the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 25, 2019
Hundreds of Los Angeles high school and college students walked out of their classes to demonstrate in support of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients on November 12, the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the program. In 2017 the Trump administration terminated DACA, and the lawsuits against the termination have now reached the Supreme Court.
DACA allows some undocumented persons, who were brought to the U.S. as children, to live and work in the U.S. legally. But DACA is not the “amnesty” that right-wing commentators like to call it. While DACA can relieve some people of the immediate threat of deportation, it actually reinforces that same threat in the long run. Recipients have to renew DACA every two years, which requires that they stay on the “good side” of the authorities—especially since they have given the federal government all kinds of information about themselves!
So, companies will certainly see DACA recipients as workers who are likely to accept low pay and harsh working conditions. And that may explain the fact that, among the supporters of DACA before the Supreme Court, are some very big companies, such as Apple and Google, but also Amazon—you know, that huge, and hugely profitable, company that needs to fill thousands and thousands of warehouse jobs, for which it pays a scarcely living wage!
Corporations like to be on both sides of an issue like this—to sow divisions in the working class, while making use of the low-wage labor those divisions help reinforce.