immigration is the question of our times. Over 65 million people fled their homes in 2017, due to war, gang violence, political repression, environmental catastrophe, or economic difficulty, and that number will rise. Many of these reasons are caused or exacerbated by the powerful countries of the world, towards which millions are fleeing. Capital and powerful militaries respect no borders. Whether it is the United States support of the coup in Honduras, which brought the military to power and destabilized the country; the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; Germany and US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, used to push Yemen to the brink of starvation, or Russia and Iran’s support dictator Bashar Al-Assad in Syria: the human consequences are horrific. Regardless of drone surveillance, border walls, sensors, dogs, oceans, deserts, arrests, and deportations: people will always emigrate.
The question, then, is simple: do we stand in support of people fleeing their homes, or not?
The consequences of not standing with immigrants are visible in the drowned bodies fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, the perished in the Sonoran Desert, those trapped on Manus Island, the wails of children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
And while anti-immigrant discourse takes different shapes in Europe and in the US, the arguments end up the same: immigrants and refugees take jobs, take social resources, do not integrate, are criminals.
These arguments have all been debunked over and over by experts: immigration is the sign of a healthy economy, and immigrants are more likely to set up small businesses that contribute to the economy. In Germany, immigration is necessary as the native population’s birth rate falls below replacement level; in the US undocumented immigrants pay taxes but cannot receive benefits. Yes, refugees require social services to begin with, including help with language, housing, and the job search, but this is offset by those who stay and contribute longer-term. It’s the same reason Germany has offered the free university to national students and international students: a study found that 50% of international students stay in Germany, working and paying taxes. Finally, immigrants and refugees are less likely to commit crimes than native-born populations.
But the logic of the anti-immigrant arguments is what is most disturbing: that we would draw a circle around a certain group of people and say “these people are not deserving.” At base, it is an anti-human argument, one that sees “the Other” as non-human.
“Those are not our children on the border” is used to justify acts of cruelty. But this cruelty does not come out of nowhere: twenty years of scapegoating of immigrants and militarizing the border has created the infrastructure for today’s family separation and detention. Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement- today’s Gestapo- was only formed in 2002 with bipartisan support. George W. Bush passed the “Secure Fence Act” which built 700 miles of the border wall, which Senators Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton voted for. Bush’s administration implemented mass deportation trials in “Operation Streamline.” Later, Obama would win the distinction of most deportations under a sitting president, and whose policy of family detention led to his administration being sued for imprisoning families. These family detention centers are now expanded by Trump, who has also expanded ICE raids to terrorize immigrant communities.
There are kernels of the ‘undeserving’ argument in neoliberal austerity, whose cuts in all sectors, education, health, housing, childcare, transportation, have had a disastrous effect on our lives. In the United States, people are dying younger, infant and maternal mortality rates are rising. Suicide rates are up. Childcare eats away at 20-30% of income, the average student debt is $25,000. For too long, neoliberal logic has drilled into our heads that the working class is undeserving of social benefits, offering us only the gospel of positive thinking. On the other side of the coin, centrists and the right-wing scapegoat “the Other” to justify government cuts, working to appease Capital.
Where does the distinction between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ end? If immigrants are not ‘deserving,’ what about disabled individuals? Single mothers? Those addicted to drugs? Thos who cannot work? Those without homes? Those in prison? Students laden with debt? Our right to life should not be based on our ability to labor.
Jeff Session’s argument that domestic violence cannot be used to claim asylum in US tells us that immigrant women are not deserving of a life free from violence. It is easy for the same logic to justify cuts in social spending for domestic violence shelters in the United States. The logic of austerity and racism work together.
Decades of this have done their job: Reagan’s ‘welfare queens,’ Clinton’s ‘super-predators,’ Trump’s ‘Mexicans are all rapists and drug-dealers,’ Beatrix von Storch’s “immigrants are criminals” have been used to justify cuts in welfare, increase criminalization, and militarize the border. The white population is soothed by thoughts of superiority while Capital pockets the difference.
German fascism saw this to its logical conclusion, encoding the socially-fit ‘Aryan’ population as deserving and worthy, while Jews, the disabled, Communists, Roma, gays, and the ‘socially unfit’ were deemed undeserving of citizenship, property, the right to vote, and later, the right to life.
Socialism’s answer is that all people, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, skin color, or ability, are deserving of life. As part of the fight against neoliberalism, we must insist that we are deserving, and so are our neighbors- regardless of their nationality. We must break down the borders between countries, and we must break down the borders between ourselves and “the Other.” Our humanity urgently depends on it.
La Luchona 