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This is abhorrent:
theguardian.com/world/2023/feb

We opened our doors to Ukrainian refugees, as we should have. We should just as well open our doors to refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

People don't choose to be refugees. They are forced to.

🧵

The GuardianChildren among 59 people killed in sailboat wreck off Italy’s coastBy Angela Giuffrida

And don't get me started on "economic migrants" BS!

"Economic migrant" is the correct term for an "expat". I am an economic migrant, born in Poland, living in Iceland, and proud of it.

I hate the term "expat" with a passion of a thousand suns. I find it racist, used to artificially differentiate between rich, predominantly white, Northern-born people moving freely and comfortably wherever they want; and destitute, predominantly BIPOC people forced to risk their lives to secure livelihood.

🧵

There is this myth that if borders are opened, suddenly a deluge of people will come and somehow flood the local community.

Iceland is tiny, 350k people. It's in the EEA. Everyone in the EU can just move here and start a new life, no work visa required — including from countries that rightwingers used to love scaring people in the North and West with: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania.

Guess what? No deluge. No flood of economic migrants. People don't want to uproot their lives willy-nilly!

🧵

And then there's this other myth, of a "Schrödinger's migrant": a person who moves in to a country, and at the same time "steals jobs" and "abuses the welfare system."

Which one is it? Are the refugees coming in and hanging on on state welfare? Or are they "stealing jobs"?

It's neither. Because it's not a zero-sum game. More people means more economic activity, means more jobs. Yes, on some basic level it's that simple.

So what's the deal with the "Schrödinger's migrant", then?

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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Simple: labor force with access to a strong social safety net (including good welfare system) is expensive to the moneyed classes. It's cheaper to hire people who have no labor protections, no access to welfare, and ideally also no local support network.

It's not about making refugees not come. It's about making sure they never get the protections the local labor force already has.

Why? Because then they become super cheap labor. And a way to dismantle labor protections for everyone!

How?

🧵

"Look at those refugees! Businesses are hiring them because they are cheap, they are cheap because they don't have labor protections, ergo labor protections hurt your ability to get hired, my working class friend!" 👀

That's the narrative.

The problem isn't refugees "stealing jobs", the problem is capitalists being able to skirt labor protections.

The solution is not to block refugees from coming, it's to afford them the same labor protections, and access to welfare and healthcare!

🧵

People washing up on Italian and Spanish beaches and dying in cold, dark Białowieża forests in Poland are not members of some barbaric horde trying to take down "Western civilization", steal your job, or hog the welfare system.

They are fellow human beings, with hopes and dreams, making the desperate decision to flee their homes, risk their lives, travel thousands of kilometers in hope of finding a chance to *survive*.
oko.press/people-are-already-d

They are visible victims of a class war.

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OKO.press„People are already dying, and freezing temperatures are coming”, warns an activist on the Polish borderBy Maciek Piasecki

As an economic migrant myself I can only say:

Nobody is illegal!
Refugees welcome!
youtube.com/watch?v=r-Nw7HbaeW

And just to be super-clear here: I am glad, a bit proud even, how Ukrainian refugees were welcomed in Poland and other places in the EU. Our support for Ukrainian people must continue.

But it should not be limited to just Ukraine.

People freezing on the Polish-Belarussian border, or dying on rickety boats crossing the Mediterranean deserve our empathy and help just as much.

🧵/end

@rysiek very much true. Repression at the border is one aspect, for your point on exploitable labour the ongoing exclusion - from the formal labour market!
-in the host country is very relevant.
Re

@rysiek Thanks for writing this, I've always abhored the term as well, as an immigrant myself I can totally relate.

@rysiek

The responsibility of security services in the EU in the deaths of refugees - failure to respond urgently to firsthand witness reports of a person in critical medical distress - is much more direct in Poland:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%

Security forces in the EU have also done pushbacks, which are (in principle) illegal in the EU but legalised in Poland:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushback

Any info on ongoing legal procedures to cancel the illegal Polish law?

@mikulas_peksa

en.wikipedia.org2021–2022 Belarus–European Union border crisis - Wikipedia

@rysiek The vast majority of farm workers in the U.S. are seasonal migrants living in squalid conditions with little to no labor protections, oftentimes lured under false pretenses, made to sign legally questionable contracts, and sometimes even kept from terminating their “employment” with threats of force.

@rysiek The rabid anti-immigration posturing that saturates the conversation in this country is precisely what maintains the agricultural capitalist’s coercive leverage over the desperate worker whose only difference from native citizens is where they happened to be born.

And I haven’t even mentioned slave labour in prisons.