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| '''Migration''' is the movement of people away from their usual place of residence, either within a country or across international borders. Migration may be temporary or permanent and may occur for economic, political, familial, educational, environmental, military, or other reasons.<ref>https://www.iom.int/key-migration-terms</ref> | | '''Migration''' is the movement of people away from their usual place of residence, either within a country or across international borders. Migration may be temporary or permanent and may occur for economic, political, familial, educational, environmental, military, or other reasons.<ref>https://www.iom.int/key-migration-terms</ref> |
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| Migration includes movement in search of employment, education, housing, family reunification, or other opportunities, as well as movement resulting from [[war]], persecution, poverty, dictatorship, political instability, environmental disaster, displacement, [[colonialism]], or [[imperialism]]. These circumstances frequently overlap, and the distinction between voluntary and forced migration is not always absolute.
| | [[Imperialism]] and [[colonialism]] have been major historical causes of migration and displacement. Under [[capitalism]], migration is strongly influenced by the unequal distribution of employment, wealth, land, housing, productive development, and political power. Colonialism, imperialism, military intervention, economic dependency, and the international division of labor have historically created conditions which encourage or compel people to leave their homes while simultaneously creating demand for migrant [[labor power]] elsewhere. Migration should therefore be understood not only as a collection of individual decisions, but as a social process shaped by class relations, unequal development, colonial history, imperialism, and the structure of the capitalist world economy.<ref>{{Library citation|link=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:The_National_Question:_Decolonizing_the_Theory_of_Nationalism|quote=Imperialism has evolved and changed since Lenin's time, and one of its newer modes of appropriation, exploitation, and oppression is the forced migration of tens of millions of workers to the imperialist heartlands. This process may have been limited mainly to Ireland in the 19th century (as we discussed before), and to peripheral parts of Europe in the first years of the present century, because of the cost of long-distance transportation and the immaturity of this new phenomenon of imperialism. Lenin was certainly aware of the phenomenon and its growing importance, and he did not confuse it with the older forms of labor migration which had characterized the period of developing capitalism. In his earlier writings Lenin had indeed provided a thorough analysis of labor migration under pre-imperialist conditions, and had concluded, correctly, that its effects were generally progressive. This was capitalism's era of rapid growth; migration to areas of expanding employment and higher wages was characteristic of the period; and the advanced areas, among them the United States, were able to absorb the immigrants fully into a burgeoning labor force. The result was national assimilation. It was part of a 'break-down of all national barriers by capitalism', and was therefore 'inevitable and progressive'.25 But all this changed when capitalism entered the era of imperialism, the era of 'the oppression of nations on a new historical basis. It is clear that Lenin came to view the new era as one in which the conditions for national assimilation were disappearing, to be replaced by increased national oppression 'both in the colonies and at home'.27 One comment which he made just a few days before the October Revolution, during a discussion of the new Bolshevik party program, is particularly revealing: |
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| Under [[capitalism]], migration is strongly influenced by the unequal distribution of employment, wealth, land, housing, productive development, and political power. Colonialism, imperialism, military intervention, economic dependency, and the international division of labor have historically created conditions which encourage or compel people to leave their homes while simultaneously creating demand for migrant [[labor power]] elsewhere. Migration should therefore be understood not only as a collection of individual decisions, but as a social process shaped by class relations, unequal development, colonial history, imperialism, and the structure of the capitalist world economy.<ref>{{Library citation|link=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:The_National_Question:_Decolonizing_the_Theory_of_Nationalism|quote=Imperialism has evolved and changed since Lenin's time, and one of its newer modes of appropriation, exploitation, and oppression is the forced migration of tens of millions of workers to the imperialist heartlands. This process may have been limited mainly to Ireland in the 19th century (as we discussed before), and to peripheral parts of Europe in the first years of the present century, because of the cost of long-distance transportation and the immaturity of this new phenomenon of imperialism. Lenin was certainly aware of the phenomenon and its growing importance, and he did not confuse it with the older forms of labor migration which had characterized the period of developing capitalism. In his earlier writings Lenin had indeed provided a thorough analysis of labor migration under pre-imperialist conditions, and had concluded, correctly, that its effects were generally progressive. This was capitalism's era of rapid growth; migration to areas of expanding employment and higher wages was characteristic of the period; and the advanced areas, among them the United States, were able to absorb the immigrants fully into a burgeoning labor force. The result was national assimilation. It was part of a 'break-down of all national barriers by capitalism', and was therefore 'inevitable and progressive'.25 But all this changed when capitalism entered the era of imperialism, the era of 'the oppression of nations on a new historical basis. It is clear that Lenin came to view the new era as one in which the conditions for national assimilation were disappearing, to be replaced by increased national oppression 'both in the colonies and at home'.27 One comment which he made just a few days before the October Revolution, during a discussion of the new Bolshevik party program, is particularly revealing: | |
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| '[Comrade Sokolnikov] proposes to add the phrase "... the labor of unskilled foreign workers imported from backward countries". This addition is valuable and necessary. The exploitation of worse paid labor from backward countries is particularly characteristic of imperialism. On this exploitation rests, to a certain degree, the parasitism of rich imperialist countries which bribe a part of their workers with higher wages while shamelessly and unrestrainedly exploiting the labor of "cheap" foreign workers. The words "worse paid" should be added and also the words "and frequently deprived of rights"; for the exploiters in "civilized" countries always take advantage of the fact that the imported foreign workers have no rights.'28}}</ref> | | '[Comrade Sokolnikov] proposes to add the phrase "... the labor of unskilled foreign workers imported from backward countries". This addition is valuable and necessary. The exploitation of worse paid labor from backward countries is particularly characteristic of imperialism. On this exploitation rests, to a certain degree, the parasitism of rich imperialist countries which bribe a part of their workers with higher wages while shamelessly and unrestrainedly exploiting the labor of "cheap" foreign workers. The words "worse paid" should be added and also the words "and frequently deprived of rights"; for the exploiters in "civilized" countries always take advantage of the fact that the imported foreign workers have no rights.'28}}</ref> |
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| | As summarized in the ''[[Library:Exposition of the Principles of Juche Idea|Exposition of the Principles of Juche Idea]]'':<blockquote>“There are many people who live in alien countries, missing their own country. Why, then? This is because of colonialism.”</blockquote> |
| == Terminology == | | == Terminology == |
| Migration is a broad category encompassing several different forms of human movement. Terms such as ''migrant'', ''immigrant'', ''emigrant'', ''refugee'', ''asylum seeker'', ''internally displaced person'', ''exile'', and ''defector'' describe different aspects of a person's movement, legal status, or political circumstances. These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.<ref>https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/iml_34_glossary.pdf</ref> | | Migration is a broad category encompassing several different forms of human movement. Terms such as ''migrant'', ''immigrant'', ''emigrant'', ''refugee'', ''asylum seeker'', ''internally displaced person'', ''exile'', and ''defector'' describe different aspects of a person's movement, legal status, or political circumstances. These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.<ref>https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/iml_34_glossary.pdf</ref> |
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| * Personal or family circumstances | | * Personal or family circumstances |
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| These causes frequently overlap rather than existing independently.
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| A person categorized as an "economic migrant", for example, may be leaving unemployment or poverty produced by economic collapse, land dispossession, destruction of domestic industries, war, foreign intervention, sanctions, colonial dependency, dictatorship, or other conditions over which the individual possesses little meaningful control.
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| Likewise, a person who formally chooses to migrate may still be responding to material pressures which severely restrict the alternatives available to them. A worker who leaves their home because there are no jobs capable of sustaining themselves or their family has made a decision, but the economic circumstances producing that decision were not necessarily of their choosing.
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| To Marxists, this illustrates why the distinction between '''voluntary''' and '''forced''' migration should not always be understood as an absolute binary. Human beings make individual decisions within material conditions inherited from wider class, political, and historical relations.
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| === Dictatorship and political repression ===
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| Dictatorships and repressive states can produce migration by imprisoning, surveilling, censoring, torturing, expelling, or threatening political opponents and targeted communities.
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| People may flee military dictatorships, fascist governments, colonial regimes, apartheid systems, monarchies, liberal capitalist states, socialist states, or other political systems when they believe remaining in the country threatens their lives, freedom, livelihood, or political activity.
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| Political repression should therefore be analyzed concretely rather than being attributed only to governments belonging to a particular ideology.
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| During the twentieth century, political exiles and refugees fled regimes including [[Nazi Germany]], fascist Italy, apartheid South Africa, military dictatorships in Latin America, colonial governments, and governments in both capitalist and socialist states.
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| To Marxists, the political system, class character, foreign alliances, economic structure, and historical circumstances of a state remain necessary to explaining why repression occurs and whom it serves.
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| == Immigration ==
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| '''Immigration''' is migration viewed from the perspective of the country or territory into which a person moves.
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| The causes of immigration are therefore connected to the causes of migration more generally. People may immigrate because another country provides employment, higher wages, education, family connections, political security, healthcare, housing, or protection from conditions occurring in their country of origin.
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| Migration is sometimes described through '''push factors''' and '''pull factors'''. Push factors are circumstances which encourage or compel people to leave one place, while pull factors are circumstances which make another destination more attractive.
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| Push factors can include war, unemployment, persecution, political instability, dictatorship, poverty, environmental disaster, landlessness, sanctions, or destruction of infrastructure. Pull factors can include higher wages, employment, family connections, education, political stability, infrastructure, or greater access to public services.
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| These categories can describe immediate motivations, but to Marxists they remain incomplete unless the historical origins of those conditions are also examined.
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| A wealthy [[Imperialism|imperialist]] country may attract immigrants partly because capital, infrastructure, resources, and economic opportunities have historically accumulated there. A country subjected to colonial extraction, unequal exchange, foreign domination, economic sanctions, coups, or military intervention may simultaneously experience stronger pressures toward emigration.
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| The existence of migration from poorer countries toward wealthier capitalist states therefore does not by itself prove that capitalism produced all of the advantages available within the destination state. The historical relationship between the countries must also be examined.
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| == Mass migration ==
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| '''Mass migration''' is the large-scale movement of substantial numbers of people from one geographical area to another. The term distinguishes broad population movements from individual or small-scale migration, although there is no single universally accepted numerical threshold at which migration becomes "mass migration".
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| Mass migration may be international or internal, voluntary or forced, temporary or permanent. It can occur suddenly during war, state partition, famine, natural disaster, political collapse, or ethnic cleansing, or develop over decades through industrialization, urbanization, labor demand, colonial settlement, resource booms, or environmental change.
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| Large migration movements are therefore not inherently signs of social collapse. Some occur because people are fleeing repression or disaster, while others accompany rapid economic development, urbanization, industrial expansion, or the creation of new labor markets.
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| To Marxists, mass migration should be analyzed according to the social forces producing it rather than treated as a political category in itself. A mass movement produced by enslavement is not socially equivalent to movement toward industrial employment, and neither is equivalent to refugees fleeing war.
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| === Mass migration and capitalism ===
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| The development of industrial capitalism greatly increased the scale and speed with which populations could move.
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| Railways, steamships, industrial cities, plantation economies, mining regions, colonial transportation systems, and expanding wage labor connected populations to labor markets across much greater distances. Capitalist development could simultaneously uproot rural populations and create new centers demanding large concentrations of workers.
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| The movement of European workers across the Atlantic during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the movement of workers toward industrial cities, and migrations associated with mining and agricultural frontiers illustrate this relationship.
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| To Marxists, such migrations reveal the contradictory character of capitalist development. Capital creates new productive centers and opportunities while also concentrating land and property, displacing older livelihoods, and making workers increasingly dependent upon selling their labor power.
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| === Forced mass migration ===
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| Some of the largest population movements in history were produced through direct coercion.
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| Enslavement, colonial conquest, ethnic cleansing, war, genocide, political partition, forced resettlement, and expulsion can move millions of people without meaningful individual consent.
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| The transatlantic slave trade, the displacement surrounding the 1947 Partition of India, and mass displacement produced by modern wars illustrate forms of forced mass migration.
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| To internationalists, describing these movements only as "migration" can obscure the coercive political relationships producing them. The movement of an enslaved person and the movement of a voluntary worker are both forms of human mobility, but they are not equivalent social relations.
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| == Major historical migration periods ==
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| Human history contains repeated periods of mass movement. These migrations were produced by different combinations of labor demand, conquest, slavery, racial oppression, economic expansion, state partition, war, industrialization, and environmental change.
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| === Atlantic European migration ===
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| The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an exceptionally large movement of Europeans toward the Americas and other overseas destinations.
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| Tens of millions of Europeans left countries including Ireland, Italy, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Migration accelerated as steamship travel became cheaper and expanding industrial and agricultural economies in the Americas demanded labor.
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| Migrants sought land, industrial employment, higher wages, religious freedom, family reunification, or escape from famine and political repression.
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| This movement is frequently described as part of an '''Age of Mass Migration'''.<ref>https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2025/06/a-moving-history-ian-goldin</ref>
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| European migrants were not treated equally within destination societies. Class, nationality, religion, and racial ideology shaped their experiences, and groups later incorporated into mainstream white American identity were themselves subjected to intense nativist hostility.
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| At the same time, European migration frequently took place within settler-colonial societies built through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and alongside immigration systems that increasingly excluded Asian and other non-European populations.
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| To anti-colonialists, the relative freedom granted to European settlers therefore cannot be separated from the colonial structures into which many of them migrated.
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| === Transatlantic slave trade ===
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| The '''transatlantic slave trade''' produced one of the largest forced migrations in history.
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| Slave Voyages estimates that approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans were embarked aboard slave ships during the transatlantic trade and that approximately 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage and disembarked, principally in the Americas.<ref>https://www.slavevoyages.org/blog/-brief-overview-of-the-transatlantic-slave-trade/154</ref>
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| This movement was not immigration in the ordinary voluntary sense. Enslaved Africans were kidnapped, purchased through slave-trading systems, forcibly transported, and subjected to chattel slavery.
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| Their forced migration supplied labor to plantation and extractive economies producing sugar, cotton, tobacco, coffee, and other commodities.
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| To Marxists, the slave trade demonstrates that population movement can be directly organized around class exploitation and the accumulation of wealth. It also illustrates the historical relationship between racial ideology, colonial expansion, forced labor, and the development of Atlantic capitalism.
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| === California Gold Rush ===
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| The discovery of gold in California in 1848 produced a large international and internal migration toward the region.
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| People arrived from elsewhere in the United States and from Latin America, Europe, China, Australia, and other parts of the world. The [[California Gold Rush]] created new towns, labor markets, transportation systems, and commercial networks while accelerating settler expansion and violence against Indigenous peoples.
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| The Gold Rush also helped produce an important period of Chinese migration to the western United States. Chinese migrants worked in mining, agriculture, service industries, manufacturing, and later railroad construction.
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| To anti-colonialists, the Gold Rush illustrates how mass migration can simultaneously create economic opportunities for migrants and intensify the dispossession of populations already living on the land.
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| === Great Migration of African Americans ===
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| The '''Great Migration''' was the mass internal movement of approximately six million Black Americans from the southern United States toward cities in the North, Midwest, and West from roughly the 1910s through 1970.<ref>https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration</ref>
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| Black families left the South to escape [[Jim Crow]], racial terror, lynching, political disenfranchisement, exploitative agricultural relations, and other forms of white supremacy while seeking industrial employment, education, and greater personal freedom.
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| The First World War and later the Second World War expanded industrial labor demand in northern and western cities. Black migrants moved in large numbers to places such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Oakland.
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| The movement transformed the geography of Black America and contributed to major political and cultural developments, including the expansion of Black urban political power and the [[Harlem Renaissance]].
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| The Great Migration is especially important to the study of migration because it occurred entirely within the borders of the United States. Black southerners were not international immigrants, yet their movement reflected many of the same forces found in international migration: political repression, racial violence, labor demand, wage differences, family networks, and unequal regional development.
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| To Marxists, the Great Migration also illustrates how capitalist demand for industrial labor interacted with racial oppression. Northern employers benefited from new labor supplies while Black workers continued to face segregation, discrimination, housing exclusion, and racial violence outside the South.
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| === Partition of India ===
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| The 1947 [[Partition of India]] produced one of the largest forced population movements of the twentieth century.
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| The end of British colonial rule divided British India principally into India and Pakistan. Communal violence and fear drove Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs across the new borders.
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| UNHCR estimates that approximately 14 million people were displaced during the Partition.<ref>https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/3ebf9bab0.pdf</ref>
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| The movement was accompanied by massacres, sexual violence, loss of property, family separation, and the destruction of communities.
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| To anti-colonialists, Partition cannot be understood independently of British colonial rule, colonial political structures, communal divisions, and the hurried process through which imperial withdrawal and state partition occurred.
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| === Korean War and Korean displacement ===
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| The [[Korean War]] caused enormous internal and international displacement throughout the Korean peninsula.
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| The division of Korea following the end of [[Japanese colonialism]], the creation of rival governments, and the outbreak of war in 1950 separated families and displaced millions of civilians.
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| The United States intervened militarily on the side of South Korea under a United Nations command, while China intervened on the side of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The war devastated cities, infrastructure, agriculture, and civilian communities throughout the peninsula.
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| Postwar Korean migration to the United States developed through several pathways, including military relationships, family connections, adoption, education, and later immigration reforms.
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| To anti-imperialists, Korean migration cannot be understood without the history of Japanese colonialism, national partition, the Korean War, and the continuing military and political division of the peninsula.
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| This does not mean every Korean migrant moved because of United States policy. It means the geopolitical conditions structuring postwar Korean migration were profoundly shaped by war and foreign intervention.
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| === Postwar migration from Indochina ===
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| The end of the [[Vietnam War]] in 1975 was followed by major refugee movements from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
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| People left the region for different reasons, including fear of political retaliation, economic hardship, ethnic conflict, war, family circumstances, and the continuing consequences of decades of colonial and military conflict.
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| Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees left by sea and became widely known as the '''Vietnamese boat people'''. United States diplomatic records from the late 1970s separately described Vietnamese refugees arriving by boat and refugees from Laos and Cambodia fleeing over land.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v22/d71</ref>
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| In 1975 alone, more than 130,000 Cambodians and Vietnamese entered the United States refugee system during the immediate collapse of the former South Vietnamese government and related evacuations.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v10/d278</ref>
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| To anti-imperialists, these movements cannot be understood only as populations "fleeing communism." France had colonized Indochina, the United States conducted a massive war in Vietnam and extended bombing and military operations into Cambodia and Laos, and the region experienced subsequent wars and political upheaval.
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| At the same time, acknowledging the destructive role of United States intervention does not require denying that some refugees genuinely feared or opposed the governments that came to power after the wars.
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| A materialist account therefore examines both the conditions created by decades of imperial war and the particular reasons individual refugees gave for leaving.
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| === Urbanization and internal migration in China ===
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| Modern [[People's Republic of China|China]] has experienced one of the largest internal movements of people associated with industrialization and urbanization.
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| Hundreds of millions of people have moved, temporarily or permanently, from rural communities toward towns, manufacturing centers, and large cities as China's economy industrialized.
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| Internal migration differs from international immigration because migrants remain within the same sovereign state, but it can nevertheless transform labor markets, housing, family structures, and regional development.
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| China's household registration or ''hukou'' system has historically shaped migrant workers' access to public services and permanent urban residence.
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| To Marxists, large-scale rural-to-urban migration illustrates that mass migration is not inherently evidence of national failure. It may also accompany industrialization, rising productive capacity, urban development, and major transformations in the division of labor.
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| The social question is how the gains and burdens of that transformation are distributed among workers.
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| === Climate migration ===
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| '''Climate migration''' is a form of environmental migration in which environmental changes associated with climate change contribute significantly to movement.<ref>https://environmentalmigration.iom.int/environmental-migration</ref>
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| Climate-related migration may result from sea-level rise, drought, water scarcity, declining agricultural productivity, extreme heat, storms, flooding, or other environmental changes.
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| Much climate migration occurs within countries rather than through international border crossings. There is also no universally accepted legal category of "climate refugee" equivalent to the refugee definition established by the 1951 Refugee Convention.
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| To eco-socialists, climate migration is additionally a question of unequal responsibility. Populations contributing least to historical greenhouse-gas emissions may face some of the greatest displacement risks, while wealthy states possess greater resources for adaptation.
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| Climate migration therefore intersects with [[climate justice]], imperialism, class inequality, and demands that richer countries contribute to adaptation and loss-and-damage financing.
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| == Nativism ==
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| '''Nativism''' is a political tendency which prioritizes people regarded as native-born or belonging to the dominant national community over immigrants and portrays immigration as a threat to the nation, culture, labor market, religion, or political order.
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| Nativism has repeatedly appeared in United States history during periods of large immigration. It has targeted different groups at different times, including Irish Catholics, German immigrants, Chinese workers, Italians, Jews, Japanese immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, Latin Americans, and other populations.
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| Nativist movements frequently present conflicts produced by capitalism as conflicts between native-born and foreign-born workers.
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| To Marxists, this can divide the working class by redirecting anger over unemployment, wages, housing, or deteriorating conditions toward migrants rather than employers, landlords, and the capitalist state.
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| === Irish immigration and anti-Catholicism ===
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| Large numbers of Irish people migrated to the United States during the nineteenth century, particularly during and after the [[Great Famine]].
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| Irish immigrants were frequently poor and Catholic, characteristics which made them major targets of Protestant nativist politics.
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| The [[Know Nothing]] movement of the 1840s and 1850s organized explicitly around anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic politics. Library of Congress materials describe the Know Nothings as opposing immigrants and Catholics and portraying Irish and German newcomers as culturally and economically backward.<ref>https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/irish/religious-conflict-and-discrimination/</ref>
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| Irish Catholics were accused of loyalty to the Pope, portrayed as incapable of republican citizenship, and used as economic scapegoats during periods of insecurity.
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| Over time, Irish Americans became increasingly incorporated into mainstream white American political and social institutions.
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| This history demonstrates that the boundaries of accepted national belonging and whiteness can change. It should not, however, be used to claim that nineteenth-century anti-Irish prejudice was identical to chattel slavery or the legally enforced racial subordination imposed upon Black, Indigenous, or Asian peoples.
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| === Italian immigration ===
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| More than four million Italians arrived in the United States by the early twentieth century, with migration accelerating particularly from the 1880s through the First World War era.
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| Italian immigrants faced nativist hostility, anti-Catholic prejudice, stereotypes of criminality and racial inferiority, labor discrimination, and violence. Library of Congress materials describe a wave of "virulent prejudice and nativist hostility" directed at Italian immigrants and racial theories portraying Mediterranean peoples as inferior to northern Europeans.<ref>https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/italian/under-attack/</ref>
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| Italians were generally eligible for legal classification as white in the United States, but their social position within American ideas of whiteness was not always identical to that of the dominant Anglo-Protestant population.
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| Southern and eastern Europeans were frequently racialized as inferior European "races" by early twentieth-century nativists and immigration restrictionists.
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| To Marxists, the later incorporation of groups such as Irish and Italian Americans into a broader white identity illustrates that racial categories are historically constructed and can change alongside class, political, and national relations.
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| It also demonstrates how groups once targeted by nativism may later be incorporated into political coalitions that direct similar hostility toward newer immigrant populations.
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| == Chinese immigration and exclusion ==
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| Chinese migration occupies a central position in the history of United States immigration and racial exclusion.
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| The California Gold Rush attracted significant numbers of migrants from China, particularly from Guangdong. Chinese workers later performed essential labor in mining, agriculture, manufacturing, service industries, and railroad construction.
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| Chinese workers were welcomed when employers required their labor but became targets of racial hostility and exclusion, particularly during economic downturns.
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| The United States Department of State describes anti-Chinese politics as arising from economic and cultural tensions together with ethnic discrimination. Non-Chinese workers were encouraged to view Chinese laborers as competitors, while racist political campaigns portrayed Chinese communities as morally and culturally threatening.<ref>https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration</ref>
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| The '''Chinese Exclusion Act''' of 1882 suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers and became a major federal system of nationality-based exclusion.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/explore-agency-history/overview-of-agency-history/early-american-immigration-policies</ref>
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| Chinese exclusion demonstrates a recurring contradiction in United States immigration history: capital may recruit or exploit migrant workers while the political system simultaneously racializes, restricts, or expels them.
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| To Marxists, anti-Chinese agitation also demonstrates how employers and politicians can transform labor-market competition into racial antagonism between workers instead of challenging the capitalist relations determining wages and employment.
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| === Immigration Act of 1924 ===
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| The '''Immigration Act of 1924''', also called the '''Johnson-Reed Act''', created a national-origins quota system designed to sharply restrict immigration.
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| The quota system heavily privileged northern and western European immigration while restricting southern and eastern European migration and excluding most Asian immigrants from legal immigration.<ref>https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act</ref>
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| The later Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 retained the national-origins system. The Department of State notes that 85 percent of the available annual visas under that system went to people of northern and western European lineage.<ref>https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act</ref>
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| The explicitly discriminatory national-origins system was substantially dismantled by the Immigration and Nationality Act amendments of 1965, which established new preferences emphasizing family reunification and employment qualifications.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/stories-from-the-archives/refugee-timeline</ref>
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|
| |
| To leftists, the removal of formal racial quotas represented an important advance, but it did not eliminate class inequality, racialized enforcement, unequal passport power, or the historical differences between populations shaped by colonialism and imperialism.
| |
|
| |
| == Asian migration to the United States ==
| |
| Asian migration to the United States has been shaped by labor demand, exclusion, war, colonialism, military occupation, family formation, refugee resettlement, international adoption, education, and changes in immigration law.
| |
|
| |
| It should therefore not be described as one homogeneous migration movement.
| |
|
| |
| Early Chinese migrants arrived in large numbers during the nineteenth-century expansion of western mining, agriculture, and railroad construction. Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Indian, and other Asian migrants subsequently entered under different legal and colonial conditions.
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|
| |
| The United States then developed some of its most explicitly racial immigration restrictions against Asian populations, including Chinese exclusion, the Asiatic Barred Zone, and nationality-based exclusions.
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|
| |
| The 1965 immigration reforms helped transform these patterns by abolishing the national-origins quota system and emphasizing family reunification and employment categories. Asian immigration expanded significantly in the following decades.
| |
|
| |
| === War, occupation, and postwar Asian migration ===
| |
| Twentieth-century United States wars and military relationships in Asia also shaped migration pathways.
| |
|
| |
| The United States occupied Japan after the Second World War, intervened militarily in Korea, fought a prolonged war in Vietnam, conducted extensive bombing in Laos and Cambodia, and maintained large military forces throughout the region.
| |
|
| |
| These wars produced deaths, destruction, refugees, family separation, military marriages, adoption networks, and long-term political ties linking Asian countries to the United States.
| |
|
| |
| Postwar migration from Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos therefore developed partly within political relationships created or transformed by war.
| |
|
| |
| To anti-imperialists, it is significant that the United States later became a major destination for people from countries in which it had fought wars, conducted bombing, maintained occupations, or supported allied regimes.
| |
|
| |
| The claim should nevertheless be stated carefully. Asian migration to the United States did not occur only because the United States "destroyed" Asian countries. Immigration reform, family sponsorship, education, professional employment, refugee policy, existing communities, and individual choices were also major causes.
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|
| |
| Japan is likewise different from Korea and Indochina. The United States occupation profoundly reorganized postwar Japan, but Japan subsequently became a wealthy capitalist state and a major United States ally rather than a principal source of refugee migration to the United States.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, the important point is not that one cause explains every Asian migrant. It is that migration patterns must be placed within the actual history of empire, war, labor demand, immigration law, and unequal development.
| |
|
| |
| === Refugees from Indochina ===
| |
| Migration from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos following the wars of the twentieth century provides the clearest example of this relationship.
| |
|
| |
| The United States admitted large numbers of refugees from Indochina after 1975. Many refugees had direct political, military, or family connections to the former South Vietnamese government or the United States, while others fled later wars, economic hardship, ethnic persecution, and political conditions in the region.
| |
|
| |
| To anti-imperialists, resettlement cannot erase the preceding history of French colonialism, United States intervention, bombing, and regional war.
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|
| |
| At the same time, the suffering and political fears of refugees should not be dismissed because their migration later became useful to anti-communist narratives.
| |
|
| |
| == "Legal" and "illegal" immigration ==
| |
| Political debates in the United States frequently divide migrants into "legal immigrants" and "illegal immigrants".
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|
| |
| The distinction refers to immigration status and compliance with immigration law, but the phrase '''illegal immigrant''' is also politically contested because it can imply that a person's existence rather than a particular act or status is itself illegal.
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|
| |
| United States immigration law distinguishes among lawful permanent residents, temporary visa holders, refugees, asylees, parolees, people with pending applications, people who entered without authorization, and people who entered lawfully but later fell out of status.
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|
| |
| A person may therefore become undocumented through several different processes. Not every undocumented immigrant crossed the border without inspection.
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|
| |
| USCIS defines unlawful presence, in general, as presence in the United States without being admitted or paroled or presence beyond a period of authorized stay.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/other-resources/unlawful-presence-and-inadmissibility</ref>
| |
|
| |
| === Barriers to legal immigration ===
| |
| A common conservative argument asks why undocumented migrants do not simply "come legally" or "get in line".
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|
| |
| The argument assumes that every prospective migrant has an available legal pathway if they are willing to wait and complete paperwork.
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|
| |
| In reality, United States immigration law does not provide a universal immigration application open to anyone who wishes to move permanently to the country.
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|
| |
| Permanent immigration is largely organized through specified family relationships, employment categories, humanitarian protections, diversity visas, and a small number of other statutory routes. Each route contains eligibility rules, numerical limits, waiting periods, or sponsorship requirements.<ref>https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/how-united-states-immigration-system-works-fact-sheet/</ref>
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|
| |
| The American Immigration Council notes that for many undocumented immigrants there is no ordinary "line" in which they can simply wait to become lawful permanent residents.<ref>https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/why-dont-they-just-get-line/</ref>
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|
| |
| A poor worker without an eligible United States relative, qualifying professional sponsorship, refugee claim, or other statutory category may therefore have no ordinary pathway to permanent immigration regardless of willingness to complete paperwork.
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|
| |
| By contrast, wealthy investors may qualify for an immigration pathway through the EB-5 program by investing qualifying capital in a commercial enterprise connected to job creation.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/eb-5-immigrant-investor-program</ref>
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|
| |
| To Marxists, this contrast demonstrates the class character of international mobility. The legal system does not simply separate people willing to obey rules from people unwilling to obey them; the rules themselves determine which classes and categories of people possess realistic routes to migration.
| |
|
| |
| === Immigration law and legitimacy ===
| |
| The fact that a migration route is unlawful does not by itself establish whether the law producing that status is just.
| |
|
| |
| United States history contains immigration laws now widely recognized as discriminatory, including Chinese exclusion and the national-origins quota system.
| |
|
| |
| To socialists, legality therefore cannot replace political analysis. Laws should be evaluated according to the social relations they enforce, the rights they protect or deny, and the class and racial structures in which they operate.
| |
|
| |
| This does not mean every border regulation is automatically illegitimate or that states possess no administrative interest in regulating entry. It means the statement "it is illegal" does not by itself answer the moral or political question.
| |
|
| |
| == Immigration to the United States ==
| |
| {{See also|United States|Imperialism}}
| |
|
| |
| The [[United States]] is one of the world's major destinations for international migration. Immigration to the country has been shaped by economic demand for labor, territorial expansion, family migration, colonial and imperial relationships, refugee movements, political exile, and major international differences in wealth and development.
| |
|
| |
| American political mythology frequently describes the United States as a "nation of immigrants". Immigration, however, has never been governed by unrestricted admission.
| |
|
| |
| The state determines who may legally enter, how long they may remain, what employment they may perform, whether they can obtain permanent residence, and under what circumstances they can be detained or deported.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, the immigration system therefore does not merely regulate movement. It sorts migrants according to categories recognized as economically, politically, or socially desirable by the state.
| |
|
| |
| === Class and legal immigration ===
| |
| United States immigration policy distinguishes migrants according to family relationships, occupation, educational and professional qualifications, humanitarian status, nationality, and capital.
| |
|
| |
| Access to these pathways is not equally distributed.
| |
|
| |
| A wealthy person with advanced education, corporate sponsorship, professional credentials, investment capital, or access to specialized immigration attorneys generally possesses greater ability to navigate international migration than a poor worker displaced by economic crisis or foreign intervention.
| |
|
| |
| The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program provides a particularly visible example because qualifying investors may obtain a pathway toward lawful permanent residence through capital investment and job creation.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/about-the-eb-5-visa-classification</ref>
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, borders therefore function partly as class filters. The international mobility available to a capitalist possessing wealth differs substantially from that available to an agricultural worker, refugee, or displaced person from the Global South.
| |
|
| |
| === Labor and immigration ===
| |
| The United States economy has repeatedly relied upon immigrant labor.
| |
|
| |
| Migrants have participated extensively in agriculture, construction, transportation, manufacturing, domestic labor, food production, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and other industries.
| |
|
| |
| Capitalist immigration systems may simultaneously demand immigrant workers and restrict the rights of those workers.
| |
|
| |
| Workers without secure immigration status can be especially vulnerable to wage theft, unsafe employment, retaliation, and threats of deportation.
| |
|
| |
| To socialists, the contradiction is not that immigrant workers "take jobs" from domestic workers. The contradiction is that capital benefits from maintaining divisions between groups of workers whose material interests substantially overlap.
| |
|
| |
| == Trump and the United States immigration system ==
| |
| In January 2018, [[Donald Trump]] reportedly questioned why the United States accepted immigrants from countries he referred to as "shithole countries" during discussions involving immigration from [[Haiti]] and African states, while reportedly expressing a preference for immigrants from countries such as [[Norway]].<ref>https://www.reuters.com/article/world/trump-questions-taking-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-sources-idUSKBN1F036R/</ref>
| |
|
| |
| The remarks were widely condemned as racist, especially by liberals.
| |
|
| |
| Liberal criticism frequently treated the episode as an expression of Trump's individual racism and hostility toward American liberal norms.
| |
|
| |
| To leftists, Trump's personal racism is relevant but insufficient as an explanation.
| |
|
| |
| Trump did not invent a United States immigration system that historically divided desirable from undesirable migrants according to nationality, race, class, and political usefulness.
| |
|
| |
| The United States previously enacted explicit Asian exclusion and a national-origins quota system that overwhelmingly favored northern and western European immigration.
| |
|
| |
| Contemporary law no longer reproduces those explicit racial rules, but migrants continue to encounter radically different possibilities depending upon wealth, citizenship, nationality, professional status, employment sponsorship, family connections, and geopolitical circumstances.
| |
|
| |
| Trump's rhetoric can therefore be understood as an unusually crude expression of a much broader historical hierarchy.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, racism in immigration politics cannot be reduced to offensive statements by individual politicians. Racial hierarchy can be reproduced through institutions, policing, detention, border enforcement, labor markets, visa systems, historical inequality, and geopolitical distinctions between populations considered politically desirable or undesirable.
| |
|
| |
| == Deportation and bipartisan immigration policy ==
| |
| Mass deportation in the United States did not begin with Donald Trump.
| |
|
| |
| Both [[Republican Party|Republican]] and [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] governments have maintained institutions of border enforcement, immigration detention, deportation, and removal.
| |
|
| |
| This continuity is important to socialist criticism of liberal immigration politics.
| |
|
| |
| === Obama administration ===
| |
| [[Barack Obama]] governed from 2009 to 2017 and presided over very high levels of formal immigration removals.
| |
|
| |
| The Obama administration carried out millions of formal removals across its eight years, leading immigrant-rights activists to criticize Obama as the '''"Deporter in Chief"'''. Different totals appear depending upon whether statistics count removals, returns, expulsions, or other repatriations.
| |
|
| |
| The Obama administration also established enforcement priorities and programs that differed materially from later Trump policies, including greater prioritization of particular categories for removal.
| |
|
| |
| To leftists, recognizing those differences does not require romanticizing the Obama administration or treating mass deportation as a uniquely Republican policy.
| |
|
| |
| The relevant issue is the underlying deportation apparatus as well as the administration controlling it.
| |
|
| |
| === Second Trump administration ===
| |
| Trump returned to office on 20 January 2025 promising a major expansion of deportation.
| |
|
| |
| His second administration intensified arrests, detention, workplace enforcement, and deportation efforts.
| |
|
| |
| In January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that more than 675,000 deportations had occurred during Trump's first year back in office.<ref>https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/21/celebrating-one-year-trump-dhs-now-offering-2600-stipend-cbp-home-app-illegal</ref>
| |
|
| |
| This figure should not be confused with the total number of removals during Obama's entire eight-year presidency.
| |
|
| |
| The useful comparison is continuity and escalation: Trump intensified and broadened an enforcement apparatus that had already been developed and administered across Republican and Democratic governments.
| |
|
| |
| === Liberalism and the deportation state ===
| |
| Liberal opposition to Trump frequently emphasizes his xenophobic rhetoric, mass raids, restrictions on asylum, detention practices, and aggressive enforcement.
| |
|
| |
| These criticisms are legitimate.
| |
|
| |
| The socialist criticism is that replacing an openly reactionary Republican with a liberal Democrat does not by itself abolish the institutions through which detention and deportation occur.
| |
|
| |
| [[United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement]] was created under [[George W. Bush]], administered for eight years under Obama, continued under [[Joe Biden]], and then inherited again by Trump.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, this illustrates the distinction between an administration and the state. Presidents can substantially alter priorities, protections, enforcement intensity, and rhetoric, while institutions and legal powers survive changes in party control.
| |
|
| |
| A socialist immigration politics therefore goes beyond demanding a more polite administrator of the border regime.
| |
|
| |
| == Conservative and reactionary views ==
| |
| Conservative arguments concerning immigration vary, but commonly emphasize border sovereignty, national security, assimilation, enforcement of immigration law, labor-market competition, public spending, cultural continuity, and the distinction between lawful and unlawful immigration.
| |
|
| |
| Some conservatives support substantial legal immigration while demanding stricter enforcement against unauthorized immigration. Others advocate lower immigration levels generally.
| |
|
| |
| These arguments should not all be treated as identical to fascism or white nationalism.
| |
|
| |
| The reactionary form of anti-immigrant politics arises when migrants are portrayed as an inherently dangerous population, racial or religious outsiders are described as incapable of belonging, demographic change is presented as national replacement, or migrants are blamed collectively for crime, unemployment, housing shortages, disease, or social decline.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, such arguments frequently redirect class conflict toward nationality.
| |
|
| |
| Housing shortages are produced through land ownership, construction policy, finance, rent, speculation, and public policy rather than through an inherent conflict between native-born and immigrant workers.
| |
|
| |
| Low wages are determined through the relationship between labor and capital, including employer power and union organization, rather than by the nationality of another worker.
| |
|
| |
| Public services can become strained by rapid population change, but the socialist response is expanded public investment and planning rather than racial or national scapegoating.
| |
|
| |
| To internationalists, border administration cannot justify dehumanizing people or treating workers as enemies because they were born on opposite sides of a state boundary.
| |
|
| |
| === Great Replacement Theory ===
| |
| The claim that immigrants "take jobs" treats the number of jobs as permanently fixed and workers as competing national blocs.
| |
|
| |
| Immigration can affect particular labor markets, especially where employers deliberately use vulnerable workers to reduce wages or weaken unions.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, the responsible actor in such cases is the employer and the institutional structure that permits unequal labor rights.
| |
|
| |
| The socialist response is therefore equal labor protections, union organization, wage standards, and secure immigration status rather than forcing one group of workers into illegality or deporting them.
| |
|
| |
| === Crime and collective blame ===
| |
| Reactionary immigration politics frequently associates migrants as a group with criminality.
| |
|
| |
| Individuals who commit crimes can be held responsible for their conduct without assigning collective guilt to millions of people sharing a nationality or immigration status.
| |
|
| |
| To socialists, collective blame obscures the distinction between individual behavior and class or national identity and can legitimate discriminatory policing.
| |
|
| |
| === Cultural and demographic panic ===
| |
| Nativist movements often portray immigration as the destruction of an unchanging national culture.
| |
|
| |
| Historically, similar claims were directed at Irish Catholics, Italians, Jews, Chinese immigrants, and other groups later incorporated into American society.
| |
|
| |
| To internationalists, cultures are not static biological possessions. Languages, religions, food, music, political traditions, and social practices change through migration, class struggle, intermarriage, conflict, and exchange.
| |
|
| |
| Demographic change therefore does not itself establish national decline.
| |
|
| |
| == Liberal views ==
| |
| Liberal approaches to migration generally defend legal immigration, multiculturalism, refugee protections, and some pathway to citizenship while accepting the legitimacy of immigration enforcement and national borders.
| |
|
| |
| Liberals frequently criticize explicitly racist or xenophobic rhetoric and may support less punitive enforcement than conservatives.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, liberal immigration politics nevertheless often separates humanitarian concern at the border from the imperial and economic relationships producing migration.
| |
|
| |
| A government may condemn anti-immigrant rhetoric while continuing sanctions, military intervention, deportation, detention, or foreign policies that contribute to displacement.
| |
|
| |
| Liberal politics can also personalize structural problems.
| |
|
| |
| Trump's immigration policy may be explained primarily through Trump's racism, while similar institutions operated under Democratic governments receive less attention.
| |
|
| |
| To socialists, the difference between administrations matters, especially when one administration materially reduces or intensifies harm, but those differences should not obscure the continued existence of the border and deportation state.
| |
|
| |
| === Migration as a measure of political preference ===
| |
| A common liberal and anti-communist argument treats emigration as a referendum on political systems.
| |
|
| |
| If people leave a socialist country for a wealthy capitalist country, the migration is presented as direct proof that capitalism is preferable.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, this argument removes migration from history.
| |
|
| |
| People migrate toward richer countries because of wages, accumulated infrastructure, stronger currencies, family networks, political conditions, employment, and other material advantages.
| |
|
| |
| The distribution of those advantages cannot always be separated from colonialism, slavery, imperialism, war, unequal exchange, and the historical concentration of capital.
| |
|
| |
| A person may rationally move toward a wealthy capitalist state without that movement proving that capitalism alone created the wealth attracting them.
| |
|
| |
| Migration must therefore be explained rather than treated as its own explanation.
| |
|
| |
| == Imperialism, colonialism, and migration ==
| |
| [[Imperialism]] and [[colonialism]] have been major historical causes of migration and displacement.
| |
|
| |
| Colonial conquest reorganized land ownership, displaced populations, transformed agriculture, destroyed or subordinated local industries, moved workers between territories, imposed political borders, created plantation and mining labor systems, and integrated colonized societies into international economic structures organized around the interests of colonial powers.
| |
|
| |
| These relationships did not automatically disappear following formal independence.
| |
|
| |
| Former colonies and other countries subjected to imperial domination may continue to experience foreign corporate ownership, debt dependency, unequal exchange, resource extraction, military intervention, sanctions, political interference, or economic structures inherited from colonial rule.
| |
|
| |
| Migration from formerly colonized countries to former colonial powers therefore cannot always be separated from colonial history.
| |
|
| |
| Shared languages, transportation routes, citizenship arrangements, family networks, labor markets, and educational systems frequently developed through colonial relationships.
| |
|
| |
| As summarized in the ''[[Library:Exposition of the Principles of Juche Idea|Exposition of the Principles of Juche Idea]]'':<blockquote>“There are many people who live in alien countries, missing their own country. Why, then? This is because of colonialism.”</blockquote>To [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninists]], contemporary migration must therefore be analyzed in relation to the international structure of imperialism rather than treated merely as millions of disconnected individual choices.
| |
|
| |
| == Migration from the Global South to the Global North ==
| |
| {{See also|Global South|Global North|Imperialism}}
| |
|
| |
| Migration from the [[Global South]] toward the [[Global North]] constitutes one important component of modern international migration, although large amounts of migration also occur between countries within the Global South.
| |
|
| |
| The contemporary economic differences separating many countries of the Global North and Global South did not emerge from isolated national histories.
| |
|
| |
| European colonial powers accumulated wealth through the extraction of land, minerals, agricultural products, enslaved and coerced labor, colonial taxation, unequal trade, and the restructuring of colonized economies around metropolitan requirements.
| |
|
| |
| Colonial economies were frequently organized to export raw materials while importing higher-value manufactured products. Infrastructure often connected mines, plantations, ports, and administrative centers according to colonial requirements rather than the independent development needs of colonized populations.
| |
|
| |
| Formal [[decolonization]] ended direct colonial administration across most of the world but did not automatically eliminate these international inequalities.
| |
|
| |
| Former colonies may remain dependent upon commodity exports, foreign investment, international debt, foreign-owned corporations, imported technology, or markets controlled largely by richer capitalist states.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxists, this continuing relationship forms part of the material basis of imperialism.
| |
|
| |
| Migration may consequently follow the routes created by empire. Former colonial subjects often migrate toward former colonial powers because they share languages, family networks, transportation links, educational systems, commercial relationships, or legal institutions originally created through colonial rule.
| |
|
| |
| The question is therefore not simply why people from poorer countries migrate toward richer countries, but why such enormous inequalities between countries exist in the first place.
| |
|
| |
| == Migration within the Global South ==
| |
| The Global South should not be treated as a single homogeneous source of migrants for Europe and North America.
| |
|
| |
| Large migration systems exist within Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.
| |
|
| |
| People move between neighboring countries for employment, education, family, trade, refuge, and seasonal work. Refugees often initially enter nearby countries rather than traveling directly to the Global North.
| |
|
| |
| To anti-imperialists, recognizing South-South migration corrects the Eurocentric image in which global migration is imagined principally as a movement toward wealthy Western states.
| |
|
| |
| == United States and Western intervention ==
| |
| The [[United States]] and other Western imperialist powers have repeatedly participated in coups, covert operations, military interventions, proxy wars, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and political destabilization abroad.
| |
|
| |
| These policies have contributed to migration in numerous historical cases by producing or intensifying warfare, economic disruption, political repression, destruction of infrastructure, unemployment, displacement, and food insecurity.
| |
|
| |
| In 1954, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] organized covert action against the government of [[Jacobo Árbenz]] in [[Guatemala]], contributing to the overthrow of his government.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54Guat/intro</ref>
| |
|
| |
| The United States later conducted covert intervention against the government of [[Salvador Allende]] in [[Chile]] and supported political forces seeking to weaken his government.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/index</ref>
| |
|
| |
| During the 1980s, the United States backed right-wing governments and anti-communist armed forces in [[Central America]], including the [[Contras]] fighting the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front|Sandinista]] government in [[Nicaragua]].
| |
|
| |
| The wars in Guatemala, [[El Salvador]], and Nicaragua produced enormous population displacement. UNHCR estimates that more than two million people were displaced by Central American conflicts during this period.<ref>https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/3ebf9baf0.pdf</ref>
| |
|
| |
| The contradiction is significant to anti-imperialists. Western political movements may condemn immigration from states whose economies, governments, and social conditions were previously damaged or destabilized through Western intervention.
| |
|
| |
| People displaced by war do not cease to be consequences of that war when they eventually arrive at the borders of the state which helped wage, finance, or prolong it.
| |
|
| |
| The same principle applies more broadly to bombing campaigns, proxy conflicts, coups, sanctions, occupations, and other forms of imperialist intervention.
| |
|
| |
| This does not mean every migrant from a country subjected to intervention migrated for the same reason, nor that United States intervention explains every migration movement.
| |
|
| |
| It means immigration cannot be separated from foreign policy.
| |
|
| |
| == Cuba and migration ==
| |
| Migration between [[Cuba]] and the United States occupies a distinctive place in the history of Cold War migration.
| |
|
| |
| Cubans have migrated for numerous reasons across different periods, including political opposition, family reunification, economic opportunity, material hardship, and personal circumstances.
| |
|
| |
| Migration from Cuba should therefore neither be dismissed as entirely fabricated anti-communist propaganda nor treated as self-explanatory proof that socialism necessarily causes emigration.
| |
|
| |
| The relationship between Cuba and the United States is especially important because Cuban migration has occurred within a prolonged geopolitical conflict involving the [[Cuban Revolution]], Cold War hostility, United States sanctions, and exceptional immigration rules created specifically for Cubans.
| |
|
| |
| === Cuban migration after the revolution ===
| |
| Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, significant numbers of Cubans left the island.
| |
|
| |
| The early emigrant population included supporters and beneficiaries of the pre-revolutionary order, political opponents of the revolutionary government, professionals, business owners, former officials, and other people opposed to or displaced by revolutionary transformation.
| |
|
| |
| Later waves contained different class compositions and motivations.
| |
|
| |
| United States policy actively facilitated large-scale Cuban migration during the Cold War. State Department records report that an airlift organized by the United States and Cuba had transported more than 131,000 Cuban refugees to the United States by December 1968.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v32/d308</ref>
| |
|
| |
| Cuban emigration therefore became both an individual human movement and part of the political struggle between Washington and Havana.
| |
|
| |
| === Cuban Adjustment Act ===
| |
| The '''Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966''' created an exceptional legal pathway for qualifying Cuban natives and citizens present in the United States to seek lawful permanent residence after meeting statutory requirements.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/green-card-for-a-cuban-native-or-citizen</ref>
| |
|
| |
| The law made Cuban migration legally different from migration by many other nationalities.
| |
|
| |
| This matters when Cuban migration is described as a neutral "vote with their feet" comparison between capitalism and socialism.
| |
|
| |
| The receiving capitalist state was not a passive observer. It created special legal and political conditions under which Cuban migrants could enter, remain, and regularize their status.
| |
|
| |
| === Sanctions and material conditions ===
| |
| Cuban migration has also taken place under the long-standing [[United States embargo against Cuba]] and additional sanctions.
| |
|
| |
| This does not establish that every economic problem in Cuba is caused by sanctions. Domestic economic policy, productivity, administration, external shocks, and trade relationships also affect Cuban living standards.
| |
|
| |
| To anti-imperialists, however, a serious discussion of Cuban economic migration cannot treat United States economic restrictions as though they have no effect on the material conditions under which migration occurs.
| |
|
| |
| A government cannot impose economic pressure upon another country and then automatically interpret every person leaving economic hardship as independent proof against the targeted system.
| |
|
| |
| === Cuba and Haiti ===
| |
| The different political treatment of Cuban and Haitian migrants has also demonstrated how nationality and geopolitics shape immigration policy.
| |
|
| |
| Cubans fleeing a communist government possessed substantial Cold War propaganda value to the United States, while Haitian migrants fleeing poverty and authoritarian rule did not serve the same ideological function.
| |
|
| |
| The Cuban Adjustment Act provides a special statutory pathway for qualifying Cuban nationals without a general equivalent for Haitian migrants.<ref>https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/green-card-for-a-cuban-native-or-citizen</ref>
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|
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| This does not mean every difference between Cuban and Haitian policy is reducible to race or anti-communism. Both populations have experienced changing policies, detention, interdiction, and deportation.
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|
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| It nevertheless demonstrates that immigration policy is affected by geopolitics as well as humanitarian need.
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|
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| == Latin America, the Caribbean, and migration to the United States ==
| |
| Migration from [[Latin America]] and the [[Caribbean]] to the United States is frequently discussed in American politics as though it begins when migrants reach the southern border.
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|
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| To anti-imperialists, the history begins much earlier.
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|
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| The United States has exercised enormous economic, military, and political power throughout the Western Hemisphere.
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|
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| Interventions, occupations, coups, support for authoritarian governments, corporate domination, sanctions, unequal trade relationships, and Cold War proxy conflicts have repeatedly influenced the conditions of countries from which migrants later traveled north.
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|
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| The 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, United States support for anti-communist governments during the Central American wars, support for the Contras in Nicaragua, and interventions elsewhere form part of this history.
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|
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| To Marxist-Leninists, imperialist states cannot be understood solely as passive destinations for migration when their policies have participated in producing conditions that encourage migration.
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|
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| This does not remove the agency of migrants or mean every migrant is a refugee from United States policy.
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|
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| It means the political history connecting destination and origin matters.
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|
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| == Africa and migration ==
| |
| [[Africa]] has experienced migration throughout its history, including regional trade migration, pastoral movement, urbanization, labor migration, displacement caused by war, and movement produced by colonial economic systems.
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|
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| European colonialism dramatically reshaped African migration.
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|
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| Colonial governments imposed borders that divided existing societies, developed mines and plantations requiring large migrant labor forces, relocated populations, appropriated land, and reorganized economies around export production.
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|
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| Contemporary African migration includes large amounts of migration within Africa as well as movement toward Europe, North America, and other regions.
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|
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| Depicting African migration solely through images of Africans attempting to enter Europe reproduces a Eurocentric understanding of a much larger phenomenon.
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|
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| To anti-colonialists, migration from Africa to European states must also be situated within the colonial relationships connecting the two continents.
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|
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| == Forced migration ==
| |
| '''Forced migration''' broadly describes population movement caused or heavily influenced by circumstances which compel people to leave their homes.
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|
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| War, occupation, dictatorship, persecution, political repression, ethnic violence, land dispossession, environmental catastrophe, famine, development projects, and destruction of livelihoods may all contribute to forced displacement.
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|
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| Forced migration is broader than the legal category of refugee.
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|
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| A person displaced by war while remaining inside their country may be an internally displaced person rather than a refugee. A person escaping devastating economic conditions may likewise be constrained by material circumstances without satisfying the legal definition contained in international refugee law.
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|
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| The distinction between legal categories and material circumstances is therefore important.
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|
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| Refugee law determines particular legal protections. A materialist analysis additionally asks why the social conditions producing displacement exist in the first place.
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|
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| == Socialist states and immigration ==
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| Migration does not move exclusively from socialist countries toward capitalist countries.
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|
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| [[Socialism|Socialist states]] have also historically received immigrants, political exiles, refugees, workers, students, revolutionaries, and people fleeing persecution abroad.
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|
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| The [[Soviet Union]] accepted some foreign revolutionaries and communists fleeing political persecution. UNHCR has described Soviet refugee admissions as relatively limited while noting that refugees it did admit included revolutionaries and communists escaping persecution.<ref>https://www.unhcr.org/publications/refugees-magazine-issue-98-after-soviet-union-chilly-reception-refugees-russia</ref>
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|
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| The historical existence of immigration into the Soviet Union nevertheless contradicts the simplified Cold War image in which population movement supposedly occurred exclusively from socialism toward capitalism.
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|
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| The [[People's Republic of China]] has likewise hosted substantial refugee populations.
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|
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| Following conflicts in Indochina, approximately 300,000 former Vietnamese nationals were locally integrated in China. UNHCR described the group as one of the world's most successfully integrated refugee populations in economic terms.<ref>https://www.unhcr.org/news/vietnamese-refugees-well-settled-china-await-citizenship</ref>
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|
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| These cases do not demonstrate that every socialist immigration policy has been successful or unrestricted.
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|
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| They demonstrate that international migration cannot accurately be reduced to a one-directional process in which people universally leave socialist systems for capitalist ones.
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|
| |
| == Political interpretation of migration ==
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| Migration frequently becomes part of ideological struggles between countries and political systems.
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|
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| A person leaving one state may be described primarily as a migrant, immigrant, emigrant, refugee, or exile. A person making a broadly similar physical movement from a geopolitical adversary may instead be described principally as a '''defector''', with their departure treated as evidence against the political system they left.
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|
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| This does not mean political persecution should be dismissed.
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|
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| People genuinely flee governments because they fear imprisonment, discrimination, political violence, poverty, or other serious difficulties.
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|
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| The problem arises when the existence of migration itself is treated as sufficient evidence for a predetermined political conclusion.
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|
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| '''Migration establishes that a person moved. Explaining why they moved requires additional evidence.'''
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|
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| === Apartheid South Africa ===
| |
| [[Apartheid]] South Africa provides an important example of why migration must be interpreted according to historical circumstances rather than through simplistic political assumptions.
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|
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| Thousands of South Africans fled the apartheid regime and lived as refugees or political exiles in neighboring African countries.
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|
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| UNHCR records South African refugee populations in countries including Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana during the late apartheid period.<ref>https://www.unhcr.org/news/feature-lesotho-marks-end-era-apartheids-refugees</ref>
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|
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| Members and supporters of organizations such as the [[African National Congress]] established political structures outside South Africa after repression and banning forced parts of the liberation movement underground or into exile.
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|
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| These people are generally remembered as '''refugees''', '''exiles''', '''anti-apartheid activists''', or members of liberation movements rather than as '''South African defectors'''.
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|
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| Yet some performed an action physically comparable to people described as Cold War defectors: they left their country, crossed an international border, rejected or opposed their government, and in some cases joined organizations committed to overthrowing it.
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|
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| The distinction demonstrates how terminology can carry ideological meaning.
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|
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| Calling someone a '''defector''' emphasizes the political system or allegiance they abandoned. Calling someone an '''exile''' emphasizes separation from their homeland. Calling someone a '''refugee''' emphasizes the circumstances producing their need for protection.
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|
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| The same person may fit several of these descriptions at once.
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|
| |
| To materialists, the same standard should be applied to migration from socialist and capitalist states: departure is evidence of departure, while the reasons and political meaning require further investigation.
| |
|
| |
| === Cold War migration ===
| |
| During the [[Cold War]], migration between capitalist and socialist countries became an important element of ideological struggle.
| |
|
| |
| Western states devoted significant political attention to people leaving the Soviet Union and the socialist states of Eastern Europe.
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|
| |
| Such people were frequently described as '''escapees''' or '''defectors''', and their experiences became useful material for anti-communist political communication.
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|
| |
| The United States established the '''United States Escapee Program''' during the early 1950s for people leaving Soviet-aligned Eastern European states.
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|
| |
| Declassified United States government records show that American officials explicitly discussed the value of escapees for intelligence collection, political operations, and psychological warfare against socialist states.<ref>https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v08/d72</ref>
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|
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| This does not mean every person leaving a socialist state was dishonest or secretly employed by an intelligence agency.
| |
|
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| Nor does it mean testimony from migrants and defectors should be discarded.
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|
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| It means politically useful testimony should be subjected to the same standards of evidence and source criticism applied to other politically interested sources.
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|
| |
| === Democratic People's Republic of Korea ===
| |
| Migration from the [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]] ('''DPRK''') is commonly described in Western discourse through the language of '''defection''' and '''escape'''.
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|
| |
| People who leave the DPRK have reported different motivations, including economic hardship, family circumstances, dissatisfaction with the government, political repression, and the desire for different economic or social opportunities.
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|
| |
| A socialist analysis should not dismiss these accounts merely because the people providing them have left a socialist state.
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|
| |
| At the same time, an individual's status as a defector does not make every subsequent statement made by that person automatically accurate.
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|
| |
| The Korean peninsula must be understood historically. Korea experienced decades of Japanese colonialism, followed by national partition and the Korean War. The DPRK has also faced extensive international sanctions and continuing military confrontation, while South Korea developed under substantially different international economic and geopolitical circumstances.
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|
| |
| To Marxists, the common question of why people leave the DPRK for South Korea if socialism is preferable is therefore incomplete.
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|
| |
| Individual migration may reflect political disagreement or repression, but it may also reflect differences in wealth, family circumstances, sanctions, national division, access to international markets, or individual opportunity.
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|
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| A Marxist approach should reject both automatically dismissing testimony because the person left a socialist country and automatically accepting testimony because the person is politically useful to opponents of that country.
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|
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| Claims should instead be evaluated through independent corroboration, consistency, documentary evidence, material context, and source criticism.
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|
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| For a fuller discussion, see [[Defection]].
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|
| |
| == Internationalism and freedom of movement ==
| |
| To [[Internationalism|internationalists]], workers should not be divided according to nationality or immigration status.
| |
|
| |
| Migrants do not constitute a separate social class. Migrant workers who sell their labor power are part of the international [[proletariat]].
| |
|
| |
| A capitalist employing an immigrant worker and a capitalist employing a native-born worker occupy the same basic class position in relation to labor.
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|
| |
| Attempts to divide these workers can therefore strengthen capital.
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|
| |
| Anti-immigrant politics frequently presents migrants as competitors for jobs, wages, housing, healthcare, education, or public services.
| |
|
| |
| A Marxist analysis instead asks why access to these necessities is artificially limited despite enormous productive capacity.
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|
| |
| Housing shortages under capitalism do not originate from immigrants possessing an inherent desire to deprive native-born workers of homes. Housing is produced and distributed through property relations, land markets, private development, rent, finance, and state policy.
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|
| |
| Likewise, low wages result from the relationship between labor and capital rather than from the nationality of another worker.
| |
|
| |
| To Marxist-Leninists, international working-class solidarity therefore requires opposition both to imperialist policies which produce displacement abroad and to chauvinist politics which attack the resulting migrants at home.
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|
| |
| This principle is expressed in the slogan:<blockquote>'''Workers of the world, unite!'''</blockquote>
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|
| |
| == Borders and class ==
| |
| National borders do not affect every social class equally.
| |
|
| |
| Members of the [[bourgeoisie]] possessing substantial wealth, property, corporate connections, or powerful passports generally enjoy far greater international mobility than workers.
| |
|
| |
| A wealthy capitalist may acquire foreign real estate, residency through investment, international legal representation, foreign education, or multiple residences.
| |
|
| |
| An impoverished migrant may instead face restrictive visa systems, dangerous border crossings, detention centers, deportation, exploitation by smugglers, irregular legal status, or separation from family.
| |
|
| |
| Capitalist states may simultaneously depend upon migrant labor while politically stigmatizing the migrants performing that labor.
| |
|
| |
| This contradiction permits employers to benefit from immigrant workers while reactionary political movements direct popular anger concerning declining wages, unemployment, housing shortages, austerity, and deteriorating public services toward immigrants rather than capital.
| |
|
| |
| [[Fascism|Fascist]], chauvinist, and extreme nationalist movements have historically intensified these divisions by portraying workers belonging to different national, ethnic, racial, or citizenship groups as enemies.
| |
|
| |
| To internationalists, the alternative is not competition between national sections of the working class, but their political organization around common material interests.
| |
|
| |
| == Political terminology ==
| |
| The language surrounding migration is not politically neutral in every context.
| |
|
| |
| Different terms emphasize different aspects of the same person's circumstances:
| |
|
| |
| * '''Migrant:''' A person who moves from one place of residence to another
| |
|
| |
| * '''Immigrant:''' A person who moves into a country or territory
| |
|
| |
| * '''Emigrant:''' A person who moves away from a country or territory
| |
|
| |
| * '''Refugee:''' A person qualifying for international protection under applicable refugee law
| |
|
| |
| * '''Asylum seeker:''' A person seeking international protection whose claim has not necessarily received a final determination
| |
|
| |
| * '''Internally displaced person:''' A person forced to leave their home while remaining within their country's borders
| |
|
| |
| * '''Exile:''' A person separated from their homeland, particularly for political reasons or because returning is unsafe
| |
|
| |
| * '''Defector:''' A person who abandons political or institutional allegiance, particularly in the context of rival states or political organizations
| |
|
| |
| The same individual may legitimately fall within several of these categories simultaneously.
| |
|
| |
| Political institutions, states, governments, and media organizations may nevertheless emphasize terminology which encourages a particular interpretation of migration.
| |
|
| |
| A politically useful opponent leaving an adversarial state may be described primarily as a '''defector'''. Someone fleeing an allied government may instead be described as an '''exile''', '''refugee''', '''dissident''', or '''asylum seeker'''.
| |
|
| |
| This does not necessarily mean any of these terms are factually incorrect.
| |
|
| |
| The ideological question concerns which aspect of the person's circumstances is emphasized and which political conclusions audiences are encouraged to draw from it.
| |
|
| |
| The histories of apartheid South African exiles, Cuban refugees, Haitian migrants, and Cold War Eastern European defectors illustrate this difference.
| |
|
| |
| Terms such as ''defector'', ''refugee'', ''economic migrant'', ''illegal immigrant'', ''exile'', ''escapee'', and ''dissident'' can therefore acquire meanings beyond their basic descriptive definitions.
| |
|
| |
| A materialist understanding of migration requires examining both the conditions under which people move and the political context in which that movement is subsequently represented.
| |
|
| |
| For a detailed examination of political defection, Cold War defectors, migration from socialist states, Cuba, the DPRK, defector testimony, and the ideological use of defectors, see [[Defection]].
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|
| |
| == See also ==
| |
| [[African National Congress]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Apartheid]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Barack Obama]]
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|
| |
| [[Capitalism]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Central Intelligence Agency]]
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|
| |
| [[Climate change]]
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|
| |
| [[Colonialism]]
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|
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| [[Cuba]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Cuban Revolution]]
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|
| |
| [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]]
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|
| |
| [[Defection]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Donald Trump]]
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|
| |
| [[Fascism]]
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|
| |
| [[Global North]]
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|
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| [[Global South]]
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|
| |
| [[Harlem Renaissance]]
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|
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| [[Imperialism]]
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|
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| [[Internationalism]]
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|
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| [[Jim Crow]]
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|
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| [[Korean War]]
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|
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| [[Labor power]]
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|
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| [[Marxism]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Marxism-Leninism]]
| |
|
| |
| [[Means of production]]
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|
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| [[Proletariat]]
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|
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| [[Propaganda]]
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|
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| [[Sanctions]]
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|
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| [[Socialism]]
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|
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| [[Soviet Union]]
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|
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| [[United Nations]]
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| [[United States]]
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|
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| [[United States embargo against Cuba]]
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|
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| [[Vietnam War]]
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|
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| [[War]]
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|
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| [[Working class]]
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|
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|
| == References == | | == References == |
| <references /> | | <references /> |
