JOIGNY, FRANCE, May 5 — Eighty-six undocumented immigrants arrived in this town in Burgundy today, as they pursue a one-month, 850-mile trek from Paris to Nice on the Mediterranean coast. The protest marchers aim to win support for the “legalization” of all undocumented immigrants. They all pay taxes or send their children to school in France.
The marchers left Paris on May Day. May Day was chosen “as a powerful symbol to say that undocumented workers are foreign slave laborers who are legally turned over to slave-trader bosses by the racist laws of the French government,” the National Coordination of Undocumented Immigrants said in a press statement.
The marchers’ itinerary is determined by the local support associations and municipalities that offer them meals and lodging along the way. The march has been organized by the “ministry for the legalization of all undocumented immigrants.” The “ministry” is a federation of several collectives of undocumented immigrants, and is supported by twelve associations and three trade union confederations (CGT, Solidaires, and CNT).
Demonstrations and rallies will be staged at each stopping point. In Nice the marchers intend to demonstrate at the France-Africa summit there. France has invited 51 African heads of state to the summit; so far 20 stated they’ll come. The “ministry” declared that marchers will “denounce the collaboration of African heads of state in the French policy of ‘selective immigration,’ with its mass deportations of, and suffering for, undocumented immigrants.” They will “demand the ‘legalization’ of all undocumented immigrants as well as an end to neo-colonialism and misdevelopment.”
“Thus,” the “ministry” continued, “the African heads of state will be challenged on their silent collusion in the racist, xenophobic, inhuman and degrading treatment of Africans.”
While the march has attracted widespread attention in the broadcast and print media here, its real success will lie in the links forged with rank-and-file workers across France. As vital as it is to denounce French neo-colonialism and French super-exploitation of immigrant workers, it’s even more vital to expose capitalism as the source of both. Firstly, failure to do so may open the door to the idea that there can be “good nationalist, anti-colonialist but pro-capitalist” leaders. Secondly, exposing capitalism helps lead to an understanding that its abolition through communist revolution is the only way to end neo-colonialism and the super-exploitation of immigrants.