Migration is a fact of life on a globalised planet. When discussing migration we are talking about 3% of the world's people or about 200 million who leave their countries. Less than 20% (40 million) of those migrants are estimated to be undocumented, and many are in the US working on farms for wages that few locals would consider. In most Western countries, migrants make up about 9% of the population. In the US it is about 13%, still lower than it was 100 years ago when the 'great migration' helped to create the most powerful economy in the world. Today, migration keeps the US economy innovative: 40% of its science and engineering PhDs are immigrants. However, millions of workers who have emigrated in hopes of improving their lives have been bitterly disappointed and subjected to the most ruthless exploitation.
In times of economic recession, the ruling class has tended to pit native workers against immigrants, warning the former that wages are low and jobs are scarce because of the latter. The Economist writes:
“For immigrants, there is plenty of work in hotels, in restaurants, in care homes, on construction sites, cleaning offices, delivering leaflets and much else—often at as little as £3 or £4 per hour, far below the legal minimum wage (now £6.31 per hour). These sorts of jobs are never offered to natives, who might alert the authorities and would in any case turn their noses up at them. They rarely last long, as most migrants move onto better-paying legal jobs as soon as they can. But they are nonetheless extremely common, and for many young migrants, they provide a vital first step. A fairly simple policy to reduce immigration then—and especially the sort of low-skilled European immigration that so worries politicians—would be to enforce labour market laws such that employers cannot get a competitive advantage by taking on immigrants at extremely low wages. There is a good reason why comparatively few Eastern European migrants have moved to Sweden and Denmark, and it is not just the weather. There, trade unions in effect control access to jobs, and so immigrants cannot compete by offering to work for less than the natives.”
The problem for the working class is capitalism not migrants and workers living in other countries. Poor housing and education, the struggle to find employment and having little or no control over a worker’s life is a consequence of capitalism and the profit motive not workers who have come from Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Pakistan, Somalia or somewhere else in the world. benefit misuse, housing shortages, educational failures, low pay and productivity. Sadly, politicians think the easiest answer is to endlessly blame foreigners. Politicians think the easiest answer is to endlessly blame foreigners for maladministration of benefits, housing shortages, educational failures and low pay, feeding people's fears in these tough economic times with toxic vote-catching speeches.
Competition is a fact of life under capitalism and workers are forced to compete on the jobs market for work and to constantly compete in employment to keep their jobs. If Britain had a wholly white working class, exploitation would still take place, workers would still be made redundant and they would still have to struggle for housing and other important necessities of life. All workers have identical class interests, they form one class and they take part in the same class struggle. Instead of turning on one another we should unite and turn on our common enemy, the ruling class. Socialists do not envisage cultural uniformity but there is more that unites human beings than divides them. The Socialist Party reasserts that the international class struggle is a fact, that the working and ruling classes of the world have nothing in common, and that every attempt to prevent the working classes of the world from uniting in their own interests requires the unqualified condemnation of all those who profess to speak in the interests of the people. Attempts to limit, control or manipulate the working classes of the world in the free exercise of that right is meant to serve the interests of the ruling classes of the world.
Capitalism cannot survive without the vicious exploitation of labour and the perpetuation of human misery. Various politicians scapegoat immigrants as the source of stagnant or falling wages, declining living standards and unemployment, and call for punitive measures against them. In truth, however, unemployment, and whatever pressure immigrant labor places on wages, is a direct result of the competitive capitalist system itself. It is a byproduct of the system of wage labour, which forces workers to compete for their livelihoods on the basis of the conditions laid down by the capitalist system. Accordingly, efforts to blame immigrants only serves to divide workers against one another, place greater hardships on immigrants and their families, and draw attention away from the capitalist source of these problems.
Capitalism is responsible for economic hardship and insecurity for all workers; that it compels workers for economic reasons to leave their home countries and seek employment elsewhere; that immigration laws, whether promoted by so-called liberals or conservatives, only serve to benefit the capitalist class. Accordingly, the critical issue facing workers today is the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Such a system condemns itself out of hand and does not deserve to survive.
The Socialist Party extends a fraternal hand of welcome to all workers, native or foreign, and invites them to join in our efforts to abolish capitalism and establish a free and democratic socialist society throughout the world.
AJJ
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