Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Socialism - a world without borders

Blame the foreigner. Scapegoat the immigrant. Fines for employers who hire illegal immigrants will be doubled and landlords who rent out housing to illegal immigrants could also face fines. Visitors from selected "high-risk" countries will have to pay a cash bond to deter them from overstaying. Divide and rule is an age-old tactic and it is often effective, but not always. The key is for all workers, no matter where they were born, to see who their real enemy is - the bosses and politicians.
Just how many times does the ruling class expect to delude us. One more time according to Cameron’s latest scare-mongering to divert attention away from his government’s crack-down on workers’ conditions. Cameron vilifies those who come to the UK to work as sponging off the rest of us by stealing our jobs, our houses,and our hospital beds. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has accused Cameron of increasing intolerance.
Cameron insists that there would be no absolute right to unemployment benefit yet out of 2 million migrant workers just 13,000 applied for the Jobseekers Allowance. Scarcely a flood of claimants. He also said there had been a 40% increase in the number of social lettings taken up by migrants between 2007-08 and 2011-12, glossing over the fact that it was an increase from 6.5% to 9% in the proportion of such lettings. Mark Prisk, the government housing minister, said in a parliamentary written answer in December:

"Most foreign nationals who have recently come to England are not eligible for an allocation of social housing. Broadly speaking, European Economic Area nationals are eligible if they are working, self-sufficient, or have a permanent right of residence in the UK (after five years' lawful residence in the UK). Other foreign nationals are not eligible for social housing unless they have been granted leave to enter or remain in the UK with recourse to public funds (for example, people granted refugee status or humanitarian protection). Where foreign nationals are eligible, they will have their housing needs considered on the same basis as other applicants in accordance with the local authority's allocation scheme." Doesn’t sound like council house queue-jumping to us.
Cameron also said that Britain has a "free National Health Service not a free International Health Service". This claim was based on Department of Health figures that show that in 2011-12 the NHS was owed £33m by foreign nationals for hospital treatment. The NHS collected only £21m of this and the department estimates that it was owed at least double the £33m, giving a figure of £66m. This represents 0.06% of the £104bn NHS budget. Hunt, the health secretary, said he believed foreign nationals owed the NHS at least £200m a year, or 0.2% of the NHS budget. The Department of Health said the £200m figure was "speculation" based on a report by CCI insurance, published in 2003, which estimated the cost at between £50m and £200m. Compared to the billions being passed on to private companies, some foreign owned, under the many hospital PFI agreements , it really is chump change.
To make its profits, business goes back and forth between countries freely. They demand the right to produce its products wherever it wants, to send its goods to any country it pleases, and to move its capital wherever it wishes. Yet migrant workers are harassed and persecuted and turned into criminals. The corporations already have the benefit of open borders — why shouldn’t workers too! Immigrants require the same conditions and legal protections as the entire working class — including health-care,housing,living wages, quality education, and the right to organize on the job. At the root, the problem for immigrants is capitalism, a system that exploits the poor to benefit the rich. Capitalism needs workers with no rights on both sides of the border. Members of the working class should recognise that the divisions in society created between workers of different ethnicities or nationalities by the ruling class is the means to keep each group divided to conquer all.

Governments in many countries like to maintain the idea that "we" would be "swamped" by less fortunate neighbours if we didn't have immigration restrictions; such a view implies that "our" government deserves credit for maintaining conditions that are the envy of those around us. Of course, greater economic opportunity acts as a "magnet" for people, though not to the extent imagined by those who fear being "swamped" by immigration. The reality is that there are not large numbers of people in any country who are eager to go elsewhere (except in extreme circumstances to escape war, famine or similar catastrophes). For most people, in ordinary circumstances, the desire to move from one country to another is quite limited (based on individual situations such as family connections) and as likely to operate in one direction as the other. Why don’t we hear about restriction to halt emigration? After all, those who leave the country were reared and educated at “our” expense.

Instead of falling for the Cameron line, why not ask yourself this; we live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth so why don’t we? How much longer must the price of capitalism’s failure be inflicting misery upon others? Many who oppose immigrants say they are a drain on the country's resources. They claim that there just isn't enough money for education, healthcare, etc., to go around. If that is the case, the fault does not lie with those in-coming workers but with the system of resource allocation. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." Now is the time for humanity needs to move to our next stage — not simply just corporate globalization, but peoples’ globalization, in which the needs of all will be met. We will have no use for national borders; people will not be forced to uproot their entire families from their homelands just to survive. Movement from place to place will be the free choice of free people. We deserve better than the system we live under today -- a world where no one is an “immigrant”, a socialist future. It will take a socialism to bring about the dream of one world.

Workers of the world unite!
For a world without borders!
For a world without capitalism!

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