From the Editors
May Day is a time to sum up the lessons in the struggle for a new world where the needs of all are met.
Undocumented workers are among the most exploited, low-wage workers in the U.S. They are forced to live in constant fear of deportation, isolated in the shadows of mainstream American society. This isolation of the immigrant worker is directed at weakening our entire working class. The legal and extra-legal attacks against this section of the working class are part of the general government assault on all workers. Undocumented workers and documented workersthose who are U.S. citizens and those immigrants with work visasare part of the same working class.
Globalization of Production and Labor
Global electronic production with robots and computers has been replacing human labor at an accelerated pace over the last four decades. This electronic global integration of the capitalist economies of countries throughout the world is called globalization. Globalization is a free, open market form of capitalism in the new age of electronics. Objectively, the zero cost of electronic production without human labor competes globally with the wage cost of human labor. This economic reality forces the global capitalist class to constantly lower the wage cost of human labor and ultimately eliminate human labor altogether as a cost of production.
Globalization is driving down the living standards of workers around the world. Global production has created global labor. With globalization, capital is free to move, virtually unrestricted around the globe. It has no national borders. Immigrantsthose with or without documentsare global labor that crosses national borders in search of work in order to stay alive. Those without documents make border crossings at the risk of losing their lives.
Global Working Class Unity
Workers, regardless of race or nationality generally have the same, common economic self interests. We need food, housing, healthcare and education in order to live and make a productive contribution to society. These are the basic necessities of lifebasic human needs. Capitalism is a wage-labor based, dying economic system. It is in its final stages of collapse, due to non-wage labor, electronic production. Increasingly the capitalist class no longer provides the basic necessities of life to larger and larger numbers of workers. Under these political conditions, the ruling class is resorting to a corporate-government form of fascist rule to protect their private property and maintain social control over a growing mass of impoverished workers.
Working class unity is the only political defense we have to protect ourselves, our families and our class against this ruling class clampdown and use of force to deny us our democratic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our common class demands for food, housing, healthcare and education cannot be won if these demands are denied to our immigrant class sisters and brothers. The Democratic Party is proposing immigration reform measures, filled with long and drawn out procedures that focus primarily on providing a pathway to citizenship for the most skilled and technology savvy immigrants.
Citizenship now for all undocumented workers is the next step for uniting our working class for the battles that lie ahead.
