Liberal pundits, in an attempt to discredit Trump’s plan to seal off the country to new waves of Third World immigration, like to think they’re clever when posing the question of what amerika would do without immigrants. Of course, this question is put almost as if they truly believe it is a humanitarian and empathetic sentiment. They point to data sheets that show migrant labor is among the least paid, and most commonly productive labor in the united $tates as if this sentiment is supposed to juxtapose that of the “fascist” Trump. Their insinuation that migrants should stay in the united $tates upon the merits of cheap labor, rather than on any true “humanitarian” inclination, is completely apparent. It was even mocked by the cadre of Alt-Right.com in one of their University speaking events. “If we deport all the migrants, who will grow our food or clean our toilets?” one spectator shouted, eliciting a sharp response from Richard Spencer: “White people can grow their own fucking food, and clean their own god damned toilets.”

It is true that Richard Spencer and his box of crackers down at Alt-Right.com are certainly fascists of a stripe, and for the most part are not ashamed of that fact, and that there is not a shred of “humanitarianism” in their sentiment. However, one has to ask themselves: where is the humanitarianism in the liberal argument of maintaining an immigrant population purely on the grounds of their economic benefit? Richard Spencer, despicable though he is, is absolutely right: white people can grow their own fucking food, and clean their own god damned toilets. The liberal argument lacks any real advantage over that of the far-right, and certainly does not evaluate the migrants they pretend to care about on the basis of their humanity. Communists should categorically reject this form of argumentation in exchange for a new, revolutionary position. One that understands that the bane of the imperialist world economy is the encroaching national democratic consciousness of the Third World. Our position must start from here.

The Unassimilated Masses

The situation in europe and north amerika, although similar, takes two distinct forms: in europe, the migrant influx is primarily from the continents on its flanks, and composed of peoples who are native to elsewhere and have a direct link to that other place. In north amerika, you have this as well, but additionally there exists a colonial element that further shapes the character of the immigrant struggle. Chican@s are not only peoples of another nationality driven to the First World by the social and material conditions of imperialism in the Third World, they are also the indigenous residents of that country to which they are returning: Aztlan.

There are a great number of people who remained in the territory after its original seizure by the amerikans, now being erroneously labeled “immigrants” by the colonial authorities. They are, as well, joined by a great number of central-amerikan migrants who, even at their own protest, are grouped with Chican@s by the settlers. Nevertheless, all are refugees of imperialism and victims of settler-colonialism, and by the admission of every reactionary in the united $tates, they are an existential threat to the amerikan system. Whether it is based on the humanitarian, liberal values of “cheap labor” or the reactionary, right-wing desires for ethnic homogeneity, there is no genuine attempt to reconcile the great contradictions that exist between settler-colonial amerika and the oppressed nationalities.

Amerika does not assimilate these peoples, and to a large degree even liberals are aware of the incompatibility of their privileges with the broad masses of the world. Amerikans do not want immigrants here as their neighbors, but will accept them as their gardeners and maids. Kamala Harris, the “progressive” democratic senator from California, made this abundantly clear when tweeting about the horrific results of Trump’s deportation policy:

This administration’s anti-immigration push is being felt—entire fields of vegetables are spoiling before they can be picked.

No, despite how it sounds, this is not plucked from the memoir of a 19th century slave-owner, it is just another amerikan liberal. Who’d have guessed? She then cites an article written by Fortune.com describing the same situation. One has to then wonder, why is it that only immigrants are employed to farm here? Why is it that this is the outrageous result of Trump’s immigration policy? This says absolutely nothing about the unemployed masses of people who are not responsible for growing amerikan food, and certainly there is no article on Fortune or any other business media decrying their deportation, nor the plight of suffering families and children fearing each day could be their last with their undocumented parents. The liberal establishment can only rationalize their opposition to Trump’s immigration policy through its effects on their pocketbooks, and are capable of no deeper “humanitarian” feeling. They will not cry for the lives lost in the horrific wars and poverty Third World migrants flee, only for the money it loses them.

To be sure, one of the things amerikans love most about their cheap foreign-made commodities is that they do not have to live near those who make them. Once those same individuals show up in their country, their skin crawls. This is because they are aware that what they have cannot be shared universally, and like the Roman proletariat, they live at the expense of much of the world. There can be no reconciliation because imperialism demands unbearable living conditions in the Third World to buy the social peace in the First World, and that those who are not the intended target of these super-profits be excluded wherever and to the greatest extent possible. This is why the vast majority of Third World migrants cannot be truly integrated, because in the zero-sum game of imperialism there is only so much privilege to go around.

The oppressed internal colonies as well as the great number of Third World migrants are an existential threat because of the dual danger they pose to the First World standard of living. On one hand, if they were to be assimilated it would necessarily compromise the very foundation of social peace in the global north. To assimilate, completely, all of those people who have and will come in (and in the case of amerika, those who were already there!) would strain the imperialist economy to the point of collapse. Wages could not be kept competitive with the totally free movement of labor, and the continual introduction of refugees seeking shelter from the hell that imperialism has created for most of the world would overwhelm social programs. However, since they cannot be integrated, they must be kept at odds with the parasitic state. They remain in constant contradiction with a society that has made clear that they do not belong. Their separation here becomes the impetus for unity elsewhere.

A Revolutionary Position

This unity “elsewhere” inevitably begins along those lines drawn by the exploiters. In the 21st century, where class conflict has taken on an international character, the only common relationship between nations is imperialism. The unassimilated masses of people realizing they cannot be part of the amerikan or european project will look to their present relations for support and solidarity, and it is along these ideological fault-lines that we should build a revolutionary consciousness. As Communists we must not only expand their national consciousness, but from it cultivate an internationalist spirit that links their struggles with that of the Third World at large. Our greatest task is the transformation of their constant state of contradiction with the societies of the First World into a proletarian class ideology, taking aim at imperialism from the company of the world’s greatest majority: the Third World proletariat.

However to do this we must first reexamine the original theses of the liberal so-called left and the right. How must we understand the immigrants and refugees who have risked everything to arrive in the First World? While liberals see them as our plucky low-wage workforce, and the right see them as a threat to the cultural homogeneity they wish to build, we must understand them as the holders of a great debt in the First World. Those Third World immigrants, who have come to escape the hell created by the imperialists, are owed access to the hoarded wealth of the First World. They are not “opportunities” for cracker entrepreneurs, nor are they a “burden” for the First World petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy. Quite the contrary, it is the First World which is a burden for them, for the whole Third World. So long as the parasitic imperialist relationship exists, wherein surplus-value is drained from the aching bodies of Third World workers, it is the clean-cut amerikan worker who is a burden to the unemployed lumpenproletariat of the oppressed nations, not the other way around.

It may seem paradoxical, that those who come to the united $tates with absolutely nothing may be burdened by the society they hope will not let them starve. There is a natural skepticism when it is looked at in such narrow terms. However, it is when we look at it from the broadest perspective, and see that it is the wages of those crackers that have been inflated by the starving masses of Asia, Afrika and Latin Amerika, we begin to understand how it could be so. How “humanitarian” are those liberals now, having looted the Third World and when faced with the wave of refugees—those not turned away for the purposes of “security”—their only recourse is to squeeze even more from the survivors of their “enterprise” in the oppressed countries. To reduce our break with the liberal and right-wing positions on immigrants to a single sentence: we recognize that the mass of unassimilated Third World immigrants represent the death of the First World standard of living, and because of the overwhelming inhumanity of that standard, we welcome them.

The liberal, First Worldist response to the question of immigration in the imperialist countries has been even less consistent than that of the right, and pathetically attempts to hide behind a false veil of “humanitarianism.” The only real alternative to that of the right, which fundamentally rejects the basis of human exploitation and stratification, is Communism. Liberal “pro-immigrant” discourse hardly challenges the basis of economic exploitation and dehumanization offered by the right, it only seeks a superficial moral solution that preserves all of the systems they benefit from. While vile groups like the Alt-Right make no secret of their intense hatred of refugees and immigrants, one can at very least respect the coherence and transparency of their position, unlike their liberal counterparts.

Turning the World Upside-Down

The question now stands, once we have accepted that a revolutionary consciousness must be built: how do we focus such a consciousness, and to what end? We have already stated that it must be built along the class/national fault-lines of imperialism, where the greatest possible majority exists to be united internationally against imperialism. It is clear that for us, the ultimate goal is the complete overthrow of imperialism and the establishment of Communism, but this requires much more elaboration on our part. The greatest immediate task for Communists in the First World is to build a unity of interests between the revolutionary movement of the imperialist countries and the Third World proletariat. This inevitably must begin from within those Third World elements existing within the First World in the form of immigrants/refugees and the internal colonies, and anchor itself in the broader movement against imperialism globally.

In amerika and the First World settler-colonies, this unity must be extended between all oppressed nationals not only toward the destruction of the international parasitic relationship of the First World, but the settler nations as a whole. Aztlan, New Afrika and the First Nations must be free, and all sovereign settler state power must be eliminated through the process of decolonization. Internationally, the resources and means of production of the First World must be internationalized to pay this debt owed to the Third World peoples and eliminate the parasitic relationship that currently exists between the two. To do this we must set about uniting all who can be united against imperialism, linking proletarian movements to the progressive anti-imperialist states and movements of the Third World in a global new democratic revolution with the explicit intention of breaking up the empire.

It has often been argued that the national minorities within the First World are insufficient in size to do this without an alliance with the petty bourgeois and labor aristocratic “working class” movements in the north amerika and europe. This is a manifestation of right-opportunism, suggesting we forgo the anti-imperialist struggle and the sacrifice the epicenter of class struggle in the world in order to immediately join forces with an opposing stratum. The oppressed nations, despite existing as a minority within the imperialist states, exist as a majority outside them. The immediate goal of Communists is to unify those two sections on the basis of a common opposition to imperialism. The global proletariat and their temporal class allies do not need the help of the labor aristocracy or imperial petty bourgeoisie in defeating imperialism. Rather, all unity between these two forces must come under the explicit direction of global new democratic revolution.

To conclude, rather than the pathetic liberal response to the right, we intend to fundamentally challenge imperialism and resolve the existing contradictions between the First and Third World. We do not want to preserve Third World immigrants in what liberals deem as “manageable numbers” for the purposes of cheap labor. Our ultimate goal is the complete destruction of imperialism and the suppression of the parasitic classes through our solidarity to the exploited masses of the world.