Labor Should Embrace and Defend Immigrant Workers

By Geoff Mirelowitz

In the September 10 nationally-televised presidential debate watched by 67 million people, Republican candidate Donald Trump declared, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating, the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”

This reprehensible, wild, and utterly false claim was directed primarily at Haitian workers who have moved to Springfield in the recent past. It’s an example of a political technique known as the “Big Lie.” It consists of amplifying a falsehood over and over with the intention of persuading large numbers of people that the lie is the truth.

Ohio governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, told ABC News September 15 this claim is “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”

In a September 20 New York Times opinion piece, DeWine explained again that Trump is lying. “As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance,” wrote DeWine, “I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

OPINION

Trump has used this technique before. In 2020 he launched a massive “Stop the Steal” campaign claiming he had won that year’s presidential election. He repeated that lie in the September 10 debate.

The technique can get results. “Polls from 2023 suggest that a majority of Republican voters, and around 30 percent of Americans overall, still believe the 2020 election was stolen,” reported the New York Times on September 17.

In asserting the new lie, Trump — as a Wall Street Journal article put it — blasted to the world false claims made previously by his running mate, U.S. Senator from Ohio J.D. Vance. Following the debate Vance too doubled down on the lie, insisting “he was willing ‘to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention,’” the Times reported September 15.

The lie did not originate with Vance, though he promoted it. “Over the summer,” the Journal wrote in a September 18 article, How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants – After Being Told They Weren’t True, “outside neo-Nazi groups — which specialize in exploiting local controversy to foment outrage about migrants — had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians.”

These ultra-rightists mobilized. “On Aug. 10, a group wearing ski masks and carrying swastika flags and rifles marched in Springfield,” wrote the Journal. “The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] identified them as Blood Tribe, which it describes as a growing neo-Nazi group claiming to have chapters across the U.S. and Canada.

“On Aug. 27, during the routine public-comment portion of the Springfield City Commission meeting,” the Journal continued, “a man identifying himself as a Blood Tribe member said: ‘I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.’”

Then, during the September 10 debate, as the Journal reported, “The Trump campaign blasted those rumors to the world — and kept pushing them even after they were exposed as lies. The Trump campaign continues to run hard at the controversy. Trump last Friday said he planned ‘large deportations’ from Springfield — whose Haitian community is overwhelmingly in the country legally. Trump campaign surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy plans to host a town hall in Springfield this Thursday. Vance said on Tuesday that Trump would like to visit Springfield, too, at some point.”

The facts about Springfield

Springfield, Ohio, was a city of 59,000 people in 2020. It needed more workers. Many Haitian immigrants responded to the city authorities’ quest for labor and moved there.

“The local economy boomed,” wrote the Journal. “Business owners said they were grateful to have workers eager to work long shifts and do what it took to meet production goals. New subdivisions sprung up in the cornfields outside town. New restaurants opened. The Haitian flag flew at City Hall.”

But in August 2023 a Haitian immigrant driving a minivan crashed into a school bus. Twenty children were injured and one — Aiden Clark — died. The ultra-rightists seized on this tragedy and mobilized to spread their racist demagogy, as the Journal described.

Only an hour before the presidential debate opened — already aware of how “morally bankrupt politicians” were cynically using their son’s death — Aiden Clark’s parents stood together as Nathan Clark, the deceased child’s father, addressed the Springfield City Commission.

Nathan Clark said, in part:

“This needs to stop now.

My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.

This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate.

They have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain.

They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members.

They are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.

I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies.

Sure we have our problems here in Springfield and in the U.S. But does Aiden Clark have anything to do with that?”

A 70-second video of Clark’s comments can be seen here.

Anti-immigrant demagogy: political poison to working class

The big lie about immigrants should also be answered by the main organizations of the working class, the trade unions. In the two-part article, U.S. Elections: Rightist Radicalism Needs Working Class Answer, World-Outlook pointed to recent statements by United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain:

“We need to reclaim our country’s history of militant trade unions that united workers across race, gender and nationality,” Fain explained.

“They want us to believe that corporate bosses gave workers decent wages, benefits and safer working conditions out of the goodness of their hearts. That justice and equality for people of color, for immigrants, for women and for queer communities were gifts benevolently handed down from above,” Fain continued. “A united working class is the only effective wall against the billionaire class’ race to the bottom,” he declared.

Fain also explained that “empty symbolism” is not enough. To reclaim labor’s power, “It must be through action.”

An example was set in Britain after ultra-rightists engaged in anti-immigrant riots following the death of three young girls at a dance class in Southport on August 5.

On August 7, The Guardian reported, “Thousands of anti-racism protesters gathered across England and formed human shields to protect asylum centres after police warned of unrest from more than 100 far right-led rallies.”

The labor movement can and should take the lead in answering Trump’s big lie. A review of the full text of the Trump/Harris debate reveals how central anti-immigrant demagogy is to his campaign. That demagogy is political poison to the working class. No union will survive, never mind grow and become stronger, if it does not heed Fain’s words and stand up for the rights of every single worker, especially those who are singled out for attack, as our Haitian brothers and sisters have been singled out today.

The demagogy of the big lie goes beyond words. The New York Times reported September 16 that 34 bomb threats have targeted Springfield schools recently. “The threats began last week after Donald J. Trump mentioned Springfield during the presidential debate, repeating a baseless rumor that Haitian immigrants in the city were abducting and eating household pets,” wrote the Times. “The threats have shaken the city and disrupted school for thousands of students.”

In response Governor DeWine sent Ohio state troopers to patrol Springfield’s public schools and a school district transportation depot.

Trump and Vance are extending this dangerous, racist demagogy, as the Times reported in a September 22 article, On the Trail, Trump and Vance Sharpen a Nativist, Anti-Immigrant Tone.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on September 21, Trump proclaimed, “We are going to totally stop this invasion. This invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.” In another example of the Big Lie, he added, “Every job in this country produced over the last two and a half years has gone to illegal aliens — every job.”

At a previous rally in Long Island, New York, Trump made plain exactly who he is targeting. “They’re coming from the Congo,” he said. “They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from all over the world — Asia,” Trump said. “A lot of it coming from Asia.

“What’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country,” Trump continued. “We’re not going to take it any longer. You got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot.”

The racist demagogy and the threats of violence it inspires will not be defeated by Democrats or Republicans, including those who may reject Trump’s rhetoric. The unavoidable fact is that the Biden-Harris administration has increasingly adapted to the steps to limit immigration taken by Trump when he was president and has adopted some of them.

Biden pulls from Trump’s immigration playbook in election-year twist CNN posted on its website on June 4. “Biden’s new plan to all but shut down the US border to asylum-seekers who cross the border illegally,” wrote CNN, “uses executive authority Trump once used to bar people from mostly-Muslim countries from entering the US in 2017 and also to bar most asylum-seekers in 2018.”

In addition, “The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas,” reported an October 5, 2023, Associated Press article.

Both capitalist parties portray many immigrants as a problem to be contained and exploited.

The labor movement must do the opposite.

We must welcome immigrant workers — refugees and others — to this country and into our unions. Millions of immigrants, with and without legal documentation, are part of the working class today. Our class cannot be united for effective action without them.

Mass immigration of working people to the United States is irreversible. It is caused by economic, social, political, and climate conditions that are largely the result of the policies and practices of the U.S. government and corporations — and those of other wealthy countries — in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Trump’s threats of mass deportations — strongly voiced again in the presidential debate — must be taken seriously. They are a genuine threat not only to immigrant workers but also to the solidarity of the labor movement that is so vital.

But the U.S. economy — from the fields of agribusiness to countless factories, workshops, and services in every state — cannot function without immigrant labor. The goal of the capitalist class is not to eliminate such labor but to maintain a pariah category of working people by restricting their rights and forcing them to live in fear of possible deportation. That includes denying these fellow workers the representation and protection offered by a fighting union.

The U.S. labor movement also needs immigrant workers. The entire history of the U.S. working class is based in large part on successive generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe — as well as African-Americans whose ancestors were dragged here by the horrific slave trade, and Native Americans whose ancestors were at first enslaved and later subjected to a Holocaust, a genocide against the Indians that wiped out millions.

One need only turn to the powerful strike by the International Association of Machinists that has shut down the Boeing Company today. Today many immigrant workers — Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indian, others — are among those on the picket lines. And, as is so often true, African American workers are among the most militant in this strike. The Boeing strike is no exception; it is the norm today.

The U.S. working class will only become more multinational as conditions around the world force more human beings to migrate in search of a better future. That is, in fact, the history of the world working class. The labor movement should embrace and draw strength from that.

Shawn Fain’s words bear repeating: “A united working class is the only effective wall against the billionaire class’ race to the bottom.”

Equally important is recognizing that the only language the rightists understand is that of counter-mobilization of broad forces who reject their poisonous views and dangerous actions.

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