December 18 International Migrants Day

This day is dedicated to immigrants so that the inhuman face of the imperialists is hidden and the image of the capitalist exploitation, which takes place every day of the year, is muddled/ obfuscated. This is the day of the young person, who leaves Greece with a suitcase full of degrees, dreams and aspirations, and migrates to find a job anywhere, since the measures taken by the three-party government to save the capitalists from the crisis have raised the percentages of unemployed youth at 52%.

 This is the day of the refugees and migrants who drownin the icy waters of the Aegean in their effort to escape from the bombs of the imperialists.

 This is the day of the immigrant who suffers in the wretched conditions of the places of “reception and hospitality”, of the immigrant who experiences the attacks of the police, the pogroms of the Golden Dawn, of the fascist groups, of the immigrant who lives with anxiety for the everyday and future life of his/her child and family. This is the day of the immigrant who faces the anti-immigration policies of the government, the E.U. and the parties which close their eyes to the causes that lead the working class to choose the path of pursuit of a better day, and at the same time they generously support the governments and the policies that plunder the toil and sweat of the peoples in order to save the profits of the multinationals.

 The uprooting of every human being from his/her birthplace is not his/her own choice. This choice is imposed by the forces of the plutocracy that keep billions of people around the world in poverty and degradation, the forces that earn igniting/sparking wars and civil wars for the redistribution of the markets and the subjugation of the peoples. These are the forces which want immigrants as a very cheap labour force, without rights to increase their profits and to decrease the price of the labour force for the entire working class. These same forces push today the Greek workers again to migration, to escape from the evils that the working class of our country lives, because of the crisis created by its own exploiters.

 Responsible for migration are not the immigrants. The responsible are capitalism, the political forces who serve capitalism, the imperialist unions, the wars and the several interventions. Responsible for migration is the system of exploitation itself, the system of the wage slavery. These are the causes of the current migration and as long as they remain and aggravate, the more the modern slave trades of the uprooted will be increased.

 We, PAME, have repeatedly revealed and denounced to the working class the causes of the modern mass migration and refugees. We are opposed to total of the anti-immigrant policies and legislation of the E.U. and of the Greek governments, which selectively seek migrants for the needs of the capital, as a cheap and manipulated labour force. The anti- peoples, anti-immigrant policies of the previous government and of the current government of the black front against immigrants and refugees attacks equally the Greek workers.

At the same time, we struggle every day against the employers’ and state terrorism, against the exclusions from education and health care, against the exclusions from the participation in the trade unions and political activity, against the circuits and the gangs that exploit immigrants, against the racist attacks. For the class-oriented trade union movement the vast majority of the immigrants are a part of the working class, its most cruelly exploited part, and it produces wealth. We do not separate them from the rest of the working class; we do not accept the dividing lines between “legal” and “illegal” migrants created by the capital and its political employees, in Greece and the E.U.

 The International Migrants Day, the references and the dedications are hypocritical. They do not intend to minimize the pogroms, the daily arrests of immigrants, the violation of every trace of human respect and dignity. They do not intend to reveal the government’s responsibility, which allows the circuits of savage exploitation of immigrants and refugees to act. Nor do they aim at revealing the responsibility of the employers who do not pay the accrued income, they do not provide foreign workers with health insurance, who violate the working-hours, wages, working conditions, who violate everything with their only target their profit.

 For the class trade union movement, the day to honour migrants, refugees, the working class is not one and only; it is everyday, 365 days a year. We have dedicated 365 days in the struggle for the abolition of exploitation of man by man, in the struggle for the best and broadest organising of workers in the class oriented trade unions, in the struggle for the overthrow of this system that can force peoples and persons to become refugees and migrants. We have dedicated 365 days to the path of solidarity. Class unity and solidarity is our weapon against the constant pursuit of the capital and the political forces, which serve it, for cheap labour, in order for them to use our fellow immigrants as a form of pressure for the reduction of the value of the labour force, to use them as a breakwater against the demands of the labour movement. This is the only answer to the poison of racism, nationalism and xenophobia, which they throw, to divide, to disorient the workers, so that we cannot see the real causes of unemployment, oppression, exploitation. The problems caused by migration can be addressed only through the common struggle of Greeks and immigrant workers and a prerequisite for the formation of a united class consciousness is to highlight the causes of migration, to highlight why hundreds of thousands are forced to migrate, to leave their country. Our firm position is that people who receive the aggressiveness of imperialism, must remain in their countries, fight native local and foreign rulers, to get rid of the yoke of monopolies, so they can remain on their land and prosper.

 The main duty of the class oriented movement is to put into action the enlightenment and organising of all workers, with the burden set on workplaces where the Greek meets with the foreign worker, where a thorough understanding of the common interests of the Greeks and migrant workers, the essence of the immigration problem as a problem of the working class can be accomplished.

Action in workplaces is essential to break the fear, the hesitation and to make workers see that they are part of the whole working class. Any other address of the problem, as a problem exclusively that has to do with solidarity, charity or culture, does not give a way out and/ or perspective.

Through common action the policies of the EU and the political forces that serve the interests of capitalists, who depending on the situation, follow duplicitous tactics in the migration issue, are revealed and counterattacked in the most effective way.

 We call the workers of our country, the class oriented unions, the federations, the Regional Labour Centres to strengthen their struggle t\o :

• Stop state oppression and persecution of immigrants, which among other things, fuel racist attacks of the fascist “Golden Dawn” and other fascist gangs.

• Defend and broaden the rights of migrants,

• Repel the deliberate slandering that the migrants are to blame for unemployment, violence, and crime.

• Pause compliance with the EU’s mechanism of the Act “Dublin II”, which is used to hold as hostagesin our country hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose destination are other EU countries and provide them with travel documents, so that they can go safely and legally in their countries of destination,

• Offer directly asylum or another form of international protection to victims of imperialist wars and interventions (eg those from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia)

• Disconnect the renewal of residence permits from stamps and working contracts, provide unemployed with it too, simplify procedures and facilitate family reunification procedures.

• Immediately legalise all immigrants living and working in our country.

• Stop the exclusion from social rights and people’s freedoms.

• Stop the participation or facilitation by Greece in the imperialist interventions eg Syria, make the Greek troops from the imperialist missions in foreign countries return back home. Shut down the military base of Souda, Crete.