What can be done? The solution to global migratory crisis is North-South cooperation, in which the super-exploitation of the peoples and lands of the planet by the core powers would be cast aside as no longer sustainable. Governments of the world would work together in the creation of a more just and democratic world-system, in which would be respected the equal sovereignty of all nations, the rights of all nations to development, and the right of all persons to work and live with security in their native countries. Such a democratic world-system can only be attained when popular movements in various core nations emerge to take power in the name of the people, thus establishing governments that develop policies in defense of the needs and interests of the people, and not the elite. In other words, the solution would require the emergence of a socialist world-system, consisting of governments that rule in the name of and on behalf of their peoples.
The transition to a more just and democratic or socialist world-system has begun, with governments representing the interests of the people having emerging in several nations in peripheral and semi-p eripheral regions: eight in Latin America plus China, Vietnam, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, and Iran. The next s tep in the process is the taking of power in the name of the people in key nations of the core.
However, even with people’s governments in power in important core nations, the move toward a just and democratic world-system would necessarily be a step-by-step process. The core-peripheral inequality established by the capitalist world-economy cannot be eliminated overnight, so a tendency for peripheral-to-core migration would continue. Therefore, governments under popular control would have to take cooperative steps to control migrations from one nation to another, so that they occur in the context of a plan for the use of the migratory labor, and in the context of programs that are responding to the various needs of the people in both core and peripheral regions.
Immediate steps by people’s governments to control international migration would be necessary in order to undermine the political use of illegal migration by fascist parties and actors, which would seek to destabilize governments under popular control through the scapegoating of illegal immigrants, as part of a global counterrevolution that would seek to establish a fascist world-system dominated by the US-based military-industrial complex and characterized by repression of political and civil rights and disregard for social and economic rights. Indeed, observing the signs of the times, one could reasonably maintain that at the present time in human history, liberalism and neoliberalism are exhausted, and the battle for the future is between socialism and fascism. One can see clear tendencies in both directions in the established world-system, still ruled by liberal and neoliberal elites yet clearly in decay and headed toward chaos.
As a dimension of continued liberal and neoliberal ideological control of the world-system, a political perspective that envisions North-South cooperation and international cooperation for the control of migration cannot be found in the news media controlled by the great corporations of the core. The superficial approach of the news media, necessary for the ideological manipulation of the people, does not allow space for historical and theoretical analysis of the various dimensions and symptoms of the systemic global crisis. To the extent that there is debate on the migratory issue, it is between those who want to receive the migrants and the refugees, and those who want to block their entrance and/or send them away. It is a debate between humaneness and indifference to human suffering, and although the one is far more moral than the other, neither addresses the source of the problem.
But not so in Cuba. Cuban television and newspapers have devoted considerable time to the global migratory crisis, in which the fundamental historical factors and the political implications have been explored. At a recent panel discussion on the theme on Cuban television, the moderator asked in conclusion for a succinct expression of future prospects with respect to the global migratory crisis. One panelist, a professor of demography at the University of Havana, maintained that as long as the economic and political interventions of the core powers continue, uncontrolled migration to the core from the periphery and semi-periphery will continue. Another panelist, a professor in international relations at the Higher Institute for International Relations (which educates Cuban diplomats), asserted that the strong migratory tendency to the core nations will continue as long as the world-economy continues to be a capitalist world-economy.
Although these commentaries by Cuban academics provided a good, succinct conclusion to the panel, not many people saw it in Washington, Berlin or London, or in Des Moines. The formation of alternative people’s parties in the core, dedicated to the education of the people, is a necessary response to the structural crisis of the world system (see “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015). An educated humanity, educated by and for itself, can save itself from the moral indifference of global elites, who are leading the world toward barbarism and chaos.
Key words: migration, illegal immigration, refugees, fascism