Organization for the Communist Party of the Proletariat, Italy | Piattaforma Comunista | Mar. 31, 2026 | Translated for the Red Phoenix by Mike M.–
The Phenomenon of Migration and its Causes
The worsening of the general crisis of the international capitalist system, together with the sharpening struggle among monopolistic groups and imperialist powers for raw materials and others’ territories, has caused the economic and social destabilization of vast swathes of the planet.
Whole countries and poor regions have been completely devastated by the conflicts, civil wars, aggressions, and plunder of millions of hectares of land and mineral resources by multi-national corporations and the wealthier countries which they control, by the blackmail perpetrated by predatory organs such as the IMF and the World Bank, and the continuous policies of theft carried out by finance capital and systemic environmental destruction, whose tragic consequences are already before our eyes.
The poverty, hunger, mass unemployment, wars of plunder, and reactionary regimes are the causes that have led millions of people to emigrate in search of a better life.
The contradictions of the capitalist-imperialist system have caused the exponential exodus of millions of migrants from poor and weak countries. On one hand, imperialism pushes the proletarians, semi-proletarians, and poor peasants to emigrate; on the other, it attracts them to the richer cities and “special economic zones” as a low-cost work force, in humiliating conditions, and employs them principally in duties spurned by local workers, who have been conditioned by reactionary propaganda to compete with the immigrant workers.
Thus, mass immigration has seen a steady increase, realized as an uptick of international migrants, whose numbers have gone from around 150 million at the start of the millennium to over 300 million in 2024.
The destination countries, naturally, generally belonged to the OECD countries, concentrated in particular in North America, the European Union and European Free Trade Association, eastern Asia, and Australia. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states are other important destinations.
Lenin on the Migration of Workers
The migratory phenomenon provoked by the continued world imperialist aggression has been amply analyzed by revolutionary Marxist thought.
In his 1913 text entitled Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration, Lenin stresses that “Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries.
Hundreds of thousands of workers thus wander hundreds and thousands of versts. Advanced capitalism drags them forcibly into its orbit, tears them out of the backwoods in which they live, makes them participants in the world-historical movement and brings them face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners.
There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner.”
Lenin highlights the economic basis of immigration, made up of the uneven development of capitalism, indicating that it is the most advanced capitalism that is forcing millions of workers from the most backward countries. By citing immigration statistics in the United States and Germany, Lenin demonstrates that the development of migratory movements of proletarians did not cease to grow, but that their structure changed from 1880 to 1890. While in the preceding period European emigration came principally from “old civilized countries” (England and Germany), where capitalism had developed more quickly, now it was the “backward” countries (starting with Eastern Europe) that were providing less-qualified workers to America and other advanced capitalist countries.
Lenin continues: “Thus, the most backward countries in the old world, those that more than any other retain survivals of feudalism in every branch of social life, are, as it were, undergoing compulsory training in civilization.”
Passing from the economic plane to the more purely political one, Lenin notes that if Russian workers are more backward from this point of view, they are further ahead in the struggle against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to stoke racial divisions among workers.
In this sense, in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), in analyzing the contradictions inherent in the last stage of capitalist development, characterized by “parasitism and putrefaction,” Lenin reveals the political consequences, characterized by the “tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement.”
The contemporary repercussions of Lenin’s analysis show how much immigration and the living and working conditions of immigrants must be considered within
the framework of imperialist theory, outside of which the current forms of this phenomenon would seem abstract and incomprehensible.
Migration and the Far Right in Europe
In today’s scenario, characterized by massive waves of millions of proletarians from the poorest and most devastated regions of the planet, the imperialist countries, facing the cyclical economic crises of capitalism and the development of the tendency for war for a new division of the world, have witnessed the growth of nationalist, neo-fascist, and xenophobic political formations and parties.
The feeling of hatred towards the “migrant,” fed by shameful disinformation campaigns by the bourgeois press, with the intent to divide the proletariat by pitting workers in competition with one another, has transformed in the past few decades into a social and political process termed “remigration.”
This process, which originally developed in western Europe, especially in France and Germany, foresees the expulsion via forced deportation of masses of first- second-, or third-generation immigrants, to their “native” countries. This is a violent response by global capitalism to the systemic inequalities and the plagues which it itself has generated.
The concept of “remigration” in its contemporary form took shape in imperialist France in the 1990s within far-right spaces that in turn spread it even to the outlying areas and the suburbs, where local and immigrant (usually second-generation, once-colonial) workers had lived side-by-side for decades.
The conflict of workers artificially created by the French bourgeoisie led to violent encounters that flowed into the suburban revolts in 2005. In this context, the rising hatred toward migrants, sustained by frenzied press campaigns and by the widening of xenophobic groups rapidly channeled into the far-right National Front, which, in 2018, took on the name National Rally. This party found support in the “Great Replacement” theory, as championed by writer Renaud Camus, an exponent of white supremacism convinced of the presumed “mutation” of France following its “colonization” by Islamic migrants hailing from the Middle East and Africa.
The rise of neo-fascism in France has solidified in recent years with the birth of the Reconquest political party, which has won a seat in the European Parliament.
In recent years, the policy of French governments, riding the wave of growing xenophobia and the increase of the far-right electoral consensus, has seen a crack-down on migration by introducing, on one side, the so-called “voluntary return assistance,” which includes economic incentives for those who decide to leave the country, and by adopting, on the other, increasingly restrictive measures. For example, 24 months of residency are now required for family reunions, as opposed to eighteen according to the December 2023 reform.
While imperialist France remains one of the preferred destinations for African migrants fleeing desperate conditions, we are bearing witness, day after day, to the programmed demolition of the French “assimilationist” model, which was founded on the formal equality of all citizens, native and immigrant, before the law.
In Germany, the tendencies favorable to the repatriation of migrants are chiefly found in two far right groups: the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) of Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla and German Identitarian Movement (IBD), the twin brother Martin Sellner’s Austrian group of the same name. Both are characterized by the enthusiastic approval of mass expulsion policies of those seeking asylum and of “non-assimilated” citizens.
With the slogan “only remigration can save Germany” AfD (which obtained 20.8% of the vote in the last election) has been putting forward aggressive political propaganda for some time directed to large areas of the country, from Potsdam, where, in 2024, a skirmish took place involving IBD and other neonazi groups on the topic of migration, to Karlsruhe, where in 2025, it delivered “expulsion cards” to the mailboxes of immigrants.
Added to this is the xenophobic campaign under the catch phrase “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” launched in Austria by the Fpo (Freedom Party of Austria) of Herbert Kickl, who, by dint of the party’s 29.2% showing in the last parliamentary elections, risks becoming in the near future the next Austrian chancellor. It was not by chance, then, that the “international” gathering of the far right on the topic of remigration and to put a stop to “Islamization” took place last summer in Vienna.
Trump and the Hunt for Immigrants
In the last several decades the politics of migration in the U.S., facing mass immigration in the thousands from Mexico and other Latin American countries (not to mention from Asia, the Middle East, and western Africa), has been marked by the construction of a wall (“the wall of shame”) along the border with Mexico, begun by the George H. W. Bush administration in 1990 and continued by successive presidencies (Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump).
Today, with Trump’s second presidency, American imperialism is undoubtedly taking the role of leader and tip of the spear in pursuing policies that are increasingly reactionary, aggressive, and war-mongering.
With words full of chauvinistic rhetoric and marked by the crudest nationalism, Trump has delineated his so-called “American strategy.” This is a set of directives and political orientations defined by, on one hand, interventionism – direct or indirect – in all international questions where important interests are at play, while cloaking such aggressions and interference in the garb of a humanitarian emergency running the gamut from nuclear danger to “narcotrafficking;” and on the other, by so-called, “mass migration,” which as expressly declared by Trump, represents one of the obstacles that must be eliminated to guarantee the defense of rights and freedoms fundamental to U.S. citizens.
Promoted under the false pretext of “national security,” remigration has thus become the cornerstone of the policies of Donald Trump’s second administration which began to take shape throughout 2025.
These policies are not limited to the deportation of “illegal” immigrants, but aim at deportations on a vast scale, including for subjects with legal status, refugees, people with protected status, or those considered “unassimilated.”
In parallel to remigration, the Trump administration has suspended immigration requests from countries defined as “high risk.”
Mass deportation of immigrants has thus become a program of gigantic proportions. In fact, Trump has promised to expel millions of people from the U.S. (some estimates range from 10 to 20 million).
In reaching its objective, the Trump administration has also reinforced federal agencies such as the notorious ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which has become a racist and fascist armed militia unleashed in every corner of the country to enact the repressive policies of discrimination imparted by the federal government, making thousands of arrests every day.
Although already fully operational during Biden’s presidency, ICE has seen its powers massively amplified with the second Trump administration. Its means of intervention have shown themselves in various states, such as Oregon and Minnesota, where the agency’s violence reached a level of ferocity that led to the murders of U.S. citizens: Keith Porter in Los Angeles in December 2025, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis in January 2026, whose murders at the hands of ICE were completely unjustified.
At the same time, there has been a drastic increase in detention centers for migrants (from Alligator Alcatraz to Guantánamo), separating the families of expelled immigrants. The strategy is tailored to create a climate of fear to be able to cause immigrants to “self deport.”
The American executive is pursuing political objectives with its terrorist witch hunt of immigrants: it wants to blame immigrants for the worsening of working and living conditions, of poverty and precarity for broad strata of the working class.
The intention is to distract the working masses from real problems and to safeguard the interests of the financial oligarchy that dominates the declining American imperialism. Trump is pursuing these objectives directly, aggressively, and recklessly, regardless of the country’s welfare or the fates of millions of migrants, refugees, and proletarians, thus violating international law, human rights, and the U.S. constitution.
The mass resistance that rose in the Twin Cities and in other U.S. cities for the expulsion of ICE, solidarity with migrants, opposing the violence against and deportation of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and against collaboration between ICE and local authorities, all represent a meaningful step in the fight to stop the disgraceful and racist politics of the Trump administration. On the basis of this experience the workers movement will be able to march toward higher phases of struggle against capitalist and fascist oppression.
Migration Politics in Italy
The “Trump model” has encouraged neo-fascist and chauvinist organizations in Europe, particularly in Italy, which have begun importing the same approach, inserting it into the milieu of migration policies long followed by the bourgeoisie.
In recent decades, imperialist Italy has, in fact, adopted policies of containment, immigration rejection, and discrimination for those requesting asylum, along the lines of the other imperialist states, in order to manage the contradictions of mass migration. An example of this is the use of the policy of “externalization” of borders. This means placing border control and migratory flows outside of a given territory, delegating such responsibilities to dependent countries.
Progressive de-localization of mechanisms of control, surveillance, and detention have therefore been entrusted the police and militias of African regimes (such as Libya, Tunisia, and Niger) which have the task of preventing migrants (among whom are many women and children) from emigrating to Italy, detaining them in ever-larger networks of concentration camps, not rarely managed by human traffickers.
Imperialist Italy has an important role in the process of externalization of borders, with the substantial consensus of European institutions and the imperialist states that compose them.
With the advent of the Meloni government, the politics of migration has assumed an even more reactionary character, fed by wanton demagogic propaganda about the “invasion.”
Migrants are becoming scapegoats for all the social ills that the government’s austerity politics and support for war are engendering.
Every day these scapegoats are flung into the headlines, accused of every conceivable wrongdoing: importing criminality, drugs, prostitution, disease, etc. They are portrayed as a grave danger to be removed at all costs.
The Meloni government’s rigid immigration measures include: a blockade using Navy to block vessels that cross the Mediterranean (result: 600 migrants dead in the initial months of this year); a ban on entering territorial waters; public quarrels with Non-Government Organizations, which have been accused of promoting illegal immigration; fast-tracked expulsions and forced repatriations; international accords with Tunisia, Libya, and extra-European Union detention centers (in Albania); planned entry tied to the a workforce in certain sectors (agricultural workers, care workers, etc.).
The Fascist Scheme for Remigration in Italy
Recently, the political debate on immigration and remigration has become further embittered, marked by the entry into the field by General Roberto Vannacci, outwardly belonging to the populist and xenophobic right linked to the fascist elements in the military.
Vannacci, who was once affiliated with Matteo Salvini’s Lega as its vice-secretary, subsequently exited that party to found “National Future,” an extreme chauvinist
political party that is in the same group in the European Parliament in Strasbourg as the AfD.
In the Italian context, already dominated by a right-wing government noted for its support for Zionism and its subordination to the commands of the U.S. and European Union, Vannacci’s emergence in the political arena represents the latest “skeleton key” used by the imperialist bourgeoisie to hasten the introduction of new, repressive measures aimed at confronting mass movements, migrant workers, and the local proletariat.
The political debate on this topic in Italy has seen yet another period of acceleration and polarization following the early 2026 referendum known as “Remigration and Reconquest.”
This proposal, the brainchild of a committee made up of neo-fascists from Casa Pound (translator’s note: an extreme right-wing, fascist society in Italy named after noted American fascist mouthpiece Ezra Pound) and three other far-right nationalist formations — Patriots’ Network, VFS (translator’s note: skinheads from the Veneto region in Italy’s northeast), and Brescia for the Brescians — consists of 24 articles that aim to counter illegal immigration and the exploitation of foreign labor, according to the intentions of its promoters.
The fascist, xenophobic, and racist nature of the referendum translate to aggressive and inhuman actions outside any sense of constitutional legitimacy or international law, and have the objective neither of security nor the fight against the exploitation of immigrant labor, which would require actions against the corporations making enormous profits from a low-cost, immigrant proletariat.
The text of the referendum contains norms that will harm proletarian families with more restrictive policies around family reunification, more intrusive monitoring of the lives of migrants, more stringent procedures for removal and expulsion, and the greater institutionalization of administrative detention facilities, true concentration camps where migrants’ “stays” become prolonged, open-air imprisonment.
The true goal of the “sovereignist” supporters of the national remigration program – backed by the American right (as revealed in Trump’s National Security Strategy) – is to substitute class struggle with ethnic struggle, with a call for the alliance of Italian workers and bosses against all immigrants, in order to create a more marginalized and blackmailed workforce ripe for more intense exploitation (in Italy, immigrants make up about 10.5% of the workforce, or about four million workers).
This political goal which has been pursued by the most aggressive and chauvinistic sectors of the industrial, agricultural, and financial bourgeoisie is now in search of mass consensus in the middle classes, crushed and impoverished by capitalist crises and monopoly policies, to pour out their hatred on immigrants rather than the predominant social order.
The proposal has collected the necessary signatures for its presentation to the Court of Cassation (judicial organ of last resort). Its approval will depend not only on the support it manages to obtain from the bourgeois block, but also, and above all, on the mass mobilization of the proletariat and the people, called to combat this latest authoritarian and racist measure.
The Migration Issue Is Critical to the Development of the Class Struggle
Within this dangerous framework emerging in the imperialist countries, we must loudly affirm that what is presented as a mere attempt to reform immigration, defined by the catchy term “remigration,” is, in reality, a project of forced, mass deportation on an ethnic, social, and cultural basis. It must be fought with all arms available to the proletariat and other workers of all countries.
This project is directed at dividing and blackmailing workers and increasing worker exploitation, whether those workers be immigrants or locals.
The issue of immigrant defense is one of the most relevant questions of our time, to be included fully in the policy of a unified proletarian front and an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist front.
If the bosses and governments spare no expense in pitting local workers against immigrants to create barriers of misunderstanding and hatred between them, our task is to highlight the uniformity of the fundamental interests of all workers and to defend the weakest and poorest sections of the proletariat.
Our duty is to cooperate in the struggle in unity with the migrants, assist their integration in local labor organization struggle, participate in the class struggle of the exploited against the exploiters, and to demand a policy of dignified and respectful welcome of migrants and a defense of their rights, the reform and equalization of salaries and rights, the abolition of racist, anti-immigrant laws and the expulsion of “administrative” detention centers, among other demands.
We must start mass campaigns opposing the approval of racist and discriminatory laws (as in Italy), the condemnation of all forms of repression enacted in the imperialist states, beginning with Trump’s U.S., and organizing support networks for immigrant workers.
The protests in Tuscany against the “remigration committee,” under shouts of “no room for fascists” and “we can stop them” were an important example of struggle where immigrant workers played a crucial role. It must be the fascists and private militias of racists who are expelled from our cities, and not workers who come from other countries!
We must develop our denunciation and condemnation of the capitalist and imperialist system that is leading to the devastation of entire countries, causing mass immigration and the flight from poverty by millions of the “wretched of the earth,” who are then exploited to the bone, repressed and deported in shameful concentration camps.
Mobilization against anti-migration policies must occur on a mass scale, as shown by the great struggles in the United States, uniting the struggles against remigration and the danger of war and ascendant fascism in other countries, and encompassing both in the general struggle for a new society without exploitation, racism, or wars of plunder.
Our task on the ideological front is to combat chauvinism by educating the exploited and oppressed working masses in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and international solidarity of workers and the peoples.
Categories: Immigration, International