Successful meeting of the Papers for All campaign in Boston
Immigrant workers face low wages, police brutality, and savage exploitation.
The Boston Branch of Labor Militant recently helped kick off the Papers for All Campaign in Eastern Massachusetts by sponsoring a well-attended public meeting on immigrant rights. The featured speakers were Carlos Petroni, a leader of the Immigrant Rights Movement / Movimiento por los Derechos de los Inmigrantes (MDI) and a member of Labor Militant, and Seamus Whelan, an Irish activist, also a member of Labor Militant.
Addressing an excellent turnout of 54 immigrant workers and grassroots community organizers, they spoke out against the scapegoating of immigrants and attacks on the living standards of all workers. The speakers also made a direct invitation to take action and to develop concrete strategies to mobilize the campaign to achieve an immediate amnesty for all immigrants.
As Carlos Petroni said,
After the passage of anti-immigrant legislation, the repeal of welfare and the anti-terrorist law, immigrants are left with none of the elementary democratic rights: no rights to services, no right to work, subjected to deportation and imprisonment… A campaign for an immediate amnesty will allow millions to work and organize to fight for full rights.
The audience, recognizing this was not more of the same old politics as usual responded by enthusiastically contributing to the discussion and speaking of their own concrete experiences. Their statements, along with the remarks of the speakers, showed that immigrant workers are not taking the outrageous attacks on their basic human rights lying down.
If there were enough jobs for all, good salaries and the right to be organized in unions – in other words if the economy would be organized to serve the needs of everyone – we would not have any rationale for discrimination and racism. Discrimination and racism are the weapons utilized by the ruling class to convince one sector of the working class that another sector of the working class is responsible for the state of the economy instead of themselves. That’s why, in times of economic upturns, discrimination generally subsides and re-emerges at times in which the economy is in a downturn. We need to educate the working class in the idea that there are not “foreigners” who take their jobs, there are capitalists that rob them of their rights, including the right to have decent jobs and wages.
The Papers for All Campaign, begun several months ago in San Francisco by the MDI, shows a new militancy in the immigrant community, which has spread rapidly bringing along with it the endorsement and support of thousands of individuals and organizations in the U.S. and around the world. Labor Militant is one of these organizations and we see the Papers for All Campaign as an important part of the struggle for workers’ rights and socialism.
Millions of men, women and children living in the United States did not qualify for the 1986 immigration amnesty. These workers and their extended families contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy in industrial productivity, income taxes, and community support, but because they are undocumented they fall under a very real threat of deportation. Immigrant workers are often coerced into laboring long hours for low wages and in sweatshop conditions. The bosses’ crimes against these vulnerable workers are designed to set worker against worker (divide and rule), and drive down wages and living standards for all working people. A reign of fear, insecurity and discrimination – a virtual system of American apartheid – has made just staying alive the order of the day for millions of immigrant workers and their families.
As Carlos and Seamus pointed out, the Papers for All Campaign will succeed best if it is led by immigrant activists themselves, and works together in a united front with grassroots immigrant rights organizations, labor unions, and the newly-formed Labor Party. Carlos Petroni emphasized:
There is no question that the fight for rights for immigrants should be led by immigrants themselves. The strategy of Democrats and Republicans is to divide us and make us believe that this is an individual issue, that each of us has to fight for his or her individual rights to live and work in this country. This is false: we won’t have rights unless we overcome the divisions and we fight together!
Labor Militant and supporters of the Papers for All Campaign in Eastern Massachusetts will continue to speak out, petition make contact with concerned people im the community, hold public meetings, support MDI and keep a vigilant eye on the Immgration and Naturalization “Service.”
Carlos ended the meeting by promising:
The Papers for All Campaign has the intention of building a national and an international movement to obtain full nghts for immigrants and their families, and to defeat racism and discrimination. The amnesty is just the first step, the rest will follow by the logic of the struggle and the movement we will be able to build.
We urge you to contact Labor Militant to get involved in the Papers for All Campaign and the struggle for a world without repressive borders and for a world with justice and prosperity for all, regardless of their “country of origin.”