15.03.2012

Migrants: not the problem

From the CPGB's Draft programme (section 3.4)

Large numbers of workers live in Britain who have come from other countries. Migration is often the result of poverty, lack of opportunity, war or persecution.

Capital moves around the world without restriction. As a matter of principle communists are for the free movement of people and against all measures preventing them entering or leaving countries. Simultaneously, we seek to end poverty, lack of opportunity, war and persecution everywhere.

The bourgeoisie uses migrant workers, especially illegals, as worst-paid labour. That is ensured through immigration laws, and quotas, lack of security and police raids, detention centres and deportations.

The capitalist state in Britain now has an official ideology of anti-racism. That in no way contradicts the national chauvinist consensus which champions British imperialism’s interests against foreign rivals and sets worker against worker.

Migrant workers are not the problem. The capitalists who use them to increase competition between workers are. The reformist plea for non-racist immigration controls plays directly into the hands of our exploiters. It concedes the right of the state to bar workers from entering Britain.

It is in the interests of all workers that migrant workers and ethnic communities are integrated. Assimilation is progressive as long as if is not based upon force. In order to encourage integration and strengthen the unity of the working class the following demands are put forward:

• The right to speak and be educated in one’s own language. The right to conduct correspondence with the state in one’s own language.
• The right to learn English for all migrant workers and their families. Employers must provide language courses.
• The right to become citizens with full social and political rights for all workers who have resided in the country for six months.
• Fight all discrimination based on race, ethnicity or culture by state or private bodies