
January 27, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
On January 23, [French] Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau sent an announcement to all [regional authorities], tightening the conditions for foreigners entering and staying in France. Taking the place of a 2012 announcement from Manuel Valls, it will further reinforce the hunt for migrants and is in line with the xenophobic policies pursued by all governments, in the wake of the far right. Retailleau is undoubtedly dreaming of a French-style Trump, who on the other side of the Atlantic has trumpeted his intention to expel “millions” of migrants.
Exploiting makes money, and exploiting undocumented migrants, makes much more!
The Retailleau announcement will make it even more difficult for migrant workers to obtain a residency permit: the minimum period of residency in France will be increased from five to seven years. Above all, obtaining a residency permit after arriving or being detected in an irregular situation will become virtually impossible. In so-called “high-pressure” sectors, bosses will be able to sort out who will get official documents, and who will lose them as soon as the “pressure” is judged to be less intense.
The attacks on migrants, a prelude to attacks on all workers
If Trump and Retailleau have similar policies, it’s not to actually deport immigrants “by the millions.” The economies of rich countries would not function without immigrant labor, as the big bosses and the politicians who serve them are well aware. Entire sectors rely on these workers, from construction and catering to cleaning and personal assistance. On the other hand, arbitrary expulsions, which are widely publicized in the media, are designed to create a climate of terror among immigrant workers and their families: last Wednesday, the police burst into a secondary school in the suburbs of Metz (in eastern France) to snatch a schoolgirl from her classroom and expel her and her parents to Belgium, without her even being able to return home!
Beyond aligning itself with the rhetoric of the far right, this policy aims at dividing the working class. Those whom Trump, Retailleau and all the others are attacking today are the most precarious workers. Tomorrow, they will attack another category of workers, and the day after tomorrow yet another. Trump has already started by pointing the finger at American civil servants and attacking their working conditions. To attack migrant workers today is to attack all workers. It’s not immigration that’s driving down wages or increasing unemployment: as we know, it’s the bosses who set wages and lay people off!
Regularization of all illegal immigrants! Free movement of all workers!
Those who leave their country are not abandoning their families and what used to be their lives, but to flee wars – often instigated by rich countries greedy for raw materials – to flee the catastrophic consequences of global warming, to flee poverty as always. One announcement will not make them stay in the hell they want to leave behind.
Against the international government of billionaires, workers of all countries, unite!
The throngs of billionaires and business leaders who turned out for Trump’s inauguration are proof, if proof were needed, that the union of the capitalist class against the working class knows no borders. From Elon Musk to Bernard Arnault, France’s wealthiest person, they all came to bow to their new godfather… It’s this gang of ultra-rich mafiosi, not embarrassed to see one of them make the fascist salute, who are the only parasites on this earth.