New York City has been met with one crisis after another, from housing and unemployment to education and collapsing infrastructure. Now the city is being met with a surge of migrants, most of whom are being bused from the South into the ever-rotting Big Apple and other northern cities.

Last year, 2.4 million migrants came into the U.S., and more than 225,000 migrants crossed the southern border in just the first 27 days of December alone. The waves of desperate people seeking refuge is a searing indictment of the economic and social devastation of Latin America by U.S. imperialism.

During the height of the anti-Trump hysteria, the Democrats and other liberals posed as friends and even saviors of the dispossessed migrants in contrast to the backward, racist and anti-immigrant Trump and his base of bigots. The calls to “let them in” and “immigrants are welcomed here” swept through left organizations, as they instilled fear that a Trump presidency would mean more deportations and violence against vulnerable immigrants. While it is true that the country saw a spike in violence against immigrants during Trump’s presidency, the left and the liberals raised a panic in response, all to get Biden elected, which did absolutely nothing to improve the conditions of migrants.

Now with Biden in the White House, more people have been deported than under Trump’s administration, and imperialism has further tightened the screws on the oppressed around the world, forcing masses of people to leave their countries. The most extreme examples are the sanctions on Venezuela and the U.S.-provoked war in Ukraine. The decline of U.S. hegemony has also had a massive effect on the working masses here, who face grinding inflation, homelessness, racist cop terror, devastation in the ghettos in the North and substandard conditions in the overwhelmingly non-union plants in the South. Now the Republicans and Democrats are trying to get the heat off themselves by pitting migrants against U.S. workers.

Many of those liberals who previously counterposed Trump’s bigotry toward migrants with wokeness and compassion have either fallen silent or flipped completely, calling for Biden to secure the border. Without a doubt, as the elections approach, both the capitalist presidential candidates will bare their teeth and compete over who will be more ruthless against the migrants and in the sealing of the border. All this shows that the differences between the two wings of the bourgeoisie are not fundamental; rather, they are tactical disagreements about how to best exploit the working class and plunder the neocolonies.

Driven from their homelands by the ravages of that plunder, many migrants don’t want to be here, but going back or being deported ensures extreme poverty and, for some, certain death. For the thousands banging at the door, we say: Let them in! Don’t house them in ghettos and poor border towns but in empty luxury apartments—like those of Tribeca, Long Island City and Billionaires Row. While the liberals called to “let them in” not so long ago, their aim was to gather votes for the Democrats. Once they were in office, the liberals hung immigrants out to dry. Why? They see nothing inherently wrong with imperialism and try to tinker with it, offering the oppressed masses wokeness and compassion because they are incapable of winning real gains at the expense of the imperialists and can only fuel anti-immigrant bigotry. To win quality housing, quality health care and immigrant rights will take a proletarian offensive against the very capitalist interests and private property that the liberals defend.

NYC Democrats Make Life Hell for Migrants, Workers

At a demonstration a few months ago, New York City Democratic mayor Eric Adams chanted: “Immigrants are welcomed here!” Now he’s singing a completely different tune, saying that the migrant crisis “will destroy this city.” The Adams administration has served eviction notices to migrant families in city shelters. At the same time, Adams has gone after the city’s working people. His solutions to the migrant crisis have been deliberately provocative measures that pit the working masses against the migrants. He threatened to cut the budgets of libraries, schools and even health care in order to finance housing and other assistance for migrants, claiming that NYC doesn’t have enough money to go around.

This whipped up reaction in the working class because his budget cuts tell workers that helping migrants will come at their expense. It’s no wonder these workers—who have been crushed by the pandemic and forced to accept rotten union contracts (in the name of labor peace for Biden)—are repeating the call to close the border and the lie that migrants are getting free housing and health care. The daily lives of the city’s working masses are hell. Ghetto neighborhoods are riddled with dilapidated housing infested with rats, roaches and mold, while many other buildings have no heat or cooking gas for months at a time. Many have looked to other methods of keeping warm and cooking. The result has been an increased number of apartment fires, forcing hundreds of black and Hispanic families into overpopulated homeless shelters or to live on the street. This doesn’t include partial building collapses or landlords who purposely neglect apartments beyond the point of repair so that they end up condemned. Welcome to the slumlord capital of the world.

This situation, coupled with the mass layoffs at the time of the pandemic, created a homeless crisis. Every day, you see hordes of destitute people and makeshift tent camps scattered throughout Gotham. Its victims are mainly black, as they were the worst hit during COVID. The rest of the working class is priced out and has been pushed to the outskirts of the boroughs and into neighboring states in search of decent and “affordable” housing. Whatever money is saved in rent is lost to gas and transportation fees, as the working class needs to commute back into the city, where it toils for stagnant pay.

Liberal politicians have been playing their part. They say that New Yorkers need better housing options, but what options do they provide? They’ve brokered deals with real estate developers, giving them subsidies and tax breaks to construct high-end apartments as long as a small portion of the units are placed in the “lottery.” The smoke and mirrors quickly dissipate, as many of the city’s poor can’t even meet the income requirements of these supposed affordable housing projects.

The hot-button issue of housing has been made more explosive by the migrant crisis. In February, Adams faced backlash from Harlem residents when they found out that migrants were to be housed in one of these luxury buildings. The high-rise had been promised to the predominantly black community, but it has laid entirely vacant for a decade because the real estate developers defaulted on their loans. The angry reaction of the Harlem residents caused Adams to backtrack on his plans, but the building still lays vacant, indefinitely.

This situation has caused resentment between the black population and migrants. And this isn’t the only instance in which the liberal Democrats have pushed such racial divisions. In January, the city temporarily moved migrants from an airfield and housed them in Brooklyn’s James Madison high school, shifting the minority students to remote learning. This infuriated parents, who voiced their concerns to the city. Mayor Adams responded, “We did the right thing,” adding “And those parents who are stating that we can’t inconvenience someone for one day because of other children—that’s not acceptable.”

The Democrats’ condemnation of the working class and minorities for not being compassionate enough not only is meant to place the burden of this crisis on the shoulders of the working masses, but also is a tactic to deepen the divide between them and the migrants. This has caused a section of the working masses and other minorities, who are trying to hold on to whatever scraps they have left, to move toward anti-immigrant chauvinism. But there is no answer in anti-immigrant bigotry or right-wing politicians like Trump, who also push divisions. Both the Democrats and Republicans are looking to solve this crisis by making both the working class and migrants pay, leaving U.S. imperialism untouched.

Migrants don’t need to be placed in working-class neighborhoods. They can be placed in the countless vacant apartments hoarded away in various rich neighborhoods. But the bourgeoisie has no intention of sheltering migrants in the areas where the wealthy and better-off petty bourgeoisie live. So, they stick the migrants in the ghettos and poorer working-class areas, which creates tensions. It’s not only migrants who need quality housing but also native-born workers and minorities. The only way to bridge this divide is to make the capitalist bosses who created this situation pay. Seize the luxury buildings and office spaces! For quality, integrated housing for both migrants and those born in this country!

Why is there no fight for this when the problem could be solved overnight? For starters, there are more than 60,000 vacant rent-stabilized apartments alone in the five boroughs. Because to fight for housing for all means going up against capitalist interests and the bounds of private property, posing the expropriation of the real estate moguls, parasitic landlords and the Wall Street-backed health care and pharmaceutical industries. It means taking control of all the vacant apartments and office buildings in order to house the homeless, migrants and native-born working people. The current labor leaders do not want to wage a real struggle against capitalism and instead push illusions that a partnership with the Democrats is necessary. At no point can you address the conditions of working people while in alliance with the very forces that contribute to the rotting conditions. What’s needed is to throw the labor traitors out and fight for a class-struggle union leadership that will defend both native-born workers and migrants.

Without such a leadership, the racial divisions will continue to eat up the city. Those divisions took a deadly turn in March. Dajuan Robinson boarded a train in Brooklyn and started an altercation with Younece Obuad, who he deemed to be a migrant. The incident was caught on video. Robinson says, “You think you’re gonna beat up cops? I’ll beat you up,” referring to a brawl between migrants and the police earlier in the year. Robinson then begins to punch Obuad, who defends himself. Robinson pulls out a knife and a gun, which Obuad wrestles from Robinson and uses to shoot him in the head in the crowded train car. The NYPD arrested Obuad and then released him when a judge found that he had acted in self-defense. Nowhere in this scene do you hear a peep from the left while many bourgeois media sources have refused to call this incident an anti-migrant attack fueled by the divisions the Democrats and liberals have pushed.

Full Citizenship Rights
for Immigrants!

In the name of “getting migrants on their feet,” which means kicking them out of city shelters and relieving the government of any obligation to provide them decent food and health care, some Democratic Party politicians have pushed expediting work visas. Of course, we strongly support the right of migrants to work here. However, these visas leave migrants vulnerable, since they can be easily revoked. This ensures that the migrants can be exploited as a cheap workforce, which will only drive down the wages of all workers. These work visas, as well as the conditions of capitalist society, force many immigrants to take unsafe jobs. This was the case with the six workers, all immigrants from Latin America, killed in Baltimore’s Key bridge collapse.

There is a way to successfully counter the capitalist work visa schemes: All immigrant workers must be admitted into the existing trade unions of U.S. workers. Organize the unorganized—including the “open shop” South! Southern workers have been crushed by “right to work” laws, now extended to Northern states like Wisconsin. At the same time, the wages of migrant workers must be brought up to the same level as native-born workers. By waging such a fight, the working class would not only expose the capitalist politicians as enemies of migrants but also demonstrate clearly to migrant workers and the oppressed around the world that the U.S. proletariat is a force to fight against anti-immigrant prejudice. And it would help the working class move its own struggles against the bosses forward.

The capitalist politicians’ calls for stricter border control and an end to programs assisting migrants will only deepen the antagonisms between migrants and U.S.-born workers, fragmenting and weakening the workers movement. It is necessary for the working class to fight for the rights of all immigrants and foreign workers, whether or not they are here legally. The workers movement must demand: All immigrants and foreign workers are entitled to immediate and full citizenship rights! Stop the deportations!

These demands will also expose how the same imperialist masters who oppress people abroad screw over the working class at home. The U.S. rulers are responsible for the massive deindustrialization of one-time labor strongholds like Detroit. They are responsible for the horrific working conditions in the South imposed by their “right to work” laws. They inflame racial divisions between white workers and the black population in order to divide and rule. They kept the working class in a political straitjacket during the pandemic under the ruse of “we’re all in this together” national unity, all the while telling the proletariat that it would be responsible for countless deaths if it were to strike for its needs. The U.S. working class fighting back and winning would not only push forward its own cause here but also weaken the class enemy’s grip on the Third World, to the benefit of working people there. It’s also in the interest of the U.S. working class to champion the anti-imperialist struggles in other countries, as every setback for the U.S. ruling class abroad weakens its position at home.

Why are even the most militant-talking bureaucrats not waging such struggle? The introduction of migrants into the unions and the fight for equal pay and citizenship rights goes up against the limits of capitalist acceptability. Each and every one of these demands requires taking the fight to U.S. imperialism, a task that left-talking union tops like UAW president Shawn Fain will not undertake because they do not want to make waves for the Democrats. Instead, they do everything they can to make sure there is no break between labor and the imperialist butchers of the Democratic Party.

Fain has said: “Right now, we have millions of people being told that the biggest threat to their livelihood is migrants coming over the border” and “The threat we face at the border isn’t from the migrants. It’s from the billionaires and the politicians getting working people to point the finger at one another.” Fain was taking digs at talking points of Republican politicians. But he pushes the suicidal idea that Biden, who has the same anti-immigrant positions as the Republicans and wants working people to pay for the migrant crisis, can be some sort of ally. That is why he will never move to strike a real blow against anti-immigrant racism and the capitalist system that spawns it. As of January, Fain has come full circle and endorsed Biden.

AOC: Fronting for
U.S. Imperialism

Once the darling of the NYC immigrant population, DSA-er and Democratic Party representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hails her own efforts at pressuring Biden to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Venezuelans. Nearly 40 percent of migrants currently crossing the border are Venezuelan, escaping the sanctions imposed on their country. TPS is not a route to citizenship but rather an immigration policy that reflects the political appetites of U.S. imperialism. In this case, TPS is explicitly being used to undermine the Venezuelan government. Coupled with the sanctions, the U.S. government is trying to bring about its collapse. AOC’s support to extending TPS to Venezuelans is really a form of support to imperialism.

While endorsing Biden for re-election, AOC has sometimes criticized his immigration policies, saying: “Doing Trump impressions isn’t how we beat Trump.” She puts forward the need to “examine the root of this problem” because the U.S. is constantly “engaging in foreign policy that drives people to our southern border.” While trying to place the blame solely on Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio and claiming to be “against broad-based sanctions,” her idea of “re-examining” sanctions is to lift those that “directly harm everyday working people” but not those “that focus on the decision makers” in Venezuela.

What a service that liberals like AOC provide to U.S. imperialism! In the guise of standing up for the Venezuelan working people, AOC pushes for the replacement of one set of sanctions that have thus far not achieved their objective—the toppling of the Maduro regime in Caracas—by another that she deems better suited to that purpose. In so doing, she legitimizes the imperialist assault on Venezuela. Such sanctions, whether “broad-based” or targeted to “hurt decision makers,” are designed to make an entire country submit to the will of the hegemonic force looking to plunder its resources—in this case the oil reserves that U.S. imperialism wants to control without question.

Venezuela has felt the wrath of the U.S. ever since its oil industry was nationalized in the 1970s. Under the cloak of humanitarianism and democratic values, U.S. imperialism has sought to crush every Venezuelan regime that has resisted U.S. encroachment—like those of Chávez and Maduro. When staged coups and the forced introduction of puppet leaders didn’t work, the U.S. and their cronies around the world implemented sanctions to starve the country and to overturn its government. With the imperialists having overextended themselves and the war in Ukraine putting pressure on global energy supplies, last November the U.S. was forced to ease some of its sanctions against Venezuela. At the same time, this creates more problems for Venezuelans as it fans national flames between them and Guyana over Essequibo.

For a Revolutionary Movement to Defeat Imperialism!

It’s not only the economy of Venezuela that has been entirely wrecked by the U.S. Migrants from Haiti have been fleeing civil unrest and gang warfare—a direct result of the U.S. “humanitarian aid” imposed after the 2010 earthquake. U.S. intervention destabilized Haiti and amped up racial and national tensions with the Dominican Republic. Refugees from Ukraine are rushing to the Polish border to escape the U.S.-provoked war. Millions of Arabs are running from devastation in Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. Each and every one of these endeavors were pushed by the liberal bourgeoisie to strengthen U.S. domination of the region.

Latin America must be regarded as a colony of the U.S., not just its formal colonies, such as Puerto Rico. The Caribbean, South and Central America are under the control of the U.S. through economic penetration and military force. With U.S. imperialism on the decline, it has sought to strengthen its position through the further exploitation and domination of Latin America. It is the duty of all who claim to be socialists, especially those living in the belly of the imperialist beast, to stand against their own bourgeoisie and put forward a program to unite the working class here with the oppressed peoples of Venezuela, Latin America and the Third World in a revolutionary movement to defeat U.S. imperialism. All U.S. troops out of Latin America! Close all military bases! Cancel the debt! End all sanctions on Venezuela!

The precondition to advancing the interests of migrants in the U.S., as well as the working class, is to break with AOC and all other Democrats, who represent the interests of U.S. imperialism and benefit from the plunder of Latin America. The DSA says: “New York City DSA and Socialists in Office have offered a bold plan to support homeless people, and people all across the country should stand in solidarity with migrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families in the United States—not turn them away or treat them with contempt.”

However, you cannot advance the position of migrants while supporting liberal imperialist politicians like AOC. It is no accident that she has backed U.S. imperialist military adventures, like the war in Ukraine, and endorsed Genocide Joe in the upcoming elections. It is part of her political program as an agent of imperialism. This is yet another reason why it is necessary for revolutionaries in the DSA—which formally opposes U.S. imperialism in its platform—to fight for a clean break with the Democratic Party of Biden, AOC and the rest of the Squad. A DSA clean break would be an important step in forging a revolutionary workers party based on the complete class independence of the proletariat.

Some left groups recognize the role of the Democrats but are paralyzed on what to do. For example, Left Voice condemns the Democrats and Republicans for anti-migrant bigotry, denounces capitalism as the source of the migrant crisis and calls for a break with the Democrats. But they paint the main problem to simply be racism, saying: “The criminalization of homelessness and the criminalization of migration are tied together through racism.” None of this does anything to win over black people, Latinos and workers being pitted against migrants in a race to the bottom. What Left Voice won’t do is take head on the racial and ethnic divisions inflamed by the liberals’ response to the crisis. Their inability to do this is a reflection of their view that the problem is backwardness, echoing the liberals, who blame the working class for racism and chauvinism. Black people and the working class here have legitimate concerns. Ignoring those concerns will do nothing to bridge the divide. To get rid of this division requires exposing liberal schemes in order to provide an independent path forward for migrants, black people and workers alike. This is the task of socialists.