Immigration: Make the Billionaires Pay for the Crises They Cause

How the Left Can Stop Losing Ground on Immigration While Proudly Defending Our Full Program

Socialists should defend immigrant rights, including full freedom of migration, by offering bold working-class policies that contrast sharply with both Trump and Harris, without echoing the left-liberal denial of problems related to mass migration under capitalism. Unfortunately, the recent DSA “Statement on Migration and International Solidarity Between Working People” suffers from some of the same blindspots that are holding back the left internationally. 

The first two demands in the Trumpian GOP platform for the 2024 elections are: “1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION, 2. CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.” The Democrats’ response to this massive threat to undocumented people and asylum seekers is to denounce Trump for torpedoing a bipartisan border security bill that, as former President Barack Obama pointed out at the Democratic National Convention, was “written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.” In other words, they politically criticize the GOP from the right for standing in the way of implementing a brutal border regime. 

An ad by Kamala Harris includes images from Trump’s border wall, integrating it fully into her own approach.  The New York Times summarized the Democrats’ attitude at the DNC on August 25: “There were little to no condemnations of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies or pledges to reverse them.” 

This aligns with the practice of the Biden-Harris administration. “In early June, Mr. Biden… invoked a sweeping executive authority to disqualify most migrants from US asylum, making it easier for immigration officials to deport” undocumented people, CBS reported on August 18. CBS claims that the order affects people “entering the country illegally.” However, Biden’s order severely restricts the right of asylum, meaning it at the same time shifts the definition of who has a legal right to be in the US. The majority of all immigrants to the US since 2020 would likely have been denied their current right to be here if they had come today under the new Biden-Harris policy. 

Before that, the Biden administration announced that it was waiving “more than 20 federal laws and regulations, including environmental ones, to build additional barriers along the Southern border,” the New York Times reported on October 5, 2023.  “The move is a remarkable reversal for a president who campaigned vociferously against a wall and halted its construction on his first day in office.” 

In her short campaign for president, Harris has already pledged to spend hundreds of millions on Trump’s wall. The bipartisan bill on immigration that Harris is now campaigning on will allow any president to shut down the border if more than an average of 5,000 migrants crossed per day in a seven day period (NBC, January 31).

Since taking office in 2021, the Democrats have never fundamentally departed from Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. To be fair, Biden did scale back some of the horrors of separating children from their parents and reduced the number of workplace and home raids by ICE (the agency tasked with terrorizing immigrants already in the US), and, overall, the mass deportation threat by Trump and the GOP still makes the Democrats the lesser evil. 

In some ways, however, the Biden administration went further than Trump ever did, such as by banning all legal entry for 5 years after a single unauthorized border crossing, with criminal penalties for defying the ban. This is on top of Biden’s “asylum ban,” a policy of turning away anyone seeking asylum who didn’t first either (a) seek protection (and get denied) in another country they traveled through on their way, or (b) apply for an appointment online through the notoriously flawed CBP One smartphone app. Even though the matter is still in the appeals process (the US District Court found it unlawful and the government appealed the decision), the higher courts have allowed it to stay in effect in the meantime. The asylum ban is a blatant repackaging of two Trump-era policies – the “entry ban” and the “transit ban” – both of which were already struck down as unlawful by the courts.

Today’s mainstream Democratic position is one of surrender to Trump’s far-right policy framework. This has ensured a total far-right hegemony over the mainstream immigration “debate.” As Trump moves even further to the right, the Democrats chase after him with reckless abandon rather than offering any meaningful alternative.

This dire situation makes it urgent that socialists and left forces build a robust challenge to this inhumane, racist, and reactionary anti-immigrant discourse. Our task is to fight to win majority support for a radically different position: that no one is illegal, “Ni Uno Más” – that we do not accept even one more deportation – that we defend full asylum rights and the right to migrate for economic, ecological, and all other reasons; the right to flee on a planet plunged into chaos by global capitalism and all the wars and climate disasters that come along with it.  

The Left Is Losing

Unfortunately, the left is not winning over a majority. Both among the public as a whole and among the working class specifically, the left has been losing ground to the far right on the question of immigration.

This situation is in no way unique to the US. All across Europe, we’ve seen a similar pattern over the past decade. The prominent new far-right parties, such as Lega in Italy, Rassemblement National in France, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, to name a few, all largely owe their growth and overshadowing of the left to the broad layers of support they’ve been able to win on the question of immigration. 

In all these cases, this has led to a shifting of the entire window of debate and the adoption of many new xenophobic and anti-immigrant policies. Even in a country like Denmark, where the growth of the new far-right parties has been more contained, there has still been a shifting of the terms of mainstream political “common sense” in their favor as other parties chase after them to the right. For example, it was a supposedly center-left Social Democratic government that instituted Denmark’s “anti-ghetto law,” which punishes even 100% legal immigrants if they are living in an area where the concentration of “non-Western” immigrants living in the neighborhood exceeds 50% (among other criteria). This is the first and so far only instance of any country attempting to codify “non-Western” as a legal category, and the law is currently under scrutiny in the EU Court of Justice for potential breach of international anti-discrimination rules, with hearings beginning September 30.

Why has the right been so successful in taking ground from the left on this issue? One important reason the approach of the liberal-left opposition has been so ineffective and unconvincing is because it pretends that working-class people – both migrant and domestic – do not and will not face any special challenges or consequences in connection with mass migration. This leads working people who are experiencing very real economic pressures, many of which are exacerbated by mass migration under capitalism, to feel gaslit and unseen, which can easily drive them further into the arms of the far right and their xenophobic scapegoating. Socialists should try to avoid making the same mistake.

DSA’s Statement

DSA published a “Statement on Migration and International Solidarity Between Working People” on August 12. In it, DSA calls out “the efforts of both Republican and Democrat politicians to whip up a frenzy,” denouncing Biden’s border policies and “Vice President Harris’ advocacy for the ‘most significant border security bill in decades.ʼ” The statement points to the root causes of migration, such as US imperialist policies of “financial and military interference” in Latin America. DSA criticizes the “prison-industrial complex including border walls, surveillance technologies, and the nation’s largest federal police force, the Border Patrol.” The statement outlines how the anti-immigrant regime is outsourced to other countries. It demands “policies which respect working-class migrants’ ability to travel, work freely and participate fully in US society alongside their US-born working-class neighbors.” All of these are important strengths of the statement.

What’s missing in the DSA statement, however, is a developed working-class-based policy that acknowledges and tackles the very real social and economic problems posed by mass migration of largely impoverished workers under an already crisis-ridden capitalist system. This is essential in order to offer a viable alternative that can effectively counter the  bipartisan consensus position of a brutal border regime. Otherwise, we risk falling into the same pitfalls as most of the rest of the broad socialist left across the world. 

Is There a Migration Crisis?

The authors of the DSA statement write about the “so-called ‘crisis’ at the border.” Many on the left fighting for immigrant justice see clearly how the border and migration crises are manufactured and cynically used by Republican and Democratic politicians to scapegoat immigrants for the horrors caused by their own system – hence the “so-called” and the quotation marks around “crisis.” However, working-class people truly are experiencing a crisis under the current capitalist conditions, and that is something the left should tackle head-on. It’s not only a “so-called” crisis, but a crisis made real by capitalism and its politicians – a crisis that needs to be solved by socialists. 

While it’s true that the numbers are not as shocking as some Republicans want us to believe, the fact remains that the rate at which people are requesting asylum and refuge in the US is increasing. Under the current conditions, where tens of millions of workers already lack affordable housing, decent pay, and reliable access to social services, a new mass influx of more poor workers will place additional stress on an already crisis-ridden system. This poses real challenges for the entire working class, including newcomers themselves. 

To be clear, the housing crisis for example is obviously a result of the housing market (that is, the logic of capitalism). It is not created by migrants. The same is true regarding the lack of living wage jobs and the miserable condition of social services. 

The way to overcome these problems caused by the logic of capitalism is with socialist policies. Even bold reformist policies within capitalism could have some impact on overcoming the most urgent problems. But on the basis of capitalism the reality is that inevitable burdens of mass migration of poor workers will hit domestic workers, especially the poorest, resulting in growing tensions that can easily be politically exploited by demagogic right-wing populist forces, especially if the left continues to downplay the economic concerns of workers in this context.  

The New York Times reported in October 2023: “Migrants were caught crossing the southern border of the United States more times in the past year than in any other year since at least 1960, when the government started keeping track of the data. It is the third record-setting year in a row, during a time when migration around the world is at historic highs. There were more than 2.4 million apprehensions in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended in September. That tops the previous record, set a year earlier, of more than 2.3 million, according to government data released on Saturday. During the 2021 fiscal year, there were more than 1.7 million apprehensions.”

The Wall Street Journal wrote on September 4: “Since the end of 2020, more than nine million people have migrated to the US, after subtracting those who have left, coming both legally and illegally, according to estimates and projections from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s nearly as many as the number that came in the previous decade. Immigration has lifted US population growth to almost 1.2% a year, the highest since the early 1990s. [… M]ost migrants didn’t come through regular legal channels. Less than 30%, or 2.6 million, are what the CBO counts as ‘lawful permanent residents’ […]. The CBO refers to most of the other 6.5 million as ‘other foreign nationals.’ The bulk of that group crossed the southern border without prior authorization, turned themselves over to American border officials and requested asylum.”

Under current (capitalist) conditions, this is a trend that we can expect to further intensify in the years ahead. As the worldwide impact of capitalism-driven climate change intensifies in both speed and scale, the poorest countries will bear the worst brunt of it, leading to new waves of climate refugees. 

Additional pressure to migrate will come from wars and imperialist oppression. There is a fundamental antagonism between the interdependency inherent in a globalized system of production and the separate and conflicting needs of the ruling classes of individual nation-states. This is one of the central contradictions of capitalism.  In an age of growing economic and political nationalism organized through sharply conflicting blocks (the “West” against China, etc.), this contradiction will lead to enormous pressures on a worldwide scale, including toward mass migration.

These numbers will also increase if we are successful in what we are unapologetically fighting for: establish a right to stay in the US for everyone already residing here, including full citizen rights; end all deportations; and abolish the terror regime against migrants along the southern border of the US, that has killed around 8,000 human beings since 1998, sent back uncountable numbers of migrants, tries to scare people off from even trying to reach the US, and was built up by Republicans and Democrats alike.   

The Impact of Migration

For capitalists, the impact of migration is very different than it is for migrants and domestic workers.

For working-class people forced to flee their homes because of environmental disasters, political persecution, oppression, or poverty, it is one of the most brutal expressions of the chaos, dysfunction, and misery inherent in capitalism.

For the capitalists, migration offers cheap labor, born of both desperation and increased competition between workers. Especially beneficial for them are people kept in illegal conditions, as they have fewer rights with which to defend themselves from super-exploitation or to try to organize. They are cynically used to weaken the labor market and often enough to get well-educated workers without having to pay for their education. Politically, migrants are used as scapegoats, for divide-and-conquer tactics.

For working-class people already living in places experiencing mass inward migration, more often than not it means growing pressures on their lives: If two million migrants per year come to the US, most of them poor, compete in already horrible housing markets with other poor people; if they have to be served by the same social services that are already overwhelmed, already letting down the existing residents; if they vie for the same low-paid jobs – then it will inevitably increase the already existing tensions tearing apart US society. 

Obviously, in a rich society like the US, these are solvable problems. However, socialists should not downplay them but take them head on, putting forward a plan to overcome them.

Beyond calling for the super-rich and large corporations to pay for the costs flowing from migration, socialists should be pointing to the need for a wholesale reorganization of society embracing migrant and domestic workers alike: We need Medicare for All; we need affordable housing through an emergency program of building at least 1 million publicly owned social housing units a year; we need a Green New Deal, guaranteeing union jobs with living wages for all. We can get that, if we fight for a political revolution against the billionaire class, a democratic socialist reorganization of society.

In general, DSA is in favor of such policies. However, not to mention them in the context of migration, as in the statement from August 12, leaves major parts of the far-right narrative unchallenged – the same narrative that politically enables the brutal anti-immigrant policies implemented today by both Republicans and Democrats.  

For Independent Politics and a Fundamental, Socialist Transformation of Society  

Socialists have always fought for the right of people to live where they want or where they believe they can find a better life. As socialists, we fight for a full legal and economic integration of migrants through solidarity, equal rights, and a joint struggle to defend and improve living standards for all. We demand full workersʼ rights and full legal rights (including voting rights and full citizenship) for all people permanently living in this country.

This struggle will only succeed if we link these struggles to a concrete vision of a radical transformation of society, of how we can use the wealth that exists today to overcome the brutal damage done by imperialism in the countries of the global south and reorganize living conditions for the betterment of all working, oppressed, and displaced people. This socialist transformation will need to be global in scope to fully overcome the entrenched problems confronting us. As we’ve already seen, capitalism is a globally interconnected system, and the social, economic, and political challenges linked to mass migration are playing out internationally. To combat the imperialism and climate change that force millions from their homes, and to achieve respectable living standards and secure political freedoms worldwide, the struggle for the working class to take power must also be a global one, based on international solidarity. 

Too often today, the most radical proposals for solving the deep problems working-class people face seem to come from the right. Of course, aside from being morally repugnant, their proposals will not actually solve anything. But if we socialists appear to trail the left liberals who one-sidedly praise immigration as a moral achievement while obfuscating the challenges it brings, then we fail to mount an effective challenge to the right’s racist solutions. 

Often we hear how migration made the US strong, but again this is just one side of the coin. Those sentiments fail to register how scapegoating and fearmongering about those same immigrants, mixed with a hefty dose of racism, was used to blow up efforts at labor organizing, to divide and conquer, to make capitalists wealthy while keeping the masses in brutal poverty. 

Migration made US capitalism rich by ruthless oppression and exploitation of both migrant and domestic workers. There is no need to prettify the past, and it’s crucial to be on guard against a repetition of these abuses going forward. 

The left needs to do its part to inoculate against this sort of capitalist subterfuge up front by making it clear that it is the hoarding of wealth by corporations that permits the social and economic problems to fester, and it is this wealth that can and should be used to solve them.  This type of demand can help to cut across the far right’s  xenophobic scapegoating and serve as a basis for uniting migrant and domestic workers together in common struggle.

Photo Credits:

• Featured: “Family Crossing A Border” by David Peinado
• “A large metal fence in the middle of a desert” by Greg Bulla
• “Man in blue jacket wearing white helmet standing on green grass field during daytime” by Tim Mossholder
• “Stop Deportation” by Daily Chalkupy is licensed under CC by 2.0