France: Immigrants’ Strike Mirrors Need to ‘Smash All Borders’

PARIS, February 24 — “Everyone here is a worker who has no rights,” declared Mahamadou Doucansy, among the undocumented immigrant workers who have been striking to win “legal” status. “They have been working in France for years, paying into social security, paying taxes and not one has documents,” continued Doucansy, who has been working here in construction since October, 2001, for the minimum wage. He is one of 250 strikers occupying the premises of the Job Training Insurance Fund since February 2. They are preparing for a police attack to evict them.

All told the cops have violently removed sit-downers from 50 occupied sites during the four-month strike, but the thousands of immigrant workers are holding fast. The solidarity from other workers and students here and from abroad has helped sustain them. (See letter to CHALLENGE, 3/3.)

This strike defies the bosses’ policy of super-exploiting such workers, holding them hostage to poverty wages under threat of deportation but without whose work whole industries could not function. It brings to the fore the bosses’ anti-working class and racist attacks based on borders established by national ruling classes.

Citizen-worker support for these immigrant strikers has international political significance since it helps to raise sharply the need of workers worldwide to smash the bosses’ borders. This kind of unity is essential to prepare workers to take the only road that can free our class from capitalism exploitation, the road to communist revolution.