Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Are there “foreigners” in the U.S. working class?

Judis, who has decades of experience on the U.S. left, succeeded in setting forth a clear and concise formulation of a socialist position in favor of immigration restrictions. In doing so, he inadvertently demonstrated how completely detached that position is from reality.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

January 3, 2022

The libertarian magazine Reason ran an eye-catching headline in its August-September issue: “How Mass Immigration Stopped American Socialism.”

The article itself doesn’t do much more than reveal its authors’ ignorance about socialism and about socialist labor organizing in the early twentieth century, but it highlights a problem that has troubled U.S. socialists for more than a century. Pro-immigrant positions are natural for leftists; they have no trouble recognizing the dehumanization and the appeals to racism and xenophobia that underlie rightwing rhetoric against “open borders” and “illegal aliens.” But does socialist support for immigrants’ rights drive away U.S.-born workers?[…]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2022/01/03/are-there-foreigners-in-the-u-s-working-class/

 

Immigrants and supporters march on May Day. Photo: David Bacon

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