Submitted jointly  by the Illinois Communist Party and the national Political Action Commission

The Communist Party USA fights for the rights of all workers and their families, immigrant as well as non-immigrant. We support the labor movement’s position of organizing immigrant workers at their workplace. A strong labor movement, uniting immigrant and native born workers, can best protect all workers from sub-standard wages, wage theft and fear of losing their jobs if they speak up for their rights and against dangerous conditions in the work place. The fight for immigrants’ rights is not a Latino cause alone but a cause that affects all working people and immigrant families from all nations throughout the world that make the United States their home.

We oppose so-called guest worker programs. These programs super-exploit thousands of immigrant workers who are brought into the country on a temporary basis and are forced to work under near-slave conditions. Also, we strongly oppose the practice of the private prison industry and the federal, state and local jails that have been profiting from the sweated labor of thousands, incarcerated for non-violent immigration violations, sometimes before trial and conviction.

Most Americans agree that the immigration system is broken. But the Republican roadblock in Congress is preventing action to pass the needed legislation, including ease of access to U.S. citizenship. But action cannot wait. A humanitarian crisis has been created in our country by deportations that are breaking up hundreds of thousands of families in this country. We hold the Obama administration accountable for failure to use its executive powers to stop the current fast pace of arrests and deportations, as it has done for the “Dreamers” (youth brought here without papers when they were minors). DHS should reform the enforcement and removal system to stop criminalizing immigrant communities and grant work authorization to hard working immigrants.

The Communist Party agrees with the Interfaith Immigration Coalition of 42 national faith-based organizations that we must “address the factors that push migrants from their homes.” U.S. corporations and the U.S. government have promoted unfair trade agreements, investments and foreign policy which have caused the destruction of livelihoods of many thousands of workers, farmers and small producers all over the globe.

For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed 20 years ago caused a huge loss of jobs in the USA. But the damage was even worse in Mexico with 2,000,000 maize farmers forced off their farms when cheap factory-farm corn from the USA flooded Mexico. After NAFTA passed, many more were forced to immigrate to the US without documents. Only the big banks and big corporations profited from NAFTA. To avoid similar and even worse damage to workers in the U.S. and Pacific countries, the Communist Party USA supports the demand of, “No fast track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (PTT).”

Therefore be it resolved

that the CPUSA supports all campaigns for emergency action to end the mass deportations that are causing a huge humanitarian crisis and the mass breakup of families, and

Be it further resolved

that we work to end all repressive immigration policies, including the militarization of the U.S. border, “Secure Communities,” Operation Streamline, E-Verify and to end the delegation of federal responsibility for immigration to states and local law enforcement, many of them repressive, and

Be it finally resolved

that we work for the passage of non-punitive immigration reform that includes ease of access to U.S. citizenship.

The views and opinions expressed in the Convention Discussion are those of the author alone. The Communist Party is publishing these views as a service to encourage discussion and debate. Those views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Communist Party, its leading bodies or staff members. The CPUSA Constitution, Program, and all its existing policies remain in effect during the Convention discussion period and during the Convention.

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CONVENTION DISCUSSION 
30th National Convention, Communist Party USA
Chicago | June 13-15, 2014

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