Contribution by the Communist Front of Italy

The Communists of Europe against the EU’s “Pact on Migration and Asylum”

Contribution by Communist Front (Italy) - 20/10/2024

 

Dear comrades,

the issue we are discussing today is of particular importance since it represents a topic related to the question of class unity of the proletariat and on which bourgeois propaganda is pervasive and poses a non-trivial challenge to communists.

In order to critically analyze EU policies on migration management and, most recently, the EU Pact on Immigration and Asylum, we cannot refrain from reiterating that the phenomenon of migration is a direct consequence of imperialism as a phase in which the international monopolies and the states at the top of the imperialist pyramid carry out extremely aggressive exploitation of the natural, economic and even human resources of the poorer countries. The ever-increasing exploitation and impoverishment of the countries at the base of the imperialist pyramid, plundered of their natural and human resources by the transnational monopolies and, on their mandate, politically and sometimes even militarily subjugated with the complicity of the local bourgeoisie, is one of the economic causes of emigration.

These policies of exploitation often result in economic and environmental devastation in countries from which masses of proletarians are forced to flee in search of a better chance of survival far from their country of origin.

These dynamics characterize both the periods in which imperialist competition leads to a full-fledged military conflict, as a “continuation of [imperialist] policy by other means”, and the periods of “imperialist peace” which, representing at most a truce in the most open and direct competition between transnational monopolies, that does not remove the element of imperialist exploitation and, indeed, prepares new wars and new devastation in various countries.

Framing the causes of the phenomenon of emigration from poorer to richer countries in this sense allows us to immediately clarify both the nature of the measures that the European Union, as an imperialist alliance, takes in terms of managing migratory flows and the instrumentality of the declarations of principle regarding the “balance between security and human rights” that are reported both in the EU Pact on Immigration and Asylum and in the political arena at the European level or, in our most direct experience, at the Italian level.

Far from being a legislative measure aimed at responding to the human needs of those forced to emigrate to European countries, the EU Pact on Immigration and Asylum in fact establishes a presumption of guilt for the asylum seeker who is defined at the start as "irregular" and who is held in Temporary Detention Centres at the border until the moment of acceptance of the request, seeing his freedom limited even though he has not in fact committed any crime. To this we can add the fact that the "obligation of solidarity" regarding reception between EU countries, which should, on paper, encourage the movement of incoming individuals in line with their objectives and support the management activities of the countries of first landing, appears to be completely ineffective since the country of relocation can refuse the asylum seeker in exchange for the payment of a sum to the country of first landing, thus determining the permanence of the immigrant in the Temporary Detention Centres which are, ultimately, indistinguishable from concentration camps.

These elements, as well as the programming of the number of those entitled to the asylum procedure made by each State based on its own reception capacity, needs, motivations and evaluation criteria that are independent of the real condition of the applicants, are all points of the Pact that respond to a logic, anything but "humanitarian", of management of migratory flows and selection, in line with the workforce needs of the bourgeois class both at the level of individual countries and at a more general European level. This logic of management and selection is a point that we cannot but condemn as it is aimed at supporting the needs of the employers in the countries of arrival rather than the real needs of the masses who are forced to live the phenomenon of emigration.

Another point we would like to focus on is the insistence in the EU Pact on Immigration and Asylum on the issue of security. The cornerstones of the strengthening of security contained in the provision are the so-called partnerships with the countries most affected by departures or migratory flows. In this sense, the narrative on the strengthening of security appears as the simple rhetorical guise of a strengthening of the presence of EU monopolies and their penetration in the countries of departure. In fact, there is talk of cooperation aimed at countering illegal departures, but this translates in practice into a greater military presence of EU states outside their borders, a presence that is entirely functional to the protection of the interests of monopolies in this or that country. Partnerships are referred to as a tool aimed at facilitating repatriation procedures that essentially imply returning to contexts in which immigrants would be at risk of violence or death if not poverty and difficulty in survival. Or again, there is talk of collaborations in the economic field with the countries of departure or transit aimed at "countering the root causes of migration". Such statements are nothing more than a cover to strengthen the ability of imperialist countries to exploit resources or economic penetration in the poorest countries to their advantage and indeed represent, as mentioned at the beginning, one of the causes underlying the phenomenon of emigration. In this same light we can analyze, as it responds to the same logic, the Meloni-Rama agreement signed between Italy and Albania for the reception of part of the asylum seekers present in the Italian Detention Centers in structures built in the country on the other side of the Adriatic Sea.

Regardless of the real scope of measures of this kind, which very often have a echo in the media that is greatly exaggerated in relation to the proximity to the elections and in any case of the relevance in the confrontation between the bourgeois forces, as communists we must counter the narrative, supported by this type of initiative, which represents the phenomenon of immigration as a danger for the workers or the peoples of the destination countries. A conception that ultimately places the current right-wing government in direct continuity with the directions of previous governments regardless of the political forces that supported them, as evidenced by the Minniti decree issued in our country by the center-left government.

In this context, we believe that it is the duty of communists to strongly denounce the EU Treaties, not in the direction of more or less specific modifications that would not change their nature, but in the direction of a comprehensive denunciation that underlines the need for their abrogation as rules aimed at supporting the needs of capital in contempt of real support for the needs of people.

This management of immigration fits perfectly with the interests of the great imperialist powers that, by keeping the economically weaker countries under control through economic exploitation, wars or underdevelopment, favor the exodus of desperate immigrants. At the same time, bourgeois propaganda tries to mask this reality, stirring up racism and xenophobia. The narrative of the "migration crisis" serves to create fear, used to justify repressive measures not so much against immigrants, but against the class struggle as a whole, dividing the proletarian front on ethnic and cultural grounds.

The communists reject this xenophobic rhetoric. The real answer is not "Italians first", a slogan so dear to the right and waved as a cure for all issues, but class solidarity between natives and immigrants.

In reiterating this we also believe it is useful to criticize those positions that, in fact, fuel divisions between Italian workers and immigrants by attempting to cloak these propaganda in “Marxism” and identifying immigrants with the “reserve industrial army.” To identify the “reserve industrial army” with a specific group on the basis perhaps of ethnicity or geographic origin is to ignore the fact that what makes up the reserve industrial army is the whole of the unemployed or underemployed regardless of where they come from, and to lend itself to the instrumentalization of bourgeois propaganda that the worsening of their living and working conditions is to be blamed on migrants.

This assessment is justified on two factors: the first is that competition between workers existed well before the significant immigration phenomenon in Italy, and the second is that in Italy today the most combative workers' struggles are in fact mainly in the labor sectors with the highest concentration of immigrant workers.

In addition to the above, a critique of the idea, spread by some sectors of the bourgeois left, that the exodus from economically underdeveloped countries can be contained through fair trade and interstate cooperation, based on the principle of “let's help them in their own country”, a principle that is actually hypocritical and reactionary and, as we have seen, entirely compatible with immigration policies that feed and do not remove the underlying causes of migration. Promoting class solidarity cannot mean limiting oneself to a fair propaganda activity on the subject but must translate into a clear direction of action for the communists.

The political and cultural action in our class is necessary, but not sufficient. We believe that it is also part of the tasks of our organization to develop activity within the workers' and trade unions. If the aim of the class enemy is to divide the labor front, to exacerbate downward competition among workers, to unleash a "war between the poor" to maintain the profit and political domination of capital, then the task of the communists must be to restore class unity and ignite a new cycle of struggles, which sees native and immigrant workers together and demands the generalization and extension to all of rights, trade union protections, wage levels and access to services, education, health, culture, housing.