Transnational Day of Action supports immigrants

Thousands of people demonstrated in more than 30 cities across Europe and Africa on Oct. 7 in solidarity with immigrants. The activists demanded Europe-wide legalization and equal rights for all migrants, closure of all detention centers in Europe and everywhere, an unconditional end to deportations, and issuance of residency permits independent of whether the immigrant had secured a permanent job.

The protest marked the anniversary of horrible repression a year ago upon sub-Saharan workers, who had gotten as far as Morocco in their attempts to reach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla but were either forced to return to their home countries or driven into the desert. This repression took place in the framework of agreements among the regimes heading both sub-Saharan and North African countries and the European imperialist countries to which the African workers were heading.

The forces driving Africans to emigrate to Western Europe and the situation those without papers face there have many similarities to those of Mexicans and Central Americans migrating to the United States. There are almost no industrial jobs at all for young people in Africa. It is almost impossible for Africans on small farms to compete with European agribusiness exports, so they are driven off the land. Hundreds die trying to reach Europe in small boats, just as people crossing the Arizona desert in the United States die.

Indeed, one of the Oct. 7 demonstrations took place on the U.S.-Mexican border in California.

Eastern European migrants from formerly socialist countries also cross into Western Europe, often without legal papers. They often find only precarious jobs that are “off the books.” In some places their labor is absolutely necessary for the West European economy. For example, Ukrainian farm laborers are working in Portugal—one of the poorer Western European countries—because Portuguese youths have left the farming areas for the cities and no one was left to work the land.

Immigration activists at the European Social Forum in Athens last May decided on the Oct. 7 initiative, which was the third such transnational day of action. A report on many of the 30 demonstrations can be found at the No Border Network site at www.noborder.org.

This year demonstrations or meetings were set in four African countries for the first time: Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia and Benin.

In Europe there were protests in Moscow, Warsaw, Athens, Hamburg and other German cities, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Paris, London and Malaga in Spain. Most of the protests in the major cities drew between 500 and 1,000 participants, including both immigrants and West European workers in solidarity with immigrant rights.

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