As the rising wave of anti-migrant and racist sentiments, policies, laws, police operations and right-wing violence and terror continue to sweep the global centers of capitalism, mainly the US and Europe, the people and their communities are fighting back.
Imperialist countries, led by the US, are on strategic decline as a result of their own crisis consequently diminishing monopoly capitalist profits. They pass on this crisis to the working peoples by keeping wages and benefits depressed, keeping working conditions intolerable, while further slashing social welfare to meager standards. This crisis has led also to the rise of right-wing political groups and politicians who exploit the righteous discontent and indignation of the masses to the ruling imperialist system and the resulting social instability and widening economic inequality. To mislead the working peoples on the roots of the imperialist crisis, these right-wing politicians attack migrants and immigrants as scapegoats, making good use of populism, chauvinism, xenophobia, racism, patriarchy, and anti-communism.
Trump’s war on migrants: deportations and resistance in the US
The US under the authoritarian Trump administration is leading the imperialist pack in attacking migrants and immigrants. Since becoming president, Trump has begun implementing his war on the so-called enemy “from within”, which includes not only clamping down on his critics, curtailing dissent, and further downsizing welfare benefits, but also the mass deportation of migrants and immigrants – Trump’s centerpiece campaign policy.
Since January, Trump has already deported more than 350,000 people, among these are Filipino and Latino workers and other nationalities. The raids, control, kidnapping and oftentimes illegal detention of migrants and their consequent deportations are conducted by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and police agencies.
US senators, congressmen, mayors, civil servants, workers unions, lawyers, human rights groups and church institutions have stood up to denounce these fascist Trump measures against migrants. Several US judges have ruled the deportations unlawful, while many local government officials, particularly in states and big cities, like Los Angeles, where large concentrations of migrants and immigrants live and work, have expressed anger and have supported efforts to protect migrants in their communities. They have also provided support, even sanctuary to communities, migrant groups and the families of those affected. Eleven out of 50 states in the US have declared sanctuary status, including California.
Protest actions have been spreading in many US states. Migrant-led grassroots organizations, Filipino-American communities and organizations, among them the Tanggol Migrante Movement (Defend Migrants), International Migrants Alliance, and church organizations have organized protest rallies, migrant caravans, and turned labor day celebrations into demonstrations carrying such themes as “No Kings” and “Workers over Billionaires”. Organizers have emphasized that these protests were not only about the widening economic inequality and immigrant rights but are also a fight to defend democracy, civil rights and the dignity of marginalized communities.
Fortress Europe and growing people’s resistance
In Europe, many governments have been introducing tougher anti-immigration measures, reintroducing border checks, fast-tracking deportations, and proposing harsher anti-migrant laws, while encouraging the rightist and fascist groups and movements to spread nationalist, populist and xenophobic propaganda.
But the resistance of the European people is also surging. In the Netherlands, in particular, a broad section of Dutch society has been speaking up, organizing and mobilizing to register its strongest opposition to a proposal by the right-wing Dutch government to introduce a new asylum law that not only criminalizes migration and fundamentally erodes refugee rights, but more so criminalizes support and assistance to undocumented refugees and migrants.
The resistance to the proposed law has so far not only drawn the support of hundreds of Dutch institutions, NGOs, the biggest trade unions, churches, migrant organizations, concerned individuals and progressive politicians, but also many local communities and municipalities, with some pushing for “sanctuary” areas. The central Dutch city of Utrecht, for instance, while not yet making a formal, national-level declaration as a “sanctuary city” however, actively promotes refugee integration and inclusion through progressive policies. Protest rallies spearheaded by migrant communities themselves together with the biggest trade unions were held in the country’s political capital The Hague. An organization assisting refugees, for instance, has written a petition against the new asylum laws that gathered more than 100,000 signatures, and still gathering support.
Amidst these attacks, progressive Filipino groups have denounced the Marcos Jr. administration for intensifying its labor export policy while refusing to fundamentally address the economic backwardness and political repression that force Filipinos to leave the country. Migrant Filipinos do not enjoy support from the Philippine reactionary state and remains silent in the face of blatant human rights violations committed against its nationals abroad.
In the UK and Northern Ireland, migrants led by Filipino migrant group Migrante have condemned ultra-Right groups and individuals for the latest incidents of anti-migrant violence in the last week of July, after a false news spread of a migrant stabbing three young women. Similarly, violence targeting migrants erupted in Northern Ireland in June after news of two migrant youths sexually assaulted a young girl.
Migrante International, a global alliance of Filipino migrant organizations, stressed that the recent acts of anti-migrant violence in the UK are a consequence of the rise of far-right governments and anti-migrant policies that are provoking a racist culture of hate and discrimination against migrants. “They are denying millions of migrants their rights to live and work without hate and discrimination” the alliance stressed.
Rising anti-migrant policies in Japan and Australia
In Japan, around 300 activists, Filipino and Indonesian refugees and migrants representing dozens of organizations, joined by 11 members of the Japanese Parliament, protested on September 5 outside the Japanese Parliament to oppose the “Zero Plan” policy, to denounce the worsening xenophobia, and to for call for justice for victims of racism in the country.
Conservative and right-wing political forces in the Japanese government have been pushing for mass deportations and direct discrimination against gaikokujin (foreigners) by putting in place the “Zero Illegal Aliens Plan for the Safety and Security of the People” (Zero Plan), a comprehensive policy that aims to deport all “illegal” residents in Japan by 2028. The plan reportedly includes stricter pre-entry screening for foreigners starting in 2028 and measures to tighten immigration control in the country.
In Australia, big solidarity protest actions for all migrants, refugees, Palestine and First Nation people (indigenous people in the country) were held in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney last August 31. These were participated in by Filipino activists from the Bayan-Australia. The solidarity actions served as counter-protests to the anti-migrant mobilization of neo-Nazi, racist, ultra-right and extremist groups, which was launched in different parts of Australia on the same day. These extremist groups blame migrants for the ongoing crisis in housing and infrastructure in the country, rather than the decades-long neoliberal policies and privatization in Australia.
Migrante-Australia stated that the anti-migrant “protest” in Australia manifests the intensifying global white supremacists in the US, Japan, and Europe who use migrants as scapegoats for the economic crisis, and particular issues like the housing shortage and unemployment.
According to the figures of the United Nations, an all-time record of 68.5 million people were uprooted in 2024 as a consequence of US-instigated wars, persecution and violence in the Middle East, such as in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Syria, Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia. In addition, the US proxy war in Ukraine has threatened the spread of violence in Europe and has stoked the surge of refugees.
Conclusion
The attacks against migrants and immigrants reflect the deep crisis engulfing the capitalist system – a system that thrives on the exploitation and oppression of the working people. Unable to mitigate their crises, prevent the floodgates of mass resistance from bursting, and maintain their class rule, the political chieftains of the capitalist order ignite the simple strategy of divide and rule – foreigners versus locals, colored versus whites, superior versus inferior, effectively concealing the class divide between oppressors and oppressed.
Decisively aroused, organized and mobilized, communities, peoples’ organizations and “woke” individuals and entities would eventually figure out that standing up and resisting the rise of xenophobia and racism, is but a part of the bigger struggle to end capitalist exploitation and oppression.