Keegan D. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Illinois–

The reactionary imperialist war criminal in a liberal mask, Joe Biden, is implementing an executive order which will shut down the already incredibly limited American immigrant asylum system. The order would shut down the asylum system if the observed number of instances of undocumented immigration over the southern border averages above 2,500 crossings a day, and would not allow for the asylum system to resume or for asylum seekers to enter until that number falls below 1,500 a day on average.

The 2,500 limit which triggers an asylum system shut down is extremely restrictive, reactionary, and is currently surpassed on a regular basis based on recent immigration data. The average daily number of observed undocumented crossings last month was 3,700. Worse, the necessary less than 1,500 average undocumented crossings needed to restart the asylum system is a nearly impossible figure to achieve. Not only would there need to be less than 1,500 undocumented crossings, but this would need to be sustained for over a week for it to count as a daily average per the executive order’s policies. On top of this, these figures for “acceptable” numbers of undocumented crossings, which are themselves difficult to calculate, are also often unrepresentative of the actual state of undocumented crossings.

As Biden carries out this most recent executive order, it should be noted that it is being implemented alongside an already proposed 4.7 billion dollar emergency increase in the budget for border security agencies for the 2025 fiscal year. This increase in funding does not help alleviate the causes of immigration (US imperialist ventures in Central and South America) or limit its strain on the administrative capacities of local governments, but does increase the rate at which border security agencies are able to expel and brutalize migrant families. This increase in budget will also almost certainly result in an increase in observed undocumented crossings due to increases in checkpoints and agents, but it will not represent an actual increase in such crossings. This will likely make it even more difficult to meet the target of fewer than 1,500 daily average observed undocumented crossings in order to resume the asylum system.

Biden’s executive order also comes as he attempts to gain support for re-election from America’s imperialist bourgeoisie who want to both maintain vast and highly exploitable reserve armies of labor in the global south, as well as create an ideological scapegoat for America’s decline which is in fact driven by the capitalist relations they create and enforce. The United States’ monopolized imperialist capitalist class has long utilized the American state to secure their interests economically and politically abroad, importantly relying on cheap labor and materials from Latin America to maintain the capitalist system’s profitability.

To ensure access to Latin America’s labor and materials and keep them profitable, the US has conducted countless regime changes, supported vicious reactionary dictators, and directly or indirectly killed communist and other progressive forces across the hemisphere during Operation Condor and beyond. These actions have created the situation in which many migrate to the US due to the political and economic instability of their home countries caused by American capital. Biden’s most recent executive order works under the same logic as these previous examples and is an attempt to shut the door completely on those seeking asylum from political and economic destruction which his administration has furthered. The executive order seeks to instead return would-be asylum seekers to Latin America in order to exploit their labor more advantageously for the capitalist class.

Additionally, the rationale of Biden’s executive order also hypocritically follows the logic of Trump’s own reactionary border policies, something which Biden initially campaigned against. Biden’s order gives into the historically conservative argument and reactionary position that immigrants are drivers of crime and job loss, both of which are false and are narratives employed previously by Trump.

First, on the issue of crime, it has been empirically measured that undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes, particularly violent crimes. For example, a 2020 University of Madison study found that, “Compared to undocumented immigrants, U.S. citizens were twice as likely to be arrested for violent felonies…, two-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for felony drug crimes, and over four times more likely to be arrested for felony property crimes.”

Further, in relation to the jobs and wages of the American multinational working class, immigrants are not the threat, capital is. Again due to capital’s need to maintain its necessarily increasing rate of profit, capital attempts to extract value from labor at an ever more efficient rate, meaning capital constantly attempts to both automate as much as possible and drive down the wages of the working class. In other words, immigrants aren’t stealing jobs, the capitalist class is systematically destroying them.

In order for the American multinational working class to gain quality jobs and a sustainable future, it cannot blame its problems on the working class of countries which American imperialism has ravaged. Instead of division, the working class must understand that Biden’s executive order does nothing to repair the damage caused by American capital which drives current immigration at the southern border, and that it instead attempts to divide the international working class in service of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

It also cannot be understated that this executive order will result in countless deaths and acts of violence to be perpetrated against currently blocked asylum seekers, a sacrifice made without thought by the bourgeois class. We, the international proletariat, must fight against this. The international proletariat knows not borders but solidarity, and further understands that the problems currently facing us are the result of capital’s internal interconnected contradictions. The system of imperialism, which is the foundation for the immigration crisis, is the very same system which exploits the working class here in America more and more every day. Only in the struggle for socialism can the working classes of all nations solve the crises of our modern situation. Down with imperialism, down with reaction, down with capitalism!

Categories: Immigration, U.S. News

Tags: Imperialism