These anti-working class, racist politicians need to face a "hostile environment"!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
2 May 2018

So, May's Home Secretary Amber Rudd, finally resigned after lying to MPs about the Home Office's deportation targets.  But what difference does this make?
    Her successor, Sajid Javid, may be of Asian origin, but he is first and foremost a mouthpiece for the City.  What does he care about working class people?  And didn't he vote for every one of the measures introduced by his party to create a "hostile environment" against migrant workers - and, more generally, against all workers?
    And wasn't Brokenshire, Javid's replacement, the artisan of the "right to rent" checks which resulted in entire households being made homeless because they didn't have the right paperwork?
    As to the real mastermind behind this racist policy, Theresa May herself, she remains safe in her job.  Not only does she stand by her brainchild, but she justifies the deportation targets which caused Rudd's downfall!  As far as she's concerned, the Windrush generation was just collateral damage - nothing to do with her policy!

A storm of hypocrisy

No, despite the parliamentary furore caused by the Windrush scandal, nothing has changed.
    In fact, May even managed to manoeuvre her way through the storm to her own advantage:  not only has she got rid of Rudd, who was one of the potential contenders for her post, but she's reinforced her government's Brexit faction!
    And, now, what about the victims of this racist policy?  According to the ruling of an appeal tribunal, at least 7,000 foreign students have been illegally deported by the Home Office since 2014!
    But apparently ministers "don't do body counts" when it comes to migrant workers!
    Who knows how many thousands, maybe tens of thousands, have been detained like criminals, after coming to work in Britain, not just from the Caribbean but from all over the world, just because they couldn't produce the piles of documents demanded by the Home Office?  What will ever make up for the indignity and brutality they suffered in these infamous deportation centres, run for profit by private government contractors?  And what will ever make up for their lives being broken by forced deportation?
    Who knows how many more of these workers were sacked from their jobs or evicted from their homes for the same arbitrary reasons?  How many were refused vital treatment by the NHS?  And among those, how many have already paid for May's vicious policy with their lives?
    But the appalling mistreatment of migrant workers isn't going to stop.  If May delivers on her pledge, the Windrush generation are meant to get their rights.  But will they?  And what about all the other targets of May's racist policy?  Sajid Javid officially disowned May's "hostile environment", but only to replace it with a "compliant environment".  But "compliant" with what?  With the same racist Immigration Act concocted by May in 2014!

We're all in the same working class boat!

The Windrush scandal is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg.  All migrant workers are targeted, including those from the former British Empire who believed they would be treated as British; and also the EU migrants who came to Britain, because they had a legal right to be treated as citizens.
    However, the policy followed by mainstream politicians (with the more or less overt support of a large proportion of Labour MPs) ever since 2010, has not been only xenophobic and racist.  Above all, it has been anti-working class.
    Indeed, aren't all defendants deemed innocent until proven guilty, according to the justice system?  Yes, but not when workers are targeted
    So, under May's policy, migrant workers have been deported on the grounds that since they couldn't prove they were "legal", they were necessarily "illegal".  Likewise for benefit claimants:  the jobless have to prove that they're looking for work, while the disabled and sick have to prove that they can't work.  And all of them are treated as skivers and spongers, as a matter of principle.
    This is the logic of a class system, in which workers are deemed guilty until proven innocent!
    Corbyn who, at least, unlike most Labour MPs, voted against May's policies, may well demand her resignation.  But what would that change?
    Nothing can be done to reform such a corrupt system.  It can only be replaced - and only the working class has the capacity to do this, as a class, using all our collective strength and energies, regardless of passport and language.
    And this is why, against the xenophobic, racist policies of May and her politicians, we have to be 100% behind our migrant sisters and brothers, wherever they may come from.