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	Workers Vanguard No. 1074	18 September 2015

On Imperialism and Refugees

(Letters)

12 July 2015

Workers Vanguard,

In WV No. 1071 (10 July 2015), I noticed a small paragraph in an article (“Europe: Racist Clampdown on Immigration”) which stated, “We say: Those who make it here should have the right to stay here—Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! No deportations! Shut down the detention camps! All imperialist military forces out of Africa and the Near East!”

What is meant by “Those who make it here should have the right to stay here”? What about those people who have not made it here yet, e.g. those who are stranded in the seas and are being blocked by the imperialists from “making it here”? As communists, shouldn’t we defend their right to get off the boats? Perhaps this is just a case of bad wording in an attempt by WV to separate its slogans from the call to “open the borders”, but these are important questions that I asked myself after I read that paragraph. The rest of the article is excellent!

Comradely,
Joseph C.

WV replies:

Joseph C.’s questions suggest he would prefer the wording: “Those who want to make it here should have the right to get and stay here,” at least in the case of the many thousands trapped at sea. But why stop with them? What about those braving treacherous overland routes (caught, say, in the Libyan desert)? Or the millions confined to squalid camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan? Or the countless people unable to even begin the escape from their war-ravaged, famine-stricken home countries, laid waste to by the U.S. imperialists and their allies?

The desperate efforts of so many people to get into Europe (and the U.S.) are a direct consequence of the imperialist subjugation of the neocolonial world. With their systematic looting of wide swaths of the planet and devastating wars, or proxy wars, from Afghanistan to the Near East to Africa, the advanced capitalist powers impose inhuman conditions on the vast majority of mankind. The UN estimates that there are now some 60 million people worldwide displaced by war and persecution, the highest number since World War II. Many millions more migrate to escape the grinding poverty inflicted by capitalist imperialism. Demanding “the right to get off the boats” onto the shores of Europe is in effect a call to “open the borders.”

This demand imbibes the false belief that the very same imperialist rulers, having intercepted the boats to pack the refugees off to some terrible fate, can be made to act out of humanitarian concern, bringing them ashore to a life of supposed freedom and economic well-being. Alternately, the demand may aim for the abolition of border patrols, but no capitalist ruling class has or ever will voluntarily relinquish control over its own territory, as the article cited by Joseph C. notes.

The call to “open the borders” and its variants are hopelessly utopian. The modern nation-state arose as a vehicle for the development of capitalism and will remain the basis for the organization of the capitalist economy until the world capitalist order is shattered through a series of workers revolutions. Policing its borders is vital to the very existence of the capitalist state power. Moreover, “open the borders” can have a reactionary content, from advancing imperialist economic penetration of dependent countries to obliterating the right to national self-determination.

Despite pleas to (temporarily) open the borders in the face of the refugee crisis today rocking Europe, the bourgeoisies there have no intention of allowing unrestricted immigration. Whatever they do will not be out of any kind of altruism. To the extent that German chancellor Angela Merkel is now posturing as a great humanitarian and offering to open the door to 800,000 migrants, it is because Germany has a falling birth rate and is in need of manpower in certain sectors of its economy. Once these jobs are filled, the door will again be slammed shut. In fact, Germany quickly moved to close its border with Austria. Other European countries, which have different labor needs, are much less inclined to take in refugees, highlighting yet again the divisions within the European Union.

There can be no progressive immigration policy under capitalism, and it is not the business of communists to propose policy alternatives. Our aim is to organize the social power of the proletariat to smash this capitalist system and establish workers rule. To foster the unity, solidarity and fighting capacity of our class, we seek to mobilize the labor movement in defense of immigrants, including by championing full citizenship rights for all and opposing deportations, roundups and detention center hellholes. Against employer attempts to wield undocumented workers as a club against labor, they must be brought into the unions with full rights and protections. To stem the tide of growing fascist and right-wing anti-​immigrant terror, workers defense guards are an urgent necessity.

In our article “The Leninist Policy Toward Immigration/Emigration” (WV No. 36, 18 January 1974), we observed regarding the “open the borders” demand: “This is merely a variant of utopian egalitarianism—the belief that a just society can be established by sharing out the currently available wealth.” As Marxists, we recognize that it will take a series of workers revolutions across the globe and the establishment of an internationally planned economy to eliminate material scarcity through a vast increase in the productive forces of all countries. This alone can provide a decent life for those who now live in the teeming slums and rural villages of the Third World as well as the ghettos and barrios of this country. Only then can there be a world without borders.