As a migrant “caravan” makes its dangerous trek through Mexico, capitalist bosses worldwide continue to scapegoat immigrants for the failures of the profit system. With the dwindling group still hundreds of miles away from the nearest U.S. border, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to send 15,000 or more troops with permission to shoot (Military Times, 11/1). Two weeks earlier, when the migrants approached Mexico from Guatemala, Mexican cops in riot gear greeted them with pepper spray. As they suffer from hunger, illness, and drenching downpours, these Central American refugees must also fend off the bosses’ racism and rising fascism.   
In his vicious effort to divide workers, Trump followed up with a threat to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. Though it’s unlikely that the Racist-in-Chief will be able to deliver on this promise in the near future, the constant barrage of racist propaganda plays into the hands of all bosses. Whatever their internal disagreements, all capitalist rulers need to weaken working-class fightback. They all need super-profits from immigrant workers’ labor. They all promote rotten nationalist ideas.
Workers unite
Who is in the caravan? In the runup to the November 6 midterm elections, Trump played to his racist base. He warned of an “invasion” by gang members and “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners”—a conflation of racist lies about Latin and Muslim workers. The reality is very different, as the Washington Post (10/23) observed:
Women push babies in strollers next to clusters of teenage boys. At night, small families sleep on the ground next to middle-aged men smoking cigarettes. One man walks with his 3-month-old puppy named Muñeca on a red leash…. A little girl carries a stuffed koala on her head. A pregnant woman stops to take a break in the shade. A young couple kisses after a rainstorm. A 6-month-old girl wears a yellow dress that reads, “Little baby dancer.” A man wears a shirt he bought in Arizona, before being deported for the sixth time.
In contrast to the bosses’ relentless assault, the working class has rallied to the migrants’ cause. Poor Mexican workers have donated food, water, clothing, blankets. Churches and recreation centers have offered shelter for sleep. Volunteer nurses are treating their blistered feet and respiratory infections. “The responsibility of feeding, clothing and sheltering several thousand migrants has been embraced by the small Mexican towns along the route, with residents jumping into charity mode as if they are responding to a natural disaster” (Washington Post, 10/26).
Workers around the world are supporting our immigrant sisters and brothers. In February, a 63-year-old restaurant owner in Bosnia and Herzegovina shut down his small business to provide 80,000 free meals to Syrian refugees. “They’re people who are seeking refuge,” he says. “They want to work; they want to provide for their families just like us” (Al Jazeera, 10/23).
Many workers understand that national borders benefit only the bosses and the profit system’s exploitation. The working class has no borders!
Imperialism:  root cause of mass migrations
The caravan originated in Honduras on October 13, and soon attracted other migrants—seeking safety in numbers—from El Salvador and Guatemala. It takes a lot to move people to leave their homes. In this case, as noted by Pueblos sin Fronteras, the group that organized the caravan, the push came from “decades of political, economic and military intervention by the United States and of negligence, coups d’état, insecurity, corruption and impunity by Central America’s governments” (Politifact, 10/22).
In advanced finance capitalist nations, bosses are driven to expand beyond their borders to dominate markets, resources, and labor in other countries by force. This is what is known as imperialism, and it lies at the heart of the current crisis in Central America. The workers in this region have felt the imperialist boot on their neck for well over a century. In the absence of a mass working-class movement to challenge the blood-sucking imperialist bosses and the local rulers who sell out to them, the situation now is especially unbearable.
In 2009, a military coup in Honduras paved the way for the current fascist government of President Juan Orlando Hernández and skyrocketing murder and poverty rates. While U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, refused to formally recognize the coup, they maintained the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. To this day, several hundred U.S. troops remain stationed at Soto Cano Air Base, under the pretense of “fighting the drug war” and providing “humanitarian aid” (The Conversation, 10/25).
Meanwhile, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), engineered by the U.S. bosses, has devastated economies and job prospects for workers in El Salvador and Guatemala. Since the passing of CAFTA in 2005, U.S. imports to Central America have increased by more than 80 percent, or nearly $15 billion dollars (Telesur, 3/1/16). This massive influx of U.S. agricultural goods has destroyed any chance of smaller domestic farmers to compete in the market. Millions of rural workers have been uprooted. They must migrate simply to survive.
Worldwide crisis of workers on the move
The migrant crisis isn’t limited to the Americas. All over the world, workers are escaping imperialist-driven civil wars, racist persecution, indiscriminate violence, and economic exploitation. The number of refugee workers worldwide exceeds 68 million, roughly the population of France (UNHCR, 5/15).
Among those recently caught up in the bosses’ lethal chaos are workers from Syria and West and Central Africa. The capitalist crisis has brought them to the doorstep of the European Union (EU). After initially “accepting” some of these workers, the European rulers quickly showed their racist colors. They essentially closed their borders while pressuring Middle Eastern and African countries to stop migrants en route (The Guardian, 7/7/17).
As the imperialist super-powers move toward a broader global conflict, and the global economic crisis intensifies, we can expect even more violent anti-immigrant racism. It will be up to the international working class—to fight back.
The fight of the workers has no racist borders!
The bosses’ assaults against migrant workers is an attack on our entire class. The profit system survives through exploitation and racist, anti-worker violence and terror. It cannot be reformed; it must be destroyed! PLP calls on the international working class to build a communist movement to seize state power from the capitalists. We call on workers everywhere to organize to support our migrant sisters and brothers with food, shelter, and safety. And to soldiers in the U.S. military: Refuse all orders to shoot our sisters and brothers!
All workers have fundamental common interests that unite them. Only a communist revolution led by a mass, international Progressive Labor Party can end this capitalist nightmare. We call on all workers, from Central America to Syria, from South Sudan to China, to help us build this fight. Join Progressive Labor Party!  We have a world to win.