U.S. racism drives Haiti migrant crisis
Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 11:52AM
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After more than 10,000 refugees from Haiti risked their lives to journey through South American jungles and gang-infested territory to reach the Texas border, they were met by a wave of racist terror. In a throwback to the 18th-century slave catchers, U.S. border patrol agents, mounted on horseback, whipped and kidnapped members of our class—men, women, and children. But this shocking display of inhumanity was nothing new. It was part of a long tradition of liberal atrocities toward immigrant and Black workers. In the United States of Amerikkka, Democrat and Republican rulers alike use racism to divide, exploit, scapegoat, and demonize the most vulnerable workers.
After U.S. President Joe Biden campaigned last year to address “the Trump-created humanitarian crisis at our border” and to stop “denying asylum to people fleeing persecution and violence” (joebiden.com), many were deceived into thinking his administration would be a change from open racist Donald Trump, and that he would welcome immigrants with open arms. The reality exposes the fallacy of “lesser evil” wishful thinking. The fact that liberals are the main danger to the international working class. In fact, Biden is following the same playbook used both by Trump and by Biden’s nightmare Democrat predecessor, Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama. Like Trump, Biden is cynically exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic and using “Title 42” to authorize his nazi border agents to deny migrants their asylum “rights.” Like Obama, he is expelling migrants en masse—more than 700,000 since February (BuzzFeed, 9/23).
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights these racist expulsions and stands in solidarity with workers who are fleeing the instability and destruction caused by capitalism. The international working class must reject all forms of nationalism and borders. The fight to destroy capitalism and imperialist exploitation must be led by Black workers under the banner of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.
Bosses’racism leads to mass desperate, migrations
Anti-immigrant and anti-Black racism are essential to all capitalist rulers. Since the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haitian bosses have partnered with U.S. and other imperialist thieves in skimming tens of millions of dollars for business “development” while leaving workers in Haiti worse off than ever. This, in turn, has led to the latest mass migration out of Haiti (Current Affairs, November 2016).
In Brazil, the bosses super-exploited these immigrant workers to build stadiums for the 2014 World Cup (Reuters, July 2014). In Chile, they faced racist super-exploitation and terrible poverty; in Venezuela, the collapse of the state capitalist economy caused more of the same. Heading north to the U.S., they had to pass through Mexico under the fake-socialist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who collaborated with the U.S. to keep migrants penned in Mexico while waiting indefinitely for their asylum claims to be processed in the U.S.
Abused, humiliated and rejected, these refugees trekked on from the frying pan into the fire: to the United States, with its horrific history of brutalizing immigrants in general and workers from Haiti in particular.
From Carter to Clinton: racist incarceration
Former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan worked hand-in-hand with the arch-criminal Duvalier dictatorship(Papa Doc and Baby Doc, ruthless ex-Presidents of Haiti) They deported asylum seekers back to Haiti, sending many to their torture and death.
In 1991, after Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a coup, thousands of fleeing workers were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and penned in an overcrowded camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to await processing. Then President George H.W. Bush ordered the Coast Guard to turn back ships directly to Haiti—a policy denounced as “cruel” by Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign for president. But after taking office, Clinton reversed course and kept Bush’s policy in place.
He also continued to use Guantánamo Bay for the racist detention of hundreds of refugees from Haiti. His administration justified this racist detention by claiming that they were carriers of the HIV virus, even though the rate of HIV transmission was lower in Haiti than in the U.S.(refugees.org, 9/21).
Obama to Biden: continued racist assault
Under the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton focused on building a favorable climate for business in Haiti. In the name of “free trade,” the U.S. embassy engaged in a joint effort with Haitian elites, factory owners, and big U.S. textile companies to cap the minimum wage in Haiti at 31 cents per hour (COHA.org, 7/11).  
After the 2010 earthquake, the face of the international relief effort was United Nations “special envoy” Bill Clinton, who channeled “relief” efforts to attract foreign investments and profits. At the time, Port-au-Prince lay in ruins. Haitian workers were crowded into filthy tent cities, where thousands died in a cholera epidemic triggered by United Nations “peacekeepers” (pri.org, 10/27/20). As Current Affairs (11/2/16) noted, “the Clinton-led recovery was a disaster.”
Shortly before Obama left office, his Homeland Security Department rounded up thousands of refugees: “Immigration facilities have been so overrun that hundreds of immigrants have been moved to criminal jails, in violation of international norms” (Miami New Times, 12/14/16). Obama’s solution was to ramp up and fast-track deportations to a country then in shambles from Hurricane Matthew and rocked by “violent post election unrest”(Miami New Times, 12/14/16).
Communism = No Borders
In the face of the relentless attacks by Biden and other capitalist bosses, the refugees from Haiti organized migrant caravans to protect themselves from police and gangs, and to take care of one another to the best of their ability.
 As usual, the international working class has turned out in support, with rallies in solidarity throughout the world. At the U.S.-Mexico border, workers from Mexico cooked for the refugees stuck under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas (Mexico Daily News, 9/27). On the U.S. side, community organizations have raised money for them.
As this border crisis continues, we must fight for no deportations—and to build a revolutionary communist party. Borders were created by the capitalists to define which workers were theirs to exploit. But workers have no borders!  We must fight for communism to create a world without nations or exploitation. One class, one world, one Party. Join PLP!

Article originally appeared on The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plparchive.org/).
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