More on Immigration

Emigration for survival has been going on for time immemorial. Human beings from the beginning of time were looking for a place where their basic needs would be met. At the time there were no countries or no borders. Today emigration continues to be a survival skill.  Millions of workers who emigrate hope of improving their lives have been bitterly disappointed and subjected to the most ruthless exploitation by the ruling class.

Some on the Left see the free movement of labour as part of neo-liberal globalisation  - something which benefits Big Business but not ordinary people. They further add that  immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages.  For the capitalist, immigrants are sources for both exploitable labour and consumers in the market. But being Leftists they call for policies to make migration unnecessary and for funds to be used to enable poorer regions to be self-supporting.

Some mistakenly 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 labour places on wages, is a direct result of the competitive capitalist system itself. It is a by-product 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 scapegoat immigrants only serve 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 with its private ownership of the economy and exploitation of wage labour is responsible for economic hardship and insecurity for all workers; that it compels workers for economic or political reasons to leave their home countries and seek a new life 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. We can't let the employers divide us and play us off one against the other. If we organise in unions, and politically, we can fight back.

Azeb Brahana is a 25-year-old Eritrean who left her country in 2012, aware, she says, that the life she wanted was not possible in a country with mandatory national service. To get to Europe she worked for a year in Sudan and endured months in a Libyan jail, where the United Nations estimates thousands of refugees and migrants are being held in deplorable conditions. It was in prison that Brahana gave birth to her son, and it is because of him that she is determined to make it, finally, to a place of safety and stability. “Somewhere I can live with my baby, happy,” she says. She paid people-smugglers $1,600 (£950) to board a boat packed with more than 300 people.

Many others have stories of torture and ill-treatment on their epic journeys across Africa. “They threatened you,” says Adama Bah, 16, from Gambia, recalling his time in Libya where he says he earned the money to pay smugglers for the sea crossing to Italy. “I saw many people shot in the leg or dead.” Bah wants to be a footballer when he grows up. “That’s my dream,” he says.

Teame Habte, 20, from Eritrea, came to Italy through Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya and was taken from the sea to Lampedusa. “My uncle lives in Rome,” he says. “I will work. I will do any work. I need to send money home because my family is very poor.”

 The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi told his parliament: “A Europe that tells the Calabrian fisherman that he must use a certain technique to catch tuna but then turns its back when there are dead bodies in the sea cannot call itself civilised.”

“We continue to talk of an emergency about migrants … It’s not possible to talk about an “emergency” after 20 years,” says Rosario Valastro, president of the Italian Red Cross in Sicily.