It is the task of all workers regardless of their place of birth to unite and present one front to the common enemy in the common struggle which is the fight against the exploitation of those who work by those who own — our fight is against wage-slavery.
Scotland is a nation of immigrants and what has been the lot of foreign-born workers? The longest hours and the lowest wages; the worst housing and the poorest schooling plus discriminatory laws against them. Foreign workers are cut off by differences in language, in customs, religion, so they more easily became prey to the employers, and today are the most exploited and oppressed section of the working class. From every corner of the world they have come, anxious to experience liberty and happiness in a new land. They have come, hoping for a better life, in which the misery and suffering of the past will be ended. Instead, they find that they are despised, condemned to live in squalor and poverty performing the hardest and most unpleasant work, while they create wealth for the class they serve. Foreign workers finds the dice loaded against them from the moment they arrive and the form of exploitation varies in the different localities, but there are certain general practices which are to be found where foreign-born workers are numerous such as employment agencies charging of fees out of proportion to services rendered and misrepresentation of of terms of employment and conditions or the withholding wages. Unacquainted with the English language, law, or court procedure, the foreign-born worker is the victim of fraud and dishonesty. The story of the practical enslavement of the foreign born workers has been told again and again. The capitalists have taken advantage of this to rob and oppress the foreign-born even worse than they rob and oppress the native-born workers.
If the dividends are to be paid, if industry is to continue to make their millions in profits the employers must have the foreign-born workers and they must intensify the exploitation and increase their ruthless oppression. Or they must have a similar source of cheap, expendable, flexible disposable labour for like purposes - the native born worker. The employers are creating by law a class of worker which can be compelled to accept low wages and bad working conditions, and then using these oppressed and exploited workers to destroy the organisations and reduce the standard of living of the native and foreign-born alike. They hope through oppressive exception laws directed at the foreign-born workers to create a class of workers who cannot fight back, and thus weaken and destroy the whole labour movement.
In order to force lower wages, longer hours, and worsen the conditions of employment, on all the workers, the employers are trying to divide the working class. The struggle between the working class and the employing class, no matter what the nationality, race, or religion be, is a war. In this war, the class war, as in all other wars, an army picks the weakest sector in its enemy’s front as the first point of attack. This is the quickest and easiest way of breaking through and smashing the whole line of the enemy’s defense. The employing class has picked the foreign-born workers as the first working people to be attacked because they are the weakest politically, the worst oppressed job-wise and the most handicapped socially. Not knowing the language and institutions of the country and often being victims of the prejudice and hatred fostered among the native workers by the capitalists, the foreign-born workers offer the easiest picking for the employers Thus, the drive of the exploiters against the foreign-born workers is only a wedge to split wide open the army of the working class, indigenous and in-comer. The employers’ aim is to pit one section of the working class against another. With lower wages and worse conditions of employment forced upon the foreign workers, the defeat of the better organised and better paid native workers is made sure. The success of the capitalists in forcing lower wages, longer hours, and intolerable working conditions on the native workers is then only a matter of time. It is clear that the present drive of the employing class against the foreign-born workers is only a preliminary offensive that is being prepared against the whole working class — the local-born and the foreign-born workers.
In order to separate the native workers from their foreign-born brothers and sisters, in order to prejudice them against the foreign-born workers, the capitalists and their Government raise ridiculous and false alarms in the media about the threat of incomers. With so large a number of the workers intimidated, the capitalists feel safe in launching their drive against the whole working class. The divided workers will then be more easily crushed by the united capitalists. The propaganda strategy of the capitalists’ attack is clever. First, they force the damnable working and living conditions upon the foreign-born workers. Then, the employers curses and condemns the foreign-born workers to the native workers for the intolerable conditions that it has forced the foreign-born workers to accept. The press spread the brazen lie that the foreign born workers are a menace to the standard of living. The capitalist class thus hides its own guilt by shifting the blame to the foreign-born workers. The governments of all the EU countries have responded to their inability to provide a decent standard of living for workers – houses, schools, hospitals and job security – by blaming the influx of immigrants. Thus the enmity of the native workers to the capitalists who are to blame for the falling standard of living is turned from the ruling elite and against the foreign-born workers instead. Thus the employers misleads the native workers into believing that their foreign-born brothers and sisters are responsible for lowering wages and lengthening hours. The capitalists are hoping to sow dissension. The workers are in this way divided along the artificial lines of nationality. A disastrous defeat for the working class is assured and a capitalist victory is secure.
The Socialist Party knows that the complete liberation of the working class can come only through the revolution; that is, when workers be able to abolish wage slavery. But until then the working class cannot sit idly by but via the unions organise a campaign of defense against their employers. The immigrant workers can be a source of great strength or terrific weakness to the whole working class in its struggle against the capitalist class. When these foreign-born workers are oppressed, unorganised and separated from the native workers they are a source of weakness and danger — politically and industrially — to the whole labour movement. But if these foreign-born workers are organised and united industrially and politically with all the other workers — the native workers — then the working class can successfully fight back against the employers in their campaign to break the unions, cut the wages, lengthen the hours of work or put full-time into part-time and lower the standard of living of all the workers — native and foreign-born alike. In recent years the foreign-born workers have joined the native-born in the struggle against the bosses, and low wages. The bosses have learned that they can no longer use the foreign-born workers to cut the standard of living of all workers. If members of the working class are to save themselves from intensified wage slavery,if the workers are to win freedom from exploitation and oppression by the employers, then all the workers, native and foreign-born must unite in the common fight. The fighting forces of the foreign-born workers must become a living part of the whole working class army. A divided front of the workers will crumble.
All workers must unite and wage a strong campaign for the removal of all visa laws forbidding foreign workers from working. All workers — foreign-born and native — must unite to prevent the enactment of new laws against foreign-born workers. The unions must wage a strong campaign of unionisation amongst all unorganised workers, especially amongst the unorganised migrant workers. All the workers must wage an active campaign to uproot the prejudices fostered by the employing class against the foreign-born and to draw foreign born workers more and more into the political and civic life of the communities where they live. We denounce the laws directed against the foreign-born. We denounce registration, fingerprinting and photographing of asylum seekers.
Ideologically, the “religion” of the state is nationalism. In lieu of class unity, nationalism is successful because it appeals to primal human desires for solidarity and belonging, as well as fear of the unknown (“outsiders”). Fear of outsiders is deliberately cultivated by rulers in order to mystify the real cause of the people’s discontent (namely rulers themselves), especially during times of economic/environmental crisis. Ultimately, the state has come to function as a sort of artificial surrogate for real community.
All workers have but one enemy — the capitalist class. The fight is between those who work for a living and those who own. It is a war between the exploited and their exploiters!
There is no race except the human race, no nation except the world!
“The Immigrant”
I have shouldered my burden as the American
man-of-all-work.
I contribute eighty-five percent of all the labor
in the slaughtering and meat-packing industries.
I do seven-tenths of the bituminous coal mining.
I do seventy-eight per cent of all the work
in the woolen mills.
I contribute nineteen-twentieths of all the clothing.
I manufacture more than half of the shoes.
I build four-fifths of all the furniture.
I make half the collars, cuffs and shirts.
I turn out four-fifths of all the leather.
I make half the gloves.
I refine nearly nineteen-twentieths of the sugar.
I make half of the tobacco and cigars.
And yet, I am the great American problem.
When I pour out my blood on your altar of labor,
and lay down my life as a sacrifice
to your god of toil, and make no more
comment than at the fall of a sparrow.
But my brawn is woven into the warp and woof
of the fabric of your national.
My children shall be your children and your land
shall be my land because my sweat and
my blood will cement the foundations
of the America of Tomorrow
Frederick J. Haskins
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