Victims of Imperialist Policies Ripe For Exploitation as Refugees

 Richard Mellor GED
Afscme Local 444, retired

Here's where the bombing and terror inflicted on former colonial countries by the US, the UK and the French in particular, pays off. Hundreds of thousand fled Iraq to escape the US governments slaughter and destruction off that country. Libyans, Syrians, and economic refugees from sub Saharan Africa, countries unable to develop their economies after centuries of plunder by colonialism are all victims of colonialism and imperialism. These nation states, created from without in the interests of European capitalism, boxes built around scores, sometimes hundreds of tribal groupings, created populations forced to accept a new national identity as Nigerians or Cameroonians and so on that had very negative effects on their development.

The payoff is that people leaving their homes with all they have on their backs including a child or two are "willing" to work in conditions others avoid.  Willing, is the term often used in the mass media but I am sure they would have been as willing to stay where they were or as willing to earn more under better conditions. But we rarely, if ever create the conditions in which we make life changing choices. That's the limit of so-called free will.

The other aspect of this is that these people are hidden as the reporter says but why is that?  The employers and their state ensure it. But the trade union leaders and the so-called workers parties in these cases ignore it as well in the main. When the Greek workers refused to back down to the Troika's austerity program, Tsipras and Syriza should have waged a massive campaign throughout Europe directed at the workers organizations and appealing to the working class of Europe to join in the campaign against European capitalism and for a democratic socialist United States of Europe. And solidarity with immigrants is crucial.

We see the same situation here in the US where xenophobia and racism is directed at workers from our Southern border, countries whose economies and political life has been dominated by US imperialism and its corporations.

US policy in Latin America has been one of economic terrorism, assassination, invasion and murder. It has always considered Latin America to be its own back yard as did Europe, with Africa. These workers are leaving their homes for the same reasons those in the video have. Without international solidarity and an international working class movement, working people cannot win, cannot stop further austerity being imposed on us by the capitalist system and certainly won't be able to defend ourselves from the assault that is necessary for us to pay for the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This politician in the UK explains how we should respond to economic refugees, not with racism and xenophobia which is against our interests but with solidarity in action.

 

One can get some idea of the wealth removed from Africa by European colonialism in the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. 

The Open Veins of Latin America and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man gives a glimpse in to the US role there.