Points of Orientation:

Defeat the Racist Immigration “Deal”: NO to the White Supremacist Ransom Note!

Drive Out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime! A Better World IS Possible!

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

As we go to press, word is that the Trump/Pence regime will announce a deal in which 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came here as children (many of them known as “Dreamers”) will be enabled to stay and have a “path to citizenship” in return for a harsh new set of laws on immigration. These laws are said to include: $25 billion for Trump’s border wall; major increase in “internal enforcement”—increased arrests, speeded-up deportations, and stepped-up security at airports and other ports of entry; intensified crackdown on people who overstay their visas; prevention of people who are U.S citizens from bringing non-citizen parents from other countries into the U.S.; the ending of a State Department program to encourage migration from under-represented countries.

This comes on top of weeks of agitation by Trump and the Republicans demonizing immigrants—including calling whole areas of the world “shitholes,” and viciously slandering and insulting those who come from those areas.

One: Such a deal is intolerable—in the words of one of those being offered citizenship, “it is a white supremacist ransom note.” It will add fuel to the whipping up of an ugly nativist sentiment and white supremacist atmosphere hostile to immigrants and people of color, which is a cornerstone of the Trump/Pence regime’s “Make America White Again” program.

Two: The United States lords over a worldwide empire which plunders vast regions of the world. It violently rends the social fabric of those countries and sentences billions of the human beings who live there to dispossession and grinding exploitation, and often to being driven from country to country seeking work and even survival. It has no right to then declare people from those countries to be “illegal” and to hound and persecute them.

Three: The wall being built is both real and symbolic. It is real in the sense that it will actually further militarize the border and make it even more deadly for any who are driven from the hells that the U.S. has created in Central America and Mexico when they risk their lives to escape. And it symbolizes the determination of the U.S. to “lock out” the rest of humanity in the face of the rapidly worsening environmental crisis.

Four: We need a world without borders, without exploitation, and without oppression of any kind. Such a world actually IS possible and the work that’s been done by Bob Avakian—the forging of a new communism—shows how it could be achieved. Humanity does not have to go along with the sentence now being imposed on it.

Five: People in this country need to mount the strongest possible fight to DEFEAT this compromise/deal and to make this fight a building block to driving out the whole Trump/Pence fascist regime. This will require going into the streets in determined and defiant nonviolent mass action, as well as other nonviolent expressions of opposition (like wearing armbands or other symbols, etc.) ultimately involving millions, and refusing to go along with the capitulationist “electoral calculus” of the leading Democrats.

 

Immigrants and the New Socialist Republic in North America

The following is from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which was authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

H. Immigrants, Citizenship and Asylum.

1. Throughout its history and its development into an imperialist power, the United States of America depended on the exploitation, often in extreme conditions, of generations of immigrants, numbering in the many millions, who were driven to the USA as a result of oppression, poverty, war and upheaval. These immigrants—including those from Europe who came to the USA during the latter part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century, or at least several generations of them—were also subjected to discrimination and demeaning treatment, although after a period of time many of these immigrant groups were integrated into the larger “white European” population in the USA and, on the basis of expansion and conquest by U.S. imperialism, and the spoils acquired in this way, many were able to rise from the ranks of the working class and poorer sections of the population and become a part of the “American middle class,” with a more or less privileged position in relation to especially the lower and more exploited sections of the proletariat and the masses of Black and Latino people and others concentrated, and forcibly contained, within the decaying and repressive confines of the inner cities of late imperial America. At the same time, and in a heightening way through the end of the 20th and the first part of the 21st century, as a result of the domination and plunder carried out by U.S. imperialism throughout most of the Third World in particular, and the devastation and massive dislocation that resulted from and accompanied this, great numbers of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, as well as other parts of the Third World, were driven to the U.S., many of whom were not able to secure legal entry and consequently were forced to live in the shadows and remain vulnerable to extreme exploitation as well as to discrimination and to violence and terror carried out by the state and by mobs encouraged by reactionary policies, actions and statements of the government and government officials. And the ruling forces of the imperialist USA seized on this situation to further tighten control over, and unleash more terror against, these immigrants and to subject many of them to even more extreme exploitation, while whipping up a xenophobic and fascist anti-immigrant atmosphere.

The defeat and dismantling of the imperialist USA and its machinery of violent destruction and repression has radically changed this situation. In this revolutionary struggle, and its victory, large numbers of immigrants, as well as masses of Black people and other oppressed nationalities within the former imperialist USA, played a crucial role, and they can and must continue to play a vital part in the continuing transformation of society, and the world as a whole, as part of the backbone of the New Socialist Republic in North America.

2. At the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, all those residing within the territory of this Republic—with the exception of those who played a leading role in opposing the revolution which brought about the establishment of this Republic, and/or who may have been found guilty of war crimes and/or other crimes against humanity—shall have been accorded citizenship in this Republic, with the rights and responsibilities of citizens, in accordance with this Constitution. And, from that time forward, all those born within the territory of the New Socialist Republic in North America, as well as all those, wherever they are born, who have at least one parent who is a citizen of this Republic, shall be citizens of this Republic.

3. The orientation of the New Socialist Republic in North America is to welcome immigrants from all over the world who have a sincere desire to contribute to the goals and objectives of this Republic, as set forth in this Constitution and in laws and policies which are established and enacted in accordance with this Constitution. From the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, anyone residing outside of the territory of this Republic who wishes to enter its territory, and any such person wishing to become a citizen, or a permanent resident, of this Republic, must follow the relevant laws and procedures which have been established on the basis of this Constitution. Anyone who applies for asylum in this Republic and, through the relevant procedures that have been established for this purpose, is found to have been persecuted, or to have a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of having taken part in just struggles against imperialist and reactionary states or other reactionary forces, or on account of scientific, artistic, or other pursuits which have brought them into conflict with reactionary powers and institutions, shall be afforded asylum in the New Socialist Republic in North America, so long as they pledge to act in compliance with the Constitution of this Republic, and do act accordingly. Provided that they do not engage in any serious violation of the laws of this Republic, people granted asylum have the right to remain within the territory of this Republic for as long as they choose to do so, and shall be accorded the same rights as citizens, with the exception that, so long as they have not become citizens, they may not vote in elections or be elected or appointed to public office. They shall have the right, after a certain period, determined by law, to become citizens of this Republic, with the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens. The citizenship process, as well as review of the asylum status of all those granted asylum, shall be carried out in accordance with the laws and procedures established for these purposes.

4. Anyone who is discovered to have entered the territory of this Republic without following the relevant laws and procedures, shall be detained and provided with a timely hearing, conducted by the government institution with the relevant responsibility, to determine the reasons for their presence within this Republic. In connection with this process, such persons may apply for asylum or seek residency on some other basis, and these requests will be considered in the light of the basic orientation and principles set forth here. If, however, evidence emerges which would indicate that the person, or persons, in question have entered the territory of this Republic not only by means that are in violation of its laws, but also with the intent to further violate the law in an effort to carry out sabotage or otherwise do harm to this Republic and its people, then criminal proceedings shall be instituted against such a person, or persons, in accordance with laws and legal procedures established on the basis of this Constitution.

 

 

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