September 10, 2018

A statement from FIRE — Fight for Im/migrants and Refugees Everywhere

Jobs, services and permanent residency for all migrant workers!

Hands off public assistance and benefits! Abolish ICE!

It’s the 1% who are a drain on resources — NOT MIGRANTS.

We can now add child starvation to family separation, deportation, detention, raids, passport denials and ICE/police cooperation to the growing list of attacks on migrant workers and their families.

The first week in September, news broke of a nationwide pattern of migrant families de-enrolling from Women, Infants and Children (WIC) — the government program that provides nutrition to about half of all babies born in the U.S.

That’s because word is out that the Trump administration plans to deny work status or green cards to migrants if they or their dependents — including children born in the U.S. — use public benefits.

The archaic, racist law being used to deny citizenship based on public-assistance usage is called the “public charge” rule. It is derived from the Immigration Act of 1882, passed the same year as the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The idea is that migrants who apply for citizenship must prove they won’t end up being a “burden on the state.” This threat against status is already having the effect intended by Stephen Miller, Trump’s far-right policy “advisor.” Because it’s been leaked without being formally announced, it is now spreading fear through the immigrant community.

To counter this sick strategy and the insidious propaganda behind it, the first step is to say loud and clear:  Nobody is a bigger drain on the “state” — or society in general — than the exploiting U.S. corporate class!

This month is the 10th anniversary of the $700 billion bailout — paid from the public treasury to Wall Street gamblers who crashed the economy and took people’s homes away. That amount soon ballooned to at least $12 trillion. Since then, inequality has only gotten worse.

Whether it’s billions in subsidies for the mega-rich oil companies, or Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax giveaway for billionaires, every day the super-rich loot our budgets at the expense of public needs.

They’re quiet about it now because midterm elections are coming up. But in June Congress members released a 10-year plan that would reduce Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, Medicare by $537 billion and Social Security by $4 billion. This is all to cover the plundering from the December tax cut.

Meanwhile, teachers have to strike just to get decent wages and money for textbooks. Yet the rich and the politicians allow the Pentagon to rob from public funds — $717 billion in the latest annual budget.

The architects of the attacks on migrants want people to think there is only so much of the public pie to go around and that it must be protected from migrants. But it is billionaires like Trump who are gobbling up that pie and leaving crumbs for everyone else.

How dare anyone paint migrants as a drain on resources — when it’s their labor, along with the labor of every low-wage worker in this country, that subsidizes programs like Social Security, Medicare and private health insurance. It’s outrageous that undocumented workers can’t even use the programs they help fund because of their precarious citizenship status.

Migrant workers, just like U.S.-born workers, have more than earned every right to health care, Social Security and every other program that was won through the people’s struggle. All the attacks on migrants require a vigorous fightback to push back the racists and defeat them. A win for migrants is a win for all workers.

FIRE has been in the streets, protested ICE/police collaboration, organized a solidarity delegation to the border and participated in the occupation of ICE offices.  We will continue to fight to push back this vile attack.