PARIS, March 11 – Demonstrations and negotiations alternate as 6,000 striking undocumented workers battle for “legalization.” This struggle is a significant anti-racist one, given the fact that the strikers represent masses of predominantly African immigrants fighting their racist bosses’ super-exploitation. While the workers’ immediate goal is “legalization,” the key to real victory remains winning masses of workers to understand the long-term need to destroy capitalism — the source of all exploitation — and the bosses’ borders. Only communist revolution can achieve that goal by eliminating bosses and their profit system.

Yesterday, 1,000 undocumented strikers marched in Créteil, eight miles southwest of Paris, demanding “legalization.” A huge banner urged equal rights for immigrants.

Recently rallies were organized in the Paris suburbs of Nanterre, Evry and Bobigny. French urban geography is the opposite of the U.S. Here, the rich inhabit the core cities with the poor relegated to projects in the outlying suburbs.

For several months, strikers occupied the municipal tax office in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine.

On March 8, bosses of companies employing thousands of undocumented workers and five unions presented the text of a “common approach” to the Minister of Labor, ostensibly to “pressure” the government to “legalize” immigrant workers. This “strategy” contrasts sharply with the actions of rank-and-file workers: striking, demonstrating and occupying government buildings.

However, the rank-and-file strikers face a crucial problem. With their action now in its sixth month, and despite donations from other workers and unions, their financial situation is becoming more desperate. Due to a split between the smaller bosses (who can less afford to do without even small groups of immigrant workers) and the big bosses (who can more easily withstand the absence of a few workers), compromises are being sought between union negotiators and the struck companies.

Mass Strike Of ALL Workers Needed

The “common approach” may very well produce a “compromise” that, in exchange for partial “legalization” for some workers, would freeze out those workers on the “black market” who are paid cash in hand as well as the mostly women personal care providers. To battle such a concession, and buttress their situation, the strikers would need the mass mobilization by the citizen workers to walk out and shut production on behalf of the immigrant workers. This would unite — and benefit — the whole working class since it would reduce the ability of the bosses to use one group against the other.

The bosses will never agree to end the super-exploitation of immigrants, which contradicts their drive for maximum profits. The bosses and the politicians are on the same side. And the union leaders, in seeking “common ground” with the bosses, rather than organizing the mass of unionized citizen workers to join the immigrant workers on the picket lines, end up defending capitalism’s “negotiations” and the concessions it produces. They are saying the workers and the bosses have common interests, masking the fact that it’s the bosses’ government.

‘I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!’

On March 6, 6,000 people marched here from the Place de la République to the Immigration Ministry demanding “legalization.” Signs read, “No to exclusion, abolition of racist and xenophobic laws!”; and, “For the legalization of all the undocumented!” T-shirt slogans included, “I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!” They chanted, “Documents for all!” The same day 50 people rallied in Nîmes, in southern France.

On March 5, undocumented workers and their supporters rallied in Bordeaux, demanding extension of the “legalization” procedure to all undocumented workers. Under French law, those in France for a certain time, with employer “approval,” and who work where there is a chronic labor shortage, can be “legalized.”

In Bordeaux this means construction and restaurant workers can be “legalized” but not nurses’ aides, even though the employment bureau has vacant jobs for them. The workers’ collective condemned the exclusion of Algerians and Tunisians, who supposedly benefit from a specific law but whose treatment is even more arbitrary.

‘We Are All Immigrants’

On March 1, 3,000 people rallied at the Paris city hall, part of the “day without immigrants.” Organizers called on immigrants to cease working and consuming that day to show that companies, shops, government offices and schools cannot operate in France without first- and second-generation immigrants. Similar protests were held in Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Rouen, Strasburg and Toulouse, reflecting the fact that this movement is not restricted to Paris.

The Paris demonstrators had a banner reading “We are all immigrants!”

The demonstrations are building for a protest march to Nice on the French Riviera, at the France-Africa summit, May 31-June 1.

This five-month strike of undocumented workers highlights PLP’s call to “Smash All Borders!” Historically, all bosses use their militaries to establish borders. They then exploit workers in poorer countries, forcing the latter to immigrate to the richer ones where the bosses can extract super-profits, using racism and deportation threats, lowering standards for all workers.

Only with communist leadership — exposing the “nationality” fraud — can workers unite across all capitalist borders, internationally defying the bosses’ divide-and-conquer strategy. This prepares the ground for a communist revolution to destroy capitalism and free all workers from the system’s oppression in a worker-led society. 

Racist Immigration Enforcement is the present reality of U.S. immigration law. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) is what U.S. rulers are using to cover up and increase racist and fascist attacks on immigrant workers. This means rapidly increasing mass arrests of undocumented workers, ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) police raids on homes, jobs, military bases, bus stations and highways, all leading to mass detentions and deportations.  These “enforcement programs” have many names. The new ones are called the “Criminal Alien Program” and “Secure Communities.” Police in every city and county are either deputized as ICE agents or are cooperating voluntarily.

This liberal face of fascist enforcement — the campaign for CIR to create a “path to citizenship“— is attracting thousands of anti-racist workers and students to support it. Millions have already marched for immigrants‘ rights. In one southern city, after a mass parish meeting with over a hundred people, the Catholic Church leadership
forbid further meetings unless all speakers were
approved by the church. Some people at the meeting
exposed CIR for building fascism and racism. Many had come to the meeting wanting to ally with
immigrant workers. Misleaders insisted that the only purpose of the meeting was to convince those already friendly to immigrants to send postcards to their congressmen in support of CIR.

U.S. rulers needs CIR so they can force immigrant youth into the military to fight their widening imperialist wars. The last CIR bill in Congress contained the “Dream Act”, which would use the promise of legalization to trick these youth into giving eight years and maybe their lives to the military.

They also need it to expand fascist labor policy in the workplace. CIR in its current form would set up a massive databank called E-verify. All newly-hired workers, both citizens and non-citizen, would have to undergo background checks on their status just to get a job. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has computerized and centralized searching of everyone’s records — not just immigrants —  so that even prior marriages in Mexico 20 years ago, or a minor arrest in California in the 1970s, will show up and provide a basis for deportation or denial of work. 

CIR’s promise of “legalization” will keep the bait sweet enough to continue to attract millions of workers into a temporary-worker status under the watchful eyes of government agents. Immigrant workers are victims of racist super-exploitation, which impoverishes the whole working class by creating a “reserve army of the unemployed,” which the bosses use as a club over the heads of all workers, including white workers. The CIR will tie immigrant workers to their jobs by making their temporary status contingent on continued employment. This policy means that workers who fight back against rotten conditions risk deportation.

Risking deportation, strikes, demonstrations, jail and getting fired are some of the necessary steps millions of anti-racist immigrants and non-immigrants will have to take to free our class from the bondage of capitalist wage slavery. The alternatives the bosses’ offer lead straight to the barracks, the battlefield and an early grave. Redressing the exploitation of immigrants ultimately requires a revolution, under the red flag of communism, that destroys the national borders capitalists put up to protect their profits by force. 

BROOKLYN, NY, February 23 — Over 200 students, staff and community members from Long Island University participated today in a conference on the situation in Haiti, organized by faculty members. Reports were given by several people who had gone to Haiti since the earthquake, including an LIU student who works as an EMT.

The reports countered the lies and distortions from the press that had spread racist stories of people fighting over food. The eyewitness gave a different picture, of many people helping each other even as they struggle in unbelievably difficult circumstances. The reports also made clear that the U.S. military and UN soldiers there are not helping more people get food and other needed supplies.

PLP members distributed CHALLENGE at the conference and spoke to some of the participants about how capitalism is to blame for the deaths of 200,000 Haitian workers and about the need to build the fight for communism all over the world.

In addition to the eyewitness accounts there were panels on the future of Haiti. During one, several members of the audience made the point that the U.S. military is there to put Haiti more firmly under U.S. control and that people in the U.S. and Haiti should unite to fight against the U.S. military invasion

It appears that capitalism’s Great Recession has created such long-term unemployment that it is leading to “a crisis of historic proportions,” says the policy director of the National Employment Law Project. (NY Times, 2/21)

Of the 15 million “officially” unemployed, 6.3 million have been out of work for more than six months, the highest total since such numbers have been tracked (1948). It is already double the amount of the previous worst record, in the 1980s.

But that’s only half the story. That 15-million figure doesn’t include another 15 million who can’t find full-time jobs or have given up looking, so the long-term jobless number is far more than 6.3 million.

No wonder the NY Times, the capitalists’ leading mouthpiece, laments that “even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.”

Already between the 8.4 million jobs lost in this Great Recession plus another 2.7 million needed just to absorb new entrants into the job market, the economy would require over 11 million new jobs just to get back to when the collapse started in December 2007 (which even then was not full employment). That means “more than 400,000 new jobs a month for three years — wildly in excess of even the most optimistic projections.” (NYT editorial, 3/6)

With all the phony talk of a “recovery” starting (and admittedly a “jobless recovery” at that), even the Times confesses (3/6) that, “The job market may be hitting bottom, but it seems likely to remain mired there.” And the jobs that have been lost are “unlikely to return” — ever.

In effect the Times virtually admits what CHALLENGE has been saying repeatedly; it’s the profit system that is grinding workers down: “Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits,…often achieved by cutting payrolls.” This is exactly the fate that befell the Stella D’Oro workers when an investment company bought the bakery and then sold it when they decided they could make a hefty profit.

Now we can also see the monstrous effects of Clinton’s “welfare reform.” Their rationale for cutting off millions was that it would provide “incentive” for recipients to get jobs. But what happens with a “work-based ‘safety net’ without any work”? More jobless and destitute workers, and not even eligible for unemployment benefits.

So this is what capitalism has brought to the working class, a bottomless pit of unemployment, foreclosed homes, one of four children going to bed hungry. This is even twice as horrific for black, Latino, immigrant and Native American workers, who because of the system’s inherent racist discrimination, suffer twice the jobless rates of white workers.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, when one-third of the working class was on the street, communists led a national movement of the unemployed and organized the basic industries, winning unemployment insurance, welfare and the 40-hour week. But now we see that, as always under capitalism, its economic crises inevitably reverse those reforms.

Communists in the Progressive Labor Party must take up the mantle to organize masses of workers into an anti-capitalist movement that not only fights this insidious racist unemployment — which will be lasting for years and years — but points out to workers that only the destruction of the profit system can end this hellhole of capitalism, something the old “Communist” Party failed to do. Such a movement can become a “school for communism” whose goal would be a society run by and for workers, without bosses, profits, racism and oil wars, a society in which every worker will have a job and work for the advancement of our class. That’s communism. Join us!