December 18, has been designated by the United Nations as International Migrants Day, a day to remember the fate of millions of displaced people and migrants across the world, whose numbers continue to rise year after year. On this day, governments, international institutions, and analysts speak about the causes and consequences of migration, but they usually conceal the most important truth: that a large share of today’s migration is the direct product of the global capitalist system, warmongering policies, colonialism, and social inequality. The very governments that now complain about waves of migrants are themselves the main architects of this situation.
Poverty, unemployment, hunger, disease, political repression, war, environmental crises, shortages of water and food, insecurity, and violence on the one hand, and the hope of finding work and better income, access to education and healthcare, personal safety, political and social freedoms, and the possibility of building a more humane life on the other, are among the primary drivers of migration. A large portion of today’s global migration especially from the Middle East and Africa is forced migration. That is, people do not migrate out of free choice, but to escape war, repression, poverty, and death, embarking on deadly journeys.
The Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is a document signed by more than 140 governments. It defines a refugee as a person who has been forced to leave their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on political opinion, religion, race, war, or disaster. The convention emphasizes that no refugee should be returned to a country where their life or freedom is at risk. Yet in practice, the very states that have signed this convention systematically violate its principles by enacting restrictive laws and anti-refugee policies. Leaders of wealthy capitalist countries especially in Europe, North America, and Australia, constantly complain about the “burden” of migrants and continuously introduce anti-immigration and anti-asylum laws. But they deliberately conceal several fundamental realities.
They themselves are the architects of wars and destruction. Direct and proxy wars in the Middle East and North Africa from Libya to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, would not have been possible without the active involvement of these same powers. The sale of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to repressive regimes, the arms race, and the transformation of the Middle East and parts of Africa into permanent battlefields are the direct outcomes of Western imperialist and militaristic policies.
European colonial powers plundered Africa’s natural wealth for decades and, upon their departure, left behind artificial borders, ethnic and tribal conflicts, dependent governments, and corrupt structures. The cheap labor of the people of these countries in European factories and ports was one of the main sources of capital accumulation in past periods. Today, this plunder has not stopped. Multinational corporations, unequal trade agreements, and crushing debt continue to drain the continent’s resources. Under such conditions, when people from Africa and the Middle East flee poverty, war, and disease and knock on the doors of Europe and the United States, this is not merely an individual choice it is the direct consequence of an unjust global order that these governments have created and sustained.
The European Union and many European governments have adopted a set of policies to prevent refugees from entering that are increasingly inhumane:
- Returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin; return as a death sentence.
More than 90 percent of asylum seekers arriving in Europe come from war-torn regions of the Middle East and Africa. Many are internally displaced, their homes destroyed, lacking personal security and even the most basic means of survival. Returning them effectively means handing them over to war, torture, absolute poverty, or slow death. - Tightening anti-asylum laws.
The continuous passage of restrictive asylum laws does not target refugees alone; over time, it threatens the rights and freedoms of all residents. Strengthening far-right and racist forces that thrive on anti-migrant rhetoric paves the way for attacks on the historic achievements of labor and social movements. Social security, public services, and civil liberties come under assault. After migrants, the working class and the majority of the population in these countries will be the next victims. This trend shows that anti-migrant policy ultimately becomes anti-worker and anti-human policy whether one is a migrant or native-born. - Sealing borders and restricting sea rescue operations: calculated death in the Mediterranean.
The European Union has officially restricted rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. Authorities claim that expanding rescue capacity encourages further migration. As a result, migration routes have become more dangerous, and the number of deaths at sea has surged. This is despite the fact that Europe’s naval and air fleets, equipped with the most advanced technology, are fully capable of monitoring refugee boats from the moment they depart and rescuing them before they sink. Yet these capabilities are deliberately not used to save human lives. In reality, limiting rescue operations has not stopped migration, it has only made it deadlier.
European policies are not an exception. In the United States, some of the world’s harshest immigration and border enforcement measures are in place: family separations, detention and deportation, border walls, and violent repression at borders, policies that intensified especially with the rise of Trump. In Australia, asylum seekers are held for years in remote islands under degrading and inhumane conditions, as if they had committed a crime, simply for wanting to stay alive. These policies reveal that for capitalist governments, the lives and dignity of migrants hold no value when weighed against profit and power.
Anti-migrant policies are not only about keeping “outsiders” out; they serve other purposes as well. First, they sow division within the working class by fueling racism and xenophobia, pitting native and migrant workers against each other and diverting attention from the real enemy: capitalists and their governments. Second, they are used to justify rolling back social gains by claiming migrants are too costly, thereby attacking public services, unemployment insurance, healthcare, and education. In reality, both migrants and native citizens suffer from this regression. Third, they contribute to the moral and political degradation of host societies. The normalization of migrant deaths at sea, the imprisonment of children in camps, and the passage of discriminatory laws undermine the very human and democratic foundations of those societies.
In the face of this situation, merely defending the most minimal rights of refugees is not enough. It is necessary to assert the universal human right to life, security, work, and dignity, and to recognize the right to free movement as a fundamental human right recognizing people as citizens of a shared world. Every human being should be able to live wherever they choose without being humiliated or punished for being deemed “foreign.”
The struggle for migrant and refugee rights must be linked to the struggles of the working class and progressive, anti-racist movements in host countries. It must be made clear that the interests of Iranian, Syrian, Afghan, African, Italian, French, and German workers are not in conflict. Their common enemy is a system that profits from war, poverty, and discrimination.
On this day, it must be emphasized that no one is illegal. What is illegal and inhumane is a system that punishes people for moving. The fight to recognize the right to residence and a dignified human life for all people is an inseparable part of the global struggle for freedom, social justice, liberation from capitalist domination, and the struggle for socialism.
