International Migrant Day
In the year 2000, The General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the 18 December as International Migrant Day, to “…continue trying to ensure respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants.” According to the UN, hay 272 millions of migrants in the world, a 80% more than does 20 years, but it's just him 3,5% of the world population. About 31 millions of migrants are children who, in many cases, they find themselves alone.
Beyond the statements and formalities there is nothing to celebrate and there are plenty of reasons to denounce. Migrating is an elementary human right, whether to seek better living conditions, how to flee from war, of political persecution, of torture, of misery or any democratic or social horror. Nevertheless, the European Union, The United States and other world powers exercise brutal immigration control that generates the suffering and death of people in their attempt to cross the borders..
In 2019 the IOM estimated that that year 3.160 migrants had died or disappeared around the world. Shamefully, the limits of the supposed"Advanced democracies" in the“First World countries” They are the scene of anti-human barbarism. The Mediterranean is acommon grave of African migrants, with approximately 20.000 deaths in the last seven years. The“Atlantic Route” towards the Canary Islands through which more and more improvised boats sail, with more desperate people, It is also becoming the final destination of many lives. The same thing happens with a large number of Venezuelans who shipwreck while trying to reach Trinidad and Tobago..
The European Union, far from extending a hand of solidarity to those who arrive, has been transformed into afortaleza whose gendarmes are the governments, the right and the extreme right. With different intensity and in various forms, They reject rescues on the high seas, close ports, they carry out returns of people"Hot" and criminally promote or enable xenophobic policies. European imperialism also delegates the repressive control of its own borders to third countries such as Libya, Turkey, Morocco or Niger.
With Donald Trump as president, The United States has also disputed first place in horror, like the wall on the border with Mexico where hundreds of people die a year and the brutal measures adopted against migrants, mainly coming from Latin America. Another humanitarian drama has refugees as victims. According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 70,8 millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes, of which 25,9 Millions are refugees outside the borders of their countries of origin. Just to take some example, from Syria, Afghanistan or South Sudan have fled more than 11 millions of people, some of whom live inprecarious fields, like those set up in Greece.
The people who manage to reach and stay at their destination, are subjected to brutal exploitation, They are singled out and persecuted, minors are hospitalized, democratic and social rights are curtailed. The right and ultra sectors are the main cultivators of xenophobia, while social democracy and the reformist center-left make statements and take partial measures, that do not solve any of the underlying problems. In countries like Spain, where the PSOE-UP coalition governsdeportations and the immigration law exists as tools that go against human rights. It is no coincidence that the death of Nicaraguan Eleazar Blandón has not yet been clarified in that country., who was abandoned from a van at the door of a health center in Murcia, Where he worked as a day laborer, the conditions were deplorable.. What a Fatima, a strawberry season, of Moroccan origin, has been abandoned until her death in Huelva, once his exploitative employers found out he had cancer. Not even, in the fire of a warehouse in Badalona, has caused the death of immigrants and poor people. All these calamities on the most vulnerable have deepened with the pandemic and the health crisis, economic and social.
At the same time, Immigrants organize and receive the mobilized solidarity of millions of people around the world, who demand respect for human and social rights and who maintain that“no person is illegal”. The underlying problem is the capitalist-imperialist system, with its national borders created to divide workers and peoples, to exploit and oppress them. This system must be defeated so that it does not lead humanity towards barbarism.. From the International Socialist Leaguewe support the demands of immigrants, their struggles and the full recognition of their rights; that will only come fully from the hand of a different system, justice and solidarity: socialism with democracy in a world without borders.
