No more anti-working class, divisive, immigration laws!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
21 July 2021

As the Home Secretary says, “we” certainly ARE "angry and upset" over the refugees arriving here in Britain. But not because dinghies are landing in record numbers on these shores. Who could possibly blame refugees for fleeing the filthy Calais camps having left behind desperate poverty, violence, war or the threat of death in their homelands; for fleeing the ruins in which British and US forces have left Afghanistan, or the Middle East? Or for fleeing bloody war or persecution in Africa, fuelled by imperialist, corporate greed?

    No, we are furious because these refugees are forced to put themselves in such danger in the first place, to take such risks, after already undergoing the kind of hardship few of us can even imagine.

     The answer to the “problem” which Patel and all the other home ministers in Europe claim to be “solving” with their criminalisation of migrant workers is blindingly obvious. In the immediate term, let the governments provide the refugees with safe transport and the legal right to arrive and to remain, thus taking them out of the hands of people-smugglers!

    Anyway, the working class here has a million reasons to support all migrants. Not least because the ruling classes are so terrified that we might unite with these fellow workers - across national, ethnic and other lines - against them. And that we might want to rid the world of their anti-working class political and economic system, based as it is, on exploitation for profit and on fuelling nationalism and war. They hate the idea that we might actually wish to build a society free from conflict and class divisions, where all production is rational, centrally planned, planet-friendly and based on need, not profit.

    So yes, in the name of a better future for all, we oppose Patel’s latest crazy, racist, divisive, Home Office policies! And wherever it is possible, we will join together with our fellow workers to fight against their enforcement!