Matters of Concern to the Polity
Fight for the Rights of All Without Division,
Hierarchy or
Privilege
  
On this May Day, one of the ways workers across the
country are defending the rights of all is by opposing the trafficking
of human persons, sanctioned by governments at all levels in the name
of
either sorting out the problem of a shortage of skilled labour or
supposedly supporting humanitarian causes such as providing work for
refugees, or migrant workers and the like. The ruling elite who control
the socialized economy and politics of the country have fashioned a
state-organized hierarchy of rights throughout society. This division
of rights is designed to perpetuate the power and privilege of the
financial oligarchy and weaken the working class in its resistance to
attacks on its well-being and security and to build the New.
The ruling elite have concocted categories of people
based on
state-determined criteria. These criteria divide the people
broadly into citizens, permanent residents, temporary workers
seeking permanent status, temporary workers with no right to seek
permanent status, guest foreign workers, foreign students with
and without the right to seek permanent status who pay huge sums
to study in Canada and have the right to work while they study,
undocumented workers in a state of legal or civil death, and
others. The division of the people into these categories allows
the ruling elite to super-exploit those accorded fewer rights. It
deprives the people of a consciousness of what is happening which,
in turn, seeks to divide and weaken the resistance of the working
class to defend all its members. To deliberately deprive people of a
collective consciousness the society is divided between those who
govern and those who are governed in the hopes of undermining the
people's movement to open society's path for progress. It is by
fighting for the rights of all and to humanize the natural and social
environment that the people prevail.
 While governments adopt and
implement anti-people, anti-worker policies, the people reject being
blamed for these policies and the claim that they are anti-immigrant or
anti-refugee. It is not immigrants and refugees who are putting
downward pressure on wages, working conditions or trampling on the
rights of others. Dividing workers into categories is a state-organized
tactic to treat workers as "things" which can be dehumanized so as to
weaken and eliminate the workers' defence organizations, super-exploit
certain sections and bring down the wages and working conditions of the
entire working class. They are forms of
paying the rich along with deregulating places of work to remove any
social responsibility for the health and safety of workers and
trampling on their right to have their own independent working class
organizations at the workplace to actively defend their working
conditions. To turn things around in their favour, the workers'
movement must not lose sight of the importance of the struggle to build
the New where the rights of all are recognized by virtue of being human
and guaranteed within a new constitution and modern forms of governance.
The ruling elite have vast experience in dividing the
people
and using various political and social categories to their
advantage. Even a cursory review of immigration since the 19th
century shows how tapping the international labour market and
bringing migrants to Canada with variable rights serves the
ruling elite both economically and politically.[1]
Imperialist globalization has now created a reservoir of
hundreds of millions of migrants without legal or civil status in
any country with many living in refugee camps. This pool of
potential vulnerable immigrants within the global labour market
is swelled enormously with millions more desperate for work and a
future because of the violence and anarchy the big powers have
unleashed on their beleaguered countries.
Canada, Quebec, the provinces and territories have
devised an
array of programs to tap into this international labour market
and to bring workers to the country within a hierarchy of
variable rights. The various categories have in common denying migrant
workers and their family members their rights as equal
members of the society and polity once living and working in the
country.
The numbers within the categories are substantial and
reveal
the true soul of the ruling elite as undemocratic exploiters who
view working people as means to defend and increase the private
social wealth of those who own and control the socialized
economy. The threat of expulsion and deportation hangs over the
head of all migrants in degrees from permanent residents to
temporary workers and students, and those classified as
undocumented.
During any given year, over 300,000 immigrants are
brought into
Canada as potential or actual permanent residents said to have
the possibility of becoming citizens. The total number of
permanent residents is said to be in the millions at any time.
This pool of workers and their families is swept up into the
socialized economy in one way or another. During the same year,
over 200,000 migrants are accepted as temporary workers
classified as non-permanent residents within various programs,
with little or no chance to become permanent residents and
citizens and who must leave after a certain time to return again
if chosen or stay and become undocumented. Statistics Canada puts
the total of non-permanent residents at just under one million in
any given year. No official number of undocumented workers exists,
with estimates ranging from 200,000 up to half a million at any
given time.[2]
Added to
this are thousands of others seeking refuge from violence and
anarchy who may or may not be accepted as immigrants. In 2017,
44,000 refugees were accepted as permanent residents. Hundreds of
thousands more come to Canada as students paying large sums of
money to do so. Some are allowed to work in various ways during
their period of studies with a certain number allowed to apply
for permanent residency.
 The state-organized
negation of rights of migrants opens the
door for corruption and becomes the basis for human trafficking.
The Globe and Mail may run horror stories and shed
crocodile tears for the suffering of many migrants at the hands
of human traffickers but the newspaper does not delve into the
basis for this corruption in the state-organized denial of rights
and the legal and constitutional order defending the privilege
and alleged property rights of the ruling class.[3] Just
as trafficking in African
slaves would not have existed without state-organized racist
chattel slavery in the United States so too human trafficking
into Canada can only exist under the aegis of a state-organized
denial of migrant worker rights where much of the immigration
process itself has been privatized and abuse goes unpunished.
The foundation of the division of working people into a
hierarchy of rights is the basic class division in Canada between
those who own and control the productive forces and those who
sell their capacity to work to acquire their living. The rights
and privilege of those who own and control the productive forces
and have amassed great social wealth are guaranteed under the
right of property. So-called property right exists in
contradiction with human rights and gives those with social
wealth and positions of control of the socialized economy
dominant rights and privilege as crudely revealed in the
SNC-Lavalin affair, amongst the many other examples. The power of
property right and class privilege is demonstrated in practice on
a daily basis with state-organized attacks on working people and
forms the basic constitutional and governing theory and practice
of the ruling financial oligarchy.
The working class takes up the social responsibility to
itself
and society to put the full force of its organized power to
defend the rights of all in the present and to build the New
where the rights and well-being of all are guaranteed without
exception or division. In the here and now, on the occasion of
May Day 2019, let the workers declare that all programs that
limit the rights of migrants who have entered Canada to live and
work must be declared null and void. If the ruling elite who
control the productive forces want migrants to come and work for
them, they must not in any way deprive them of their human rights
once here.
Our Security Lies in the Fight for the
Rights of All!
Blame the Rich and Not the People for Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Worker
Policies and Laws!
Notes
1. "150
years
of
immigration
in
Canada," Statistics Canada, modified May 17,
2018.
2. "Guest
Worker Programs: Canada," Law
Library of Congress, last updated July 30,
2015.
3. "False promises: Foreign
workers are
falling prey to a sprawling web of labour trafficking in Canada," Globe
and
Mail, April 5, 2019.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number
15 - April 27, 2019
Article Link:
Fight
for
the
Rights of All Without Division, Hierarchy or Privilege
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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