Socialists and Immigration

By Duane Campbell

In spite of the economic boon for the wealthy, working people in the U.S. have yet to receive a significant improvement in their standard of living for over 30 years.  At the same time, democratic forces are once again confronted with anti-immigrant campaigns- this time fostered and promoted by a president of the U.S.

As socialists, we stand with and among the U.S. working class in opposition to the rule of the transnational corporations and their exploitation of the economy and their despoliation of our lives, our society and our environment.

We are currently experiencing a major restructuring of the global economy directed by the transnational corporations to produce profits for their corporate owners. The impoverishment of the vast majority of people in pursuit of profits for a small minority has pushed millions to migrate in search of food, jobs, and security.  Global capitalism produces global migration. Along with wars NAFTA and other “Free Trade” deals each produce a new waves of migration.

Socialists support the rights of working people to organize, to form unions, and to protect their rights and to advance their interests. Unions have always been an important part of how socialists seek to make our economic justice principles come alive.  Working people - gathered together and exploited in the capitalist workplace-are well positioned to fight their common exploitation.

Trump Lies About Immigrants

President Trump has made up three tall tales to criminalize, criticize and reject immigrants in the United States. These stories are full of lies, but he’s repeated them so often that many Americans have started to believe them.

So let’s refute all three, one by one.

1. Undocumented immigrants are criminals.

This is Trump’s core story. When he launched his presidential bid in June 2015, he famously said that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs; they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists.” And during his first speech before Congress recently, he again likened immigrants to “gang members, drug dealers and criminals.”

Here’s the truth about undocumented immigrants in the U.S.: A huge majority, 97% in fact, are good people. That number comes from a Migration Policy Institute study, which found that less than 3% of undocumented immigrants have committed a felony. It also found that American-born residents are twice as likely to commit a felony as immigrants are.

Crime statistics also demonstrate a correlation between having more undocumented immigrants and lower crime rates at the national level. Between 1990 and 2013, the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. tripled, from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. During that time, violent crime in America dropped by 48%, according to data from the FBI. Despite these facts, Trump insists on vilifying immigrants, and continues to push his “bad hombres” myth.

2. Immigrants are costly for the United States.

Another lie — and one that’s easy to refute by doing the math. Yes, it’s true that undocumented immigrants benefit from some social services and that their children get free public education all the way through high school. That costs money — but immigrants also contribute by paying taxes and creating jobs. The greatest irony is that undocumented workers also contribute part of their earnings to Social Security and Medicare, services from which they will never benefit.

Immigration Facts

Socialism and Sanders - As American as Apple Pie

Socialism :Long deployed by the right as an epithet, this form of left-wing populism is as American as apple pie.

Peter DreierN

Now that Bernie Sanders has entered the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Americans are going to hear a lot about socialism, because the 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont describes himself as a “democratic socialist.”

“Ever since I was a kid I never liked to see people without money or connections get put down or pushed around,” Sanders explained in making his announcement. “When I came to Congress I tried to be a voice for people who did not have a voice—the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. And that is what I will be doing as a candidate for president.”

We can expect the right-wing echo chamber—including Fox News hosts, Tea Party politicians, and Rush Limbaugh—to attack Sanders for espousing an ideology that they’ll likely describe as foreign, European, and un-American.

But Sanders’s views are in sync with a longstanding American socialist tradition. Throughout our history, some of the nation’s most influential activists and thinkers, such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, Helen Keller, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King, and Gloria Steinem, embraced socialism.   

Of course, America’s right-wingers say there’s already a socialist in the White House.

Chicago Workers Collaborative

Listen to the podcast.

Chicago Workers Collaborative. – The Right to Have a Job.

Expanding Latino Workers Centers and supporting African American workers.

Episode 18 -- The Chicago Workers Collaborative

Recorded 08.11.2012: Bill Barclay interviews Leone Jose Bicchieri, Executive Director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative, about activism, organizing, and the work of the Chicago Workers Collaborative. MP3 (30.6 MB) or Ogg Vorbis (27.7 MB).

For past episodes, go to:

http://www.chicagodsa.org/audarch6.html
Also see http://www.chicagoworkerscollaborative.org

Rebuild the American Dream

Forty-eight years after the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, America has made significant cultural progress. But Dr. King's ultimate dream of economic justice has been deferred. 

This Friday at 9 a.m., tune in to our national symposium on jobs, justice and the American Dream. RSVP now: [ http://go.aflcio.org/jobsandjustice ].

At our symposium, noted civil rights activists and workers' advocates will take part in two panels, answering questions asked by moderators Bob Herbert and María Elena Salinas and submitted by AFL-CIO activists around the country. 

Raul Grijalva on job creation

We Are America » DREAM Stories

We Are America » DREAM Stories

Gabe Gonzalez: No More Dreams Deferred (features Carlos Roa and Michael Nazzario videos)

Right now it's a dream deferred. A dream for people like Michael Nazario, a young man who grew up in Arizona and wants nothing more than to serve in the Marines. Or Carlos Roa, a 23-year-old man who is now studying architecture after being denied an opportunity to enlist in the armed forces.

San Francisco student to be released from federal custody (Steve Li story)

Federal immigration officials are releasing San Francisco college student Steve Li, who was jailed for more than two months as officials sought to deport him to Peru.

Harry Potter Is a DREAM Act Kid, on the Run in America (Yves Gomes featured)

I do not know whether, like countless American teenagers, Yves Gomes will be watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I this weekend. If he does, he will probably not recognize himself in the film. Gomes has no lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. But like Harry, 17-year-old Gomes is bespectacled, owlishly serious, an unlikely warrior thrust into a battle much bigger than him. It’s a fight that has already claimed his parents.

Jobs- the reality

Jesse Jackson, UAW President Bob King organize Detroit March for Jobs

 By David Green

Over 10, 000 Detroiters marched down Washington Boulevard from the UAW-Ford National Programs Center to Grand Circus Park on Saturday, August 28^th to demand jobs, peace, and justice. The march was organized by United Auto Workers (UAW) President Bob King and Operation PUSH founder and director Reverend Jesse Jackson. It commemorated the 47^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.
The dais at Grand Circus Park was teeming with dignitaries—politicians, clergy of every denomination, and union leaders. Among the elected officials present were Representatives John Conyers, Jr., John Dingell, Maxine Waters, and Marcy Kaptur and Senator Debbie Stabenow. Michigan Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Virg Bernero briefly addressed the audience and committed himself to placing the interests of Main Street over those of Wall Street. Among the union leaders who spoke were UAW President Bob King, newly-elected President of the Service Employees International Union Mary Kay Henry, Farm Laborers Organizing Committee President Baldemar Velasquez, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 25 President Al Garrett.

Haiti: Job offer

2010 July Haiti Journal #10

Sweat Shops at 200g a day ($5US)

July 28, 2010 (delayed)

Job Offer In Haiti: Must be a highly motivated woman to assemble electronic components, able to read and write, and pass a logic/math test. You will arrive at 6:45am check in with fingerprint ID. You will work 8 hours and clock out for lunch. You will be handed a food coupon that is good on only the day of issue (value is 8g or four cents US). You may use the coupon toward your purchase of lunch at the company lunch counter. However the cheapest meal there is 23g, without any meat of course…that would be extra.

The cheapest form of public transportation will take you at least one hour to get to work, and two hours going home. That will cost you 5g to 7g depending on the price of gas (each way).

The net result is that you will be at work 9 hours (with no talking) and spend three hours in transportation. Since you are a woman, after being gone those 12 hours, you will shop each day (no electricity for refrigeration) and cook breakfast and dinner for your family over an open charcoal stove. You will do all the family laundry, kill, pluck and dress the chicken, haul water and purify it, while making sure your children are freshly scrubbed twice a day.

For this work you will bring home 1000g salary each week, less the 50g for the taptap (an overcrowded bed of an open truck), then deduct 75g for lunch. This means you will bring home 875g a week, or a little less than $90US a month.

Since you will also have to buy food, work clothes, laundry soap and charcoal as well as the $100US for your four room unfurnished house…you must also sell small candies on the street after dark and take in the neighbor’s wash.

Then, since you will still don’t have enough money for utilities, you send your oldest son out to climb the telephone pole and cut into the high voltage wire.