Immigration and Inherent ‘Goodness’
By: Martin Barakov
Tags: Government, Socialism, Politics, World, Immigration

Immigration and Inherent ‘Goodness’

Many self-proclaimed ‘leftists’ and ‘socialists’ in the Western world choose to support immigration, largely as a reaction against the anti-immigration narratives espoused by conservatives and fascists alike. This is an incorrect approach to comprehending the way in which immigration works, the interests that it appeals to, and more.

A photograph of a Syrian refugee camp in Athens, Greece. (Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash)

To fully understand how immigration functions and its perceived inherent ‘goodness’, it is imperative to analyze the questions of why immigration happens in the first place as well as why they choose to go to countries like Canada or the United States. The former question largely deals with why innocent civilians are faced with the reality of needing to leave absolutely everything behind for the perception of what can typically be described as a “better life”.

The premise of immigration as a concept deals with the notion of an individual or group of individuals leaving their home country for a new, perhaps more prosperous, permanent home. Let us take a look at a number of case studies, specifically ones that are deemed to be located in the “developing” world. The net migration rates of the majority of the world that is considered developing are negatives, largely because of the desire for a better life, or so it seems.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, many people left following the catastrophic events that took place in the late 1980s and 1990s, due to a lack of economic and political security, a steep rise in poverty and organized crime, and the false allure of Western neoliberal capitalism. In Yugoslavia, the wars that occurred forced people from all ethnoreligious backgrounds to grab whatever they could and run to the nearest point of safety.

The majority of these people left for Western countries, examples being Canada, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Most of the time, this was out of pure necessity, as opposed to the superficial wish of simply wanting to move to a new country.

In Central America, working class civilians to this day feel the need to embark on a treacherous path to safety, navigating through drug lords and cartels, right-wing neoliberal countries backed by the United States government, and the consistent threat of human rights violations for everyone that dares to go through such a devastating path.

Many might argue that a series of pro-immigration policies within countries like Canada and the United States might fix the problems associated with the working class within the aforementioned regions, but they would be severely misguided and outright wrong with this analysis. The issue is not with people trying to leave, but instead with the exploitative political and economic relationship between the authorities in both areas.

Again, to consider the former as truth would signify the lack of responsibility that the United States — in particular — has for the deterioration of social and material conditions in the geopolitical area. For instance, the Honduran coup d’etat in 2009 oversaw the military ousting the broadly left-leaning leadership of Manuel Zelaya and the creation of conditions that caused a mass migration crisis from the country to the United States.

According to a 2013 report by Jake Johnston and Stephan Lefebvre of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) surrounding post-coup developments, the following conclusions were gathered with regards to the conditions of societal progress within the country:

12.3% increase in the Gini coefficient in only two years (2009–2011), the most in all of Latin America for this time period;

Between 2010–2012, poverty rose by 13.2% while extreme poverty rose by 26.3%, results that are far different than what occurred during the leadership of Zelaya;

A strong decrease in social spending, as the “reduction in expenditures on health and education” had a strong and “visible impact in Honduras”.

With the steep rise in poverty and income inequality, it should be understandable that many Honduran civilians desired to leave and move to the United States. But the both the coup and new governments since the ousting of Zelaya have been supported by the United States, as they stood on the sidelines, eerily quiet as the democratically-elected government was overthrown. The military coup was supported by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alongside officers from the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the latter reported on by The Intercept.

In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the situation is one that greatly differs of the conditions in most of Eastern Europe and Central Asia or in Central America. The open military warfare that is present there, predominantly due to the involvement of the United States and their imperialist policies, directly poses the threat of life or death if one decides to not leave the region. The bombing and presence of the United States across both the Middle East and Africa as a whole, the latter through the function of AFRICOM, is directly connected to the lack of stability and progress that could possibly present itself if foreign involvement is to be thoroughly rooted out.

This does not even begin to dissect the very strong issues that migrant workers tend to face, whether it be Honduran migrants in the United States, or Polish workers in the United Kingdom, or Iraqi migrants stuck in Turkey. The notion of being pro-immigration has little to no grounding in achieving far better conditions for the working class within these areas.

Should one be in support of achieving better status and rights for workers who are already located in these “new” homes? Absolutely.

Should this devolve into supporting immigration for the purpose of getting access to cheap labour under the guise of “helping” the “poor civilians” from the over-exploited world? Absolutely not.

Ultimately, the well-versed socialist should not incessantly be in support of immigration policies, but instead be in support of the local resistance to oligarchic developments and in support of grassroots movements that exist within these over-exploited countries. Rather than being necessarily pro-immigration, one should be in support of proletarian internationalism.

Striving to develop and improve the national economy and productive forces of these over-exploited states through progressive forces will assist with getting rid of the problem of rising immigration in areas that are economically and politically subjugated to the desires of the imperialist powers. In regards to supporting the working class in countries or territories that are being bombed without an end in sight, anti-imperialism serves as the primary ideological foundation that one can utilize to ensure open and justified hostility towards the actions being taken by imperialist governments.

All of the aforementioned themes have not even covered the problem of the brain drain phenomena, something that plagues many countries of origin, due to the ‘skilled workforce’ leaving the home country in pursuit of a better life. As such, this results in the production of generational problems that can only be addressed by improving the quality of life, as well as the quality of education to a degree which is on par — or at least close to — with the global powers. In the era of increased interconnectivity, this serves as a major challenge for the over-exploited world.

Immigration is not a positive conception solely because of the fact that the far-right are opposed to it. To consider it as such would be to have your ideological positions be developed at the whims of the right-wing forces within your country. What is a positive conception, however, is the internationalism of the working class, that is, striving for the success of proletarian movements throughout every single part of the world.