Suddenly, Europe and the United States are rolling out the welcome mat for refugees! Certain refugees, that is.
On February 27, the President of the European Union (EU)1 declared, “We welcome with open arms those Ukrainians who have to flee from Putin's bombs.” Ukrainian families are sympathetically profiled on Western media. Populations are being mobilized to provide food and shelter. Ukrainian refugees were allowed to cross into Poland without visas and ride trains without tickets. EU members unanimously agreed to allow Ukrainians to stay for up to three years without even filing for asylum.
On March 24, the U.S. also announced it would “welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.” Even Airbnb threw in, pledging temporary housing for 100,000.
Ukrainian refugees were welcomed into Europe, and even allowed to cross into Poland without visas and ride trains without tickets. Photo: Unterkunft-Ukraine
Yet for several decades, millions of refugees—from Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Central America, Haiti and dozens of other war-and-famine-wracked countries and regions—have been fleeing their homelands, hoping to find a way to protect and feed their children in the wealthy countries of the U.S. and Western Europe.
The response to these refugees on the part of the U.S. and Europe has been overwhelmingly hostile.
Trump referred to them as coming from “shit-hole countries” and yearned for immigrants from white, prosperous countries like Norway. He continued and escalated Obama’s family separation policy, to the point of literally tearing babies out of the arms of their mothers. Trump and Biden both barred refugees from entering the U.S. while awaiting their asylum hearings, instead condemning them to months or years in squalid and dangerous refugee camps in Mexico. Last June, Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, went to Guatemala to shut the door on people desperate to flee hunger and violence, declaring, “Do not come! ... If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”
Immigrants arrested by Border Patrol are detained in overcrowded conditions in McAllen, Texas.
Hunted by Border Patrol and vigilantes, blocked by walls, fences and high-tech surveillance, immigrants are forced to try and cross in remote and dangerous desert areas. In 2021 alone, at least 650 migrants died attempting to cross the border.
Texas: U.S. Border Patrol on horseback harass Haitian immigrants who have just crossed the Rio Grande River, September 19, 2021. Photo: AP
Immigrants corralled under a bridge because of overcrowded detention centers. El Paso, Texas, March 2019. Photo: AP
In Europe it was just as bad. This past winter, thousands of mainly Syrian immigrants who entered Poland from Belarus were forced into the freezing forests, hiding from Polish border guards, suffering from hunger and hypothermia. About a dozen died, including children.
Polish police and border guards stop migrants from the Middle East at the Poland-Belarus border, November 9, 2021. Photo: AP/Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA
According to The Conversation:
Since 2014, Serbian, Macedonian and Hungarian authorities have used batons, stun grenades and tear gas on Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi and other asylum-seekers, including children and pregnant women, at their borders.
Hungarian and Croatian authorities have used attack dogs and forced migrants to strip naked in freezing temperatures.
In Bulgaria and Hungary, armed vigilantes hunt asylum-seekers at the border.…
Police harassment and abuse of asylum-seekers—including children—from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries are common in France.
A Syrian refugee described his “welcome” to Croatia: “They [border patrols in Croatia] made us sit down and they asked me: ‘Where are you from?’ I said to him: ‘I am from Syria.’ He answered: ‘What is the matter with Syria?!’, and he started beating, beating, beating.”
And this type of treatment continues for “certain” refugees even now. International Rescue Committee reported in January that hunger is rampant in Greek refugee camps as 40 percent of them are no longer receiving food. At the beginning of March, Michela Pugliese of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor pointed out that “While European countries welcome Ukrainian refugees,” seven non-European asylum seekers “died yesterday after their boat sank in the Mediterranean.”
This was no outlier—since 2014, 23,700 migrants have been lost at sea in the Mediterranean and are presumed dead. Yet in 2019, when a ship captain rescued 53 immigrants whose boat had sunk off the coast of Libya, Italy refused to even let him dock with them for 16 days… and when they finally were allowed on land, the captain was arrested.
Imperialist globalization has intensified the flow of migrant laborers and immigrant workers from Third World countries to the rich countries. Migrants from Turkey arrive in Lesbos, Greece, March 2020. Photo: AP
And what accounts for this wildly different treatment?
A big part of it is that the Ukrainians are fleeing from a war started by Russian imperialism, a major foe of the U.S./NATO imperialists. So their stories of suffering, fear and death are valuable political capital for the U.S./NATO, casting Russia in a bad light and serving as justification for “our” imperialists to escalate their war moves against Russian imperialism.
In addition, there is the straight up white-Christian supremacist outlook that is at the foundation of U.S. and European imperialism, built as they were on the enslavement of Black people and the conquest and brutal exploitation of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Here we will let these representatives of “the democratic West” speak for themselves about why Ukrainians are treated differently:
- Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said: “These people are intelligent, they are educated people2.... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to…”
- Charlie D'Agata, CBS's foreign correspondent: “This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades... This is a relatively civilized, relatively European...”3
- Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, told BBC: “It's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed, children being killed every day by [Russian President] Putin's missiles, helicopters, and rockets.”
To be clear, Ukrainian people fleeing the war absolutely should be treated humanely, sheltered, and fed, and if they are unable to safely return home, resettled in new countries. But that should be the norm, not a rare exception extended when it suits the needs of the imperialist rulers.
Excerpt from:
Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America
Authored by Bob Avakian
Adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Article II. Section 3. H. Immigrants, Citizenship and Asylum.
1. Throughout its history and its development into an imperialist power, the United States of America depended on the exploitation, often in extreme conditions, of generations of immigrants, numbering in the many millions, who were driven to the USA as a result of oppression, poverty, war and upheaval. These immigrants–including those from Europe who came to the USA during the latter part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century, or at least several generations of them–were also subjected to discrimination and demeaning treatment, although after a period of time many of these immigrant groups were integrated into the larger “white European” population in the USA and, on the basis of expansion and conquest by U.S. imperialism, and the spoils acquired in this way, many were able to rise from the ranks of the working class and poorer sections of the population and become a part of the “American middle class,” with a more or less privileged position in relation to especially the lower and more exploited sections of the proletariat and the masses of Black and Latino people and others concentrated, and forcibly contained, within the decaying and repressive confines of the inner cities of late imperial America. At the same time, and in a heightening way through the end of the 20th and the first part of the 21st century, as a result of the domination and plunder carried out by U.S. imperialism throughout most of the Third World in particular, and the devastation and massive dislocation that resulted from and accompanied this, great numbers of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, as well as other parts of the Third World, were driven to the U.S., many of whom were not able to secure legal entry and consequently were forced to live in the shadows and remain vulnerable to extreme exploitation as well as to discrimination and to violence and terror carried out by the state and by mobs encouraged by reactionary policies, actions and statements of the government and government officials. And the ruling forces of the imperialist USA seized on this situation to further tighten control over, and unleash more terror against, these immigrants and to subject many of them to even more extreme exploitation, while whipping up a xenophobic and fascist anti-immigrant atmosphere.
The defeat and dismantling of the imperialist USA and its machinery of violent destruction and repression has radically changed this situation. In this revolutionary struggle, and its victory, large numbers of immigrants, as well as masses of Black people and other oppressed nationalities within the former imperialist USA, played a crucial role, and they can and must continue to play a vital part in the continuing transformation of society, and the world as a whole, as part of the backbone of the New Socialist Republic in North America.
2. At the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, all those residing within the territory of this Republic–with the exception of those who played a leading role in opposing the revolution which brought about the establishment of this Republic, and/or who may have been found guilty of war crimes and/or other crimes against humanity–shall have been accorded citizenship in this Republic, with the rights and responsibilities of citizens, in accordance with this Constitution. And, from that time forward, all those born within the territory of the New Socialist Republic in North America, as well as all those, wherever they are born, who have at least one parent who is a citizen of this Republic, shall be citizens of this Republic.
3. 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. From the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, anyone residing outside of the territory of this Republic who wishes to enter its territory, and any such person wishing to become a citizen, or a permanent resident, of this Republic, must follow the relevant laws and procedures which have been established on the basis of this Constitution. Anyone who applies for asylum in this Republic and, through the relevant procedures that have been established for this purpose, is found to have been persecuted, or to have a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of having taken part in just struggles against imperialist and reactionary states or other reactionary forces, or on account of scientific, artistic, or other pursuits which have brought them into conflict with reactionary powers and institutions, shall be afforded asylum in the New Socialist Republic in North America, so long as they pledge to act in compliance with the Constitution of this Republic, and do act accordingly. Provided that they do not engage in any serious violation of the laws of this Republic, people granted asylum have the right to remain within the territory of this Republic for as long as they choose to do so, and shall be accorded the same rights as citizens, with the exception that, so long as they have not become citizens, they may not vote in elections or be elected or appointed to public office. They shall have the right, after a certain period, determined by law, to become citizens of this Republic, with the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens. The citizenship process, as well as review of the asylum status of all those granted asylum, shall be carried out in accordance with the laws and procedures established for these purposes.
4. Anyone who is discovered to have entered the territory of this Republic without following the relevant laws and procedures, shall be detained and provided with a timely hearing, conducted by the government institution with the relevant responsibility, to determine the reasons for their presence within this Republic. In connection with this process, such persons may apply for asylum or seek residency on some other basis, and these requests will be considered in the light of the basic orientation and principles set forth here. If, however, evidence emerges which would indicate that the person, or persons, in question have entered the territory of this Republic not only by means that are in violation of its laws, but also with the intent to further violate the law in an effort to carry out sabotage or otherwise do harm to this Republic and its people, then criminal proceedings shall be instituted against such a person, or persons, in accordance with laws and legal procedures established on the basis of this Constitution.
(pp 60-63)