As it was, so it is.

‘Who are the “Undesirable Aliens”?’ by Albert Deutsch from Labor Defender. Vol. 8 No. 10. November, 1932.

Edith Berkman, fearless organizer of the National Textile Workers’ Union, faces deportation because she is a militant fighter in the ranks of the working class and for that alone. For the same reason the following leaders in workers’ struggles, along with thousands of other foreign-born workers, have been ordered deported; Frank Borich, secretary of the National Miners’ Union; Vincent Kamenovitch, N.M.U. organizer; A.W. Mills, organizer of the great Hunger March on Washington last winter; Louis Bebritz, editor of the Hungarian workers’ daily, “Uj Elore”; and G. Antinoff, leader of Detroit’s unemployed.

The true meaning and direction of the deportation terror, latest weapon used by Hoover’s government in its anti-labor attacks, is still misunderstood by large sections of the American working class. In a thousand and one ways American capitalism tries to inject into the native-born worker the false impression that his interests and that of his foreign-born fellow-workers lie in opposite directions. This “alien menace” dope is also peddled out in large quantities by traitorous misleaders of labor such as William Green and Matthew Woll.

Behind this smoke-screen of lies can be plainly seen the age-old ruling class policy–Divide and Rule! It is intended to foster dissension and to disrupt the unity of the American working class. Terrorization of the foreign-born is aimed not only at keeping great masses of workers in submission and subjection; it is a weapon aimed at the very heart of the working class movement as a whole.

It is scarcely realized that fully 30% of the total population of the U.S. is made up of foreign-born and the children of foreign-born. Concentrated as they are in urban areas, and distributed for the most part in basic industries (for ex- ample, they constitute 59% of the steel workers, and 69% of the clothing workers), the foreign-born form, in large measure, the backbone of the American working class. Consequently, any attack on the foreign-born workers is of deepest concern to every native laboring man.

It should be noted that the capitalists who now vent their spleen against the foreign-born were the very ones who welcomed them to this country as a means of maintaining wages at a low level by pitting groups of workers against one another. In many instances, the industrialists actually sent agents to comb foreign countries, and to import great numbers of workers on the basis of rosy-hued pictures painted about the “Land of Liberty and Opportunity. They came to this country, expectant and enthusiastic, only find bitter disillusionment. Poverty stalked all over the so-called “Land of Promise. Welcomed at first with silk gloves, they are now faced with the mailed fist and the iron heel of capitalist oppression. The “streets paved with gold” are lined with unemployed mil lions seeking bread. Instead of plenty, they find starvation and misery. Instead of equality, they find boss inspired discrimination at every turn.

Invariably, only the lowest paying and most dangerous jobs are open to them. In many industrial centers they are deliberately segregated from the natives by the employing class in order to easily breed hatreds, thus keeping the workers divided. They are frequently given the poorest quarters and charged the highest rents in company-owned communities. (This is particularly true of Asiatic and Mexican workers.) In an increasing number of states laws exist specifying that “no alien may be employed in connection with any state, county or municipal works.” The unemployed and starving among them are often barred from sharing even the hopelessly inadequate “relief” meted out by some cities.

In several states, bills are pending that call for registration of aliens and the imposing of “certificates of identification” upon them. The portent of these outrageous acts is clear; they are intended to serve as additional weapons with which to terrorize the millions of foreign-born workers, to crush militancy among them, and to split the ranks of the workers of America. Several such bills, it is important to note, were brought before the U.S. Congress during the last session.

The culminating point in the boss class offensive against both foreign-born and native workers is the deportation terror launched by the Hoover government, which resulted in the deportation of more than 30,000 workers during the past year alone. And the “crowning glory” of this vicious boss drive against working class unity is to be found in the Dies Bill, which awaits passage in the next session of Congress. If this bill is enacted, it will hang like a sword over the head of every foreign-born worker who fights for better living conditions for his class. It is imperative that all American workers should be keenly alive to the tremendous danger that lurks behind this infamous bill. It must be fought tooth and nail by the continued organized mass protest of the working class throughout the nation. It was organized protest that prevented its passage by the last Congress. To fight all forms of discrimination against the foreign-born will be one of our major tasks during the ensuing months.

The workers must close their ranks against all attempts of the ruling class to divide them along national, as well as racial and sectional, lines. Native and foreign-born, north and south, white and Negro–one solid phalanx united against boss oppression!

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf