Interviewer: In addition to the mass migration triggered by war and conflict, climate chaos is a major push factor; and yet there are no real international laws or policies to address climate refugees.
How would a new communism factor in migrants and refugees?
BA: Imperialism has everything to do with the larger “refugee crisis”: the U.S. propping up brutally repressive regimes and sponsoring “death squads” in its so-called “backyard” in Central America; imperialist agribusiness and U.S.-engineered trade agreements like NAFTA ruining subsistence agriculture; U.S.-led invasions and occupations, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that have decimated and destabilized society and economy; imperialist rivalry in Syria and Libya. And now there is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, giving rise to millions of Ukrainian refugees—a war also marked by the growing involvement of the U.S. and its “allies” in arming and otherwise aiding Ukraine’s military, and the increasing danger of a direct military confrontation between the U.S./NATO and Russia, with potentially catastrophic consequences posing an existential threat to humanity.
It is projected that over the next 30 years, some 200 million “climate refugees” will be fleeing extreme weather events and ongoing environmental degradation. Some eight million people currently suffer from food insecurity in the “dry corridor” that stretches from southern Mexico through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
The imperialists have no answer to this, other than more horror: brutal apprehensions, detention camps of unspeakable misery and cruelty, family separations, border enforcement that spawns migrant smuggling rings that morph into trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation.
You are absolutely right that there are no international laws and protections that address this, that is, in any seriously humanitarian way. The laws in force are the laws of the imperialist dominators of the world: regulating and militarizing borders to safeguard imperial interests, and super-exploiting immigrants that do cross into the imperialist heartlands and are forced to “live in the shadows” without rights. It is a statement of our times that the U.S.-Mexico border and the Mediterranean have become burial grounds for migrants and refugees, that refugee camps become recruiting grounds for the global “sex trade.”
The chauvinist scapegoating, targeting, and genocidal program aimed at immigrants has been a central rallying point of the fascist movement and the Trump/Pence fascist regime in the U.S. (and similar fascist forces in other countries). The rise in the number of people uprooted from Third World countries who have emigrated into the U.S. and countries in Europe—in many cases bringing with them religious traditions and other significant cultural expressions which are different from what has been the dominant, and in some cases effectively the singular, “traditional culture”—has been seized on by fascists to promote xenophobia as a major element and driving force of growing fascist movements.
In opposition to all this, as articulated in the Constitution I have authored:
The orientation of the New Socialist Republic in North America is to welcome immigrants from all over the world who have a sincere desire to contribute to the goals and objectives of this Republic, as set forth in this Constitution and in laws and policies which are established and enacted in accordance with this Constitution. [Article II, Section 3,H]
And here, too, concrete policies are spelled out which give life to this basic orientation.
Of course, the severe and increasingly desperate conditions of masses of people who are, and increasingly will be, forced to migrate not only within countries but across the globe, cannot be solved solely by the policies and actions of any particular country, even the liberating society envisioned in this Constitution. This is another important dimension of why the fundamental orientation of the new communism, and of the socialist society it is aiming to bring into being through revolution, is internationalist, and advancing the revolutionary struggle against the rule of capitalist imperialism, and all oppressive forces, throughout the world, must be the most basic orientation of that new society. And this fundamental orientation is not, and must not be, merely proclaimed but actually given life in the practical policies and actions of revolutionary forces and the radically new and emancipating society they are fighting to bring into being. At the same time once again, revolution in this country, through the overthrow of this most powerful capitalist-imperialist ruling class, will strike a tremendous blow and provide inspiration for the billions of bitterly oppressed people in the world and all those, everywhere, who hunger for a world without the rule of exploiters and oppressors and the tremendous suffering they inflict on the masses of humanity and the existential threat their system poses to the future of humanity.