Paving the Way to War — Obama’s Anti-Immigrant Reform

Barack Obama’s latest immigration reform is a major step by the U.S. ruling class toward an eventual world war. In itself, the initiative is narrow and limited, a temporary reprieve from deportation for up to five million undocumented immigrants. But by bypassing Congress, Obama made an important statement. He is concentrating the power of the presidency, an essential prerequisite for pursuing broader international conflicts.
Obama’s immigration plan springs out of the U.S. military’s need to recruit masses of Latin, black, and Asian youth to fight imperialist wars in the Middle East and South Asia. (Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who was seen as too weak in pushing for war, resigned under pressure on November 24.) The bosses’ dilemma is that they also need to terrorize young people to try to weaken working-class resistance — hence the racist murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and, more recently, of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn (see page 8). The “tragedies” and “mistakes” and “accidents” committed by the capitalists’ killer cops are fundamental to the profit system. The rulers know that racism is their main tool to divide and intimidate the working class. Racism enables them to pay lower wages to black and Latin workers, and to immigrants in particular. Super-exploitation produces super-profits, and lowers standards for white workers as well.
The bosses’ goal is to make life seem so hopeless that these unemployed youth see joining the military — and doing battle for Big Oil and the military/industrial profiteers — as their only option.
The insatiable drive for maximum profits lies at the root of all the evils of capitalism: racism, sexism, mass unemployment, poverty, sub-human wages and imperialist war. For workers to have a decent life, the entire system must be destroyed. This can be achieved only by winning hundreds of millions to the goal of communism, under the leadership of the international, revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party.
Deception by Deporter-in-Chief
His November 20 address notwithstanding, Obama remains the deporter-in-chief. In 2013, he deported a record 438,421 undocumented immigrants; his administration has expelled two million in all, a record pace. His new scheme grants a fleeting three years of “legality” to fewer than half the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today.  
Obama has tacked on various border enforcement measures that focus, as he put it, on “deporting felons, not families.” But targeting “criminal aliens” has historically served as a pretext for draconian enforcement measures that promote anti-immigrant dragnets and force undocumented workers into poverty and exploitation... the expulsion machine will keep humming for the around six million that remain “deportable” (The Nation, 11/21/14).
In part, Obama’s selective reprieve is designed to maintain immigrant workers’ fear of challenging sub-minimum and unpaid wages. While the reform is touted as a boon for workers, it will actually accelerate racist deportations, arrests, and exploitation. Immigrant families will continue to be ripped apart, just as black families were under slavery in the U.S. These are the “family values” of capitalism.
Anti-worker motives also underlie Obama’s promise of temporary residence to 3.5 million undocumented parents of U.S.-born children. U.S. war planners, their eyes fixed on an inevitable conflict with China and Russia, are delighted. According to Pentagon officials, “[The] order would remove a major obstacle currently barring children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants from joining the military….” (Military.com, 11/21/14). Obama’s move boosts the U.S. military-age population by around one million, a significant plus for ruling-class strategists.
As he eases entry for select groups, Obama is following the script in a 2011 RAND study, “Global Demographic Change and Its Implications for Military Power.” As RAND, a war-oriented think tank bankrolled by both the federal government and private-sector imperialists noted, “A full-fledged intervention by one state into another is ill-advised for countries that lack the requisite manpower.” But the U.S. also enjoys substantial advantages, including “size, affluence, high immigration levels, and...birthrate.” Obama’s “Open Door” cynically targets immigrant youth and workers, particularly those from Mexico, to kill and die in the next big war.
Obama Skirts Congress, Showing Rulers’ Disarray
The end run around Congress reveals the disarray and fragmentation of the U.S. ruling class. Obama’s ability to pull it off shows the continued dominance of the finance-capital wing of U.S. imperialism, a faction led by the Rockefellers, ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. For these mega-capitalists, Congress plays a critical role in fooling workers into believing they have “a voice in government.”
But Congress can also be obstructive. It gives voice to smaller bosses who think their profits don’t depend on U.S. control of Iraqi oil or U.S. readiness to confront China and Russia. Almost any multi-millionaire with an open checkbook — like car alarm salesman Darrell Issa or exterminator Tom DeLay — can rise to a seat in the House of Representatives. So can protégés of the billionaire Koch brothers or casino baron Sheldon Adelson, whose profits come mostly from domestic exploitation.
For now, however, the bigger bosses behind Obama have undercut these small fry with the “executive action” on immigration. Republicans may denounce Obama as a “prince,” and a “dictator,” but they are out-shouted by the top capitalists’ vast media apparatus. In the New York Times and on network television, there is almost nothing but praise for Obama’s unilateral, war-enabling, “humanitarian” action.
For all workers, regardless of where they happen to have been born, the only solution to capitalist exploitation is a communist revolution. That is why we ask you to join and build Progressive Labor Party and help us free our class from the murderous, profiteering bosses.