Solidarity with Immigrants
Dalton Nolan
2/10/2025
The last few weeks have been incredibly dizzying and turbulent for vast swathes of the working and oppressed people in this country due to Trump’s string of executive orders. One of the most consequential and most immediate of these executive orders have been related to immigration. In one executive order, Trump declared the situation at the southern border of the US a “national emergency,” which would allow the Department of Defense to more intimately work with the Department of Homeland Security to “secure” the southern border, with plans to send troops to the border. This and many other executive orders are a clear coordinated assault on immigrants across the US. With ICE once again ramping up its operations, and now that churches, schools, and hospitals are no longer safe havens, nowhere do immigrants feel safe. Even other ethnic groups are not safe, with ICE racially profiling and detaining members of the Navajo in one of their raids. All of this has predictably caused panic and fear among immigrants in the US, and it is our responsibility as organizers to assist our immigrant brothers and sisters during all of this. However, while Trump and his lackeys represent the most blatant and explicit form of nativism our country has seen recently, such rhetoric is neither new nor restricted to the Republicans, with the US and the Democrats having a long, storied history with nativism stretching far back into our history and that still continues to this day.
One of the earliest legislative attacks on immigrants was the Alien and Sedition Act of 1789, increasing the residency requirement (i.e., how long you have to reside in the US before being eligible for citizenship) for naturalization from 5 years to 14 years, all done to weaken the power base of the other political party of the time—a political ploy common throughout the history of immigration. Moving ahead a few decades, we see the establishment of the Know-Nothings Party, a political party that sought to organize protestants in opposition to Catholics, specifically Irish Catholics, to defend the country against a conspiracy to overthrow US society. In the late 1800s, Chinese immigration to the US exploded, with many of these new arrivals coming here to either join the gold rush or to find work, which usually meant working on the Transcontinental railroad. The sudden rise in the number of Chinese immigrants sparked a reaction that saw Republicans and Democrats vote in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first piece of immigration legislation targeting a specific ethnicity or nationality. In 1919 and 1920, after a series of mailbombings by Anarchists, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched a series of raids across the country, arresting suspected immigrant leftists in the US and deporting them, with the aim of “safeguarding” America from the poison of radicalism “brought” to the country by immigrants. This belief in safeguarding America would be the reason given for the later corralling of Japanese-Americans into what were effectively concentration camps under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt during WWII.
In the brief history of nativism in the US I’ve detailed above, one constant in many of these incidents is the ties nativism has to racism. In each example, the “othering” that occurs from nativist rhetoric, pitting immigrants against non-immigrants, often falls back to racial connotations and language, especially in the US. This is most apparent in recent history, where nativism is inseparable from racism. For example, following 9/11, many people of color, regardless of whether they were Arab or not, were routinely targeted and harassed because of the anti-Arabic, anti-Muslim hysteria that the media and our politicians were fueling to drum up support for American intervention in the Middle East. Today, the way that the Republican party and Trump speak about immigrants cements the connection between nativism and racism, with words like “aliens,” “criminals,” and “invaders” used to create a boogeyman for working people to fear, distracting them from the real monsters—the owning class. This redirection isn’t limited to the Republicans. While the Republicans use the immigrants as scapegoats, the Democrats use immigrants as props to redirect working people’s attention to the Republicans, with the Democrats only caring about immigrants when Trump was in office but not when Obama was deporting immigrants or when children were still in cages under Biden’s presidency. In this, immigrants become props to consistently misdirect and control working people.
The oppression of immigrants begins not when they enter the US, but back in their homeland before they even leave. Whether they’re from the Middle East, Central America, or some other part of the world, the would-be immigrants are forced to suffer from the political, social, and economic fallout from the US “intervening” in their affairs. These “interventions” could be through the International Monetary Fund, an arm of American imperialism, in which much-needed funding is held behind predatory “policy changes” and “economic restructuring” that demand a country open up and submit to American business interests at the expense of the local population. “Interventions” could also be through sanctions or the US invading a country to enforce its demands, effectively ruining the country in the process. Combined with a history of colonial and neo-colonial rule, and we have a situation where most of the world’s population is unable to live in the lands they were born in. This is why many choose not to go through the long, complicated immigration process that the US crafted because people can’t wait in line to jump through so many hoops when they have children to feed. Even when the immigrants make it to the US for a better life, to a country that supposedly welcomes all people, they are discriminated against based on their appearance and culture, with many people not wanting to associate with them or demanding they assimilate (e.g., “speak English”). This has left immigrant communities and individuals even more isolated, hurting them in the long run especially when we remember that undocumented immigrants have limited access to life-sustaining services for fear that they’ll be deported. And this lingering fear of being deported by ICE, combined with scapegoating and now quotas for deportations, makes the lives of immigrants more horrifying because, at any moment, ICE officials could come to their church or their children’s school to deport them.
Immigrants are no strangers to exploitation, with it beginning in their mother country. Whether as an individual working for a multinational corporation or simply living within a country ravaged by said corporations, the labor of the would-be immigrants and their friends, families, and communities is taken advantage of by these corporations, with all of them forced to work in hazardous conditions for little pay so that the owners of these companies can make a pretty penny. This is in addition to the land and resources of the immigrants' homeland being uprooted and poisoned by the companies for the sake of ever-greater profits. Yet, once the immigrants flee this nightmare, they enter into a new one in the US. Inside the US, undocumented immigrants exist in a precarious situation in which one wrong move could lead to them being deported. This means that whatever backbreaking job for little pay they are forced to do, they must do whatever the boss tells them to do under threat of being reported to ICE. Under this “American Nightmare,” undocumented immigrants have limited job opportunities, are forced to work in hazardous conditions, have little to no labor protection, are unable to adequately defend against wage theft or abuse, and are under constant threat of being reported to ICE by their bosses. In addition to this, because of language barriers to understanding what little rights they do have as immigrants and as workers, most immigrants are either disinterested or fearful of unionizing, making it even more difficult for them to combat abuses from their bosses.
Due to centuries of propaganda stoked by the media, politicians, and even corporations, many working people still struggle to identify themselves with immigrants. Working Americans often see the immigrants as too different from them or their struggles as not serious, leading to, at best, apathy or, worse, nativism if they buy into the propaganda. This shouldn’t be the case, as while the non-immigrant doesn’t experience all the obstacles that an immigrant goes through, there are plenty of areas of concern that unite both. Firstly, following 9/11, Democrats and Republicans voted in the Patriot Act ostensibly to combat “terrorism.” The Patriot Act was instead used to create an extensive network of surveillance and to spy on all working and oppressed people alike without any probable cause. The Patriot Act only gained significant support because of the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hysteria the owning class and its allies created, meaning that they used immigrants as political props in order to then spy on the entire country.
Secondly, as we saw with the Palmer Raids, which targeted immigrants who were often labor organizers and leftists, the new administration isn’t opposed to using deportation as a tool to “remove” pro-Palestinian non-immigrant students. In the executive order on the matter, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” no definition of antisemitism is given, meaning that the Zionist definition of “criticizing Israel” and “supporting Palestine” qualifies as “antisemitism” in the eyes of the state. All of this serves to weaken our collective ability to organize against oppression and exploitation and disrupts our ability to stand in solidarity with working and oppressed people here and abroad.
Thirdly, despite differences in customs, immigrants and non-immigrants share the same class interests. As working people, we all want decent housing, access to quality and affordable healthcare, to work in a safe and well-paying job, to have time to be able to relax however we see fit, etc., etc. Ultimately, we all strive for the ability to have self-determination, to be able to choose our own destiny in opposition to the whims of some distant boss who only cares about making money. These are what our class interests are, and they are what unite us in this class struggle. It is through this recognition of our shared class interests that we can begin to build international solidarity. With international solidarity, like with all other forms of solidarity, the power of each working person is multiplied tenfold, working class militancy is strengthened, and we have the power to fight for our shared class interests in opposition to the owning class.
It has only been a few weeks since Trump was inaugurated, and he has come out swinging. All of this has led to so much hardship for immigrants across the country, and they need our help now more than ever. The first part of assisting immigrants is learning more about their plight, especially important is dispelling the many lies that have been propagated about them for centuries. In addition to learning, it is important to reach out to organizations that provide assistance to immigrants, offering whatever support you can to make sure that they are able to continue providing their much-needed services to immigrant communities. If you join a community defense group that responds to ICE raids, then you must be very careful how you present yourself and act during these encounters. Your community defense group will likely have some training that you’ll have to follow, but some key information to keep in mind is that your actions can and will impact the community you’re trying to help, you’re there to provide whatever support the community deems necessary. The final part of helping immigrants is reaching out to your immigrant and non-immigrant co-workers and community members about the situation. When talking to your immigrant co-workers, you should provide them with support, both emotional and material, while also giving them important information about the rights they have, which can be found on the ACLU’s website at this link: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/immigrants-rights. In your discussions with your non-immigrant co-workers, your goal is to get them to care about the plight of their immigrant brothers and sisters by telling them what they’re going through, why it's important to care, and what they can do to help.
Recent events have shaken the country to its core, and it is understandable that many people are fearful of what is to come. But it's important to note that we’ve survived under Trump once before, and nativism isn’t new. The explicit and targeted assault of immigrant communities under Trump is merely just another episode in America’s long history of nativism and is one that the Democrats are allowing to happen without any resistance whatsoever. It is for this reason that we cannot allow ourselves to become paralyzed by fear. If the Democrats are not going to challenge this attack on immigrants, then it's up to all of us, working and oppressed people, to do something about it. Through learning about and supporting our immigrant brothers and sisters in their plight, we can make a real difference and, most importantly, build international solidarity. Through this international solidarity, we can march forward, with all working and oppressed people together, toward a world where the concept of “immigration” is a thing of the past and we all live in harmony with one another.
