On Thursday the Supreme Court’s six reactionary justices ruled that the president can unilaterally end the humanitarian protections offered through the program known as TPS (Temporary Protected Status). Specifically, the court ruled that courts may not weigh in on an administration’s decisions to add or remove nations from the TPS list. In effect, this now allows the Trump administration to eliminate protected status for about 1.3 million refugees from the 17 nations that have previously been eligible for TPS.
Trump, who has consistently made openly racist comments about non-white immigrants, will now likely cancel the protected status refugees from as many as 13 these nations, since he already attempted to cancel their protections before earlier court decisions stopped him. Among those affected will be Haitians, Syrians, Afghans, Salvadorans, Ethiopians, Lebanese, Nicaraguan, Somali, and Sudanese and South Sudanese and more. The largest and most notable among them are the 350,000 Haitians who have settled in the U.S. since 2010 when they first gained eligibility for TPS.
Although this cancellation almost happened earlier in Trump’s second term, and although we should not be surprised that his six racist allies on the court want non-white immigrants and desperate refugees out of the U.S., the ruling still sets the stage for terrible upheaval at least hundreds of thousands of people. Many of these migrants have come with their families, bought cars and houses, started businesses, worked at jobs for years, enrolled their children in schools, and become real parts of communities. Most have been here for at least a few years, some for a decade or more. Almost none are the so-called “worst of the worst” criminals that racist politicians always use to scare us into thinking immigrants are our enemy. This ruling and Trump’s coming actions may destroy the lives of these people, removing them from stable working-class lives and condemning them to lives of enforced poverty and potential violence or starvation.
We stand with the millions of working-class migrants who make the painful decision to leave their homelands to survive and make better lives for themselves. All working people have the right to do what they have to do to survive and improve their lives. We support their human right to move to wherever they can better their condition. And we should not expect them to “respect” a border in their struggle to survive. They are not our enemies.
Because let’s be clear: our real enemies don’t respect borders. They fly over borders in their private jets. They open and close factories in many different nations. The exploit our labor in different nations. They lay people off in country, then move to another, then lay off people there. They meet with the presidents and crown-princes and capitalists of other nations. They wire their money and stock options around the world.
And then their media companies and politicians try to tell us that a Haitian or a Somali or a Muslim is our enemy. Give us a break.
Poor people struggling to survive are not our enemy!
The people we need to expel are those who have made our world the hell that it is. The only minority we should be against is the 1%.
