International Migrants Alliance Statement on International Labor Day 2026
This May Day, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) celebrates the bravery of the whole working class movement in the midst of deepening exploitation, imperialist war, neoliberal decay, and relentless criminalization of migrant workers across the globe. It is the migrant, refugee, and the displaced who bear the absolute heaviest burden. The historical struggle of the working class must recognize the reality, where migrants have been systematically forced by global capital to serve as the deeply exploited underclass of the working class. The economic hardships and displacement they face are not accidental, but are intentional, functioning byproduct of neoliberal globalization and imperialism.
The root of this crisis lies in the destruction of Global South economies. For decades, subservient governments have enforced austerity measures and Structural Adjustment Programs dictated by the IMF and World Bank which have stripped away social protections, deliberately stunted the local economies to ensure continued dependency, creating a massive and desperate reserve army of labor. These governments transformed their own citizens into exportable commodities by aggressively promoting labor export policies. It is a way to prop up their failing economies through remittances, completely abandoning their people to wage theft and precarious, slave-like conditions abroad. In 2024, official remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached US$656 billion, and yet, the top four countries where remittances make up the largest share of their GDP are classified as highly fragile. Nicaragua, for example, saw remittances soar to 27.2 percent of its GDP as deep economic and political instability drove mass migration, primarily to the United States.
On the other hand, labor migration is not received passively by host countries but institutionalized as well. The World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, through its Mode 4 provisions, legally codifies the temporary movement of workers to provide services for the host country, tying a migrant’s right to stay and work directly to their employer, which resulted to migrant’s right embedded into International trade law, not its local labor law. Additionally, through its Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), the World Bank has embedded the “migration for development” framework into the UN’s Global Compact on Migration, reducing the crisis into three quantitative measurements: remittance costs, recruitment cost and remittance volume. The same institution that executes the Structural Adjustment Programs now manages the metrics by which those economies measure the migration those programs produced.
Upon arrival in host countries, migrant workers face a reality where the narrative of “legal protection” completely collapses. Institutionalized frameworks of bondage, such as the Kafala System in West Asia and Temporary Foreign Worker Programs in the migrant-destination countries, legally tie workers to their employers, acting as a legal cage that makes a worker’s right to exist in a country dependent on their employer’s goodwill. By stripping away their mobility and rights, these systems hold the worker’s very livelihood and residency for ransom, ensuring they remain in a permanent state of subjugation and total economic dependency.
Migrant workers all bear the brunt of imperialist aggression that exploit their lives and livelihoods.The current US-Israel war against Iran is turning the Gulf into a war zone, creating a daily crisis for survival for 31 million of migrant workers. Employers are now weaponizing this instability to escalate exploitation. One report from workers in a signage company in the UAE has reported that their employers are using the conflict as a convenient excuse to withhold wages, paying only half salaries and forcing them into unpaid, compulsory leave. This is a recurring trend across the region, where Bangladeshi workers and other migrant communities are being pressured into wage theft, with the threat of immediate deportation.
Meanwhile, the human cost is also mounting. At least 12 South Asian workers have been killed since the war started. The region’s care economy rests on 6.6 million domestic workers, mostly trapped under the coercive Kafala system, while at the same time, they are the backbone of Arab households.
The ruling elite of the Global North faces growing anger from their own populations. To maintain their grip on power, they resort to militarization and fascism, and actively use migrant workers as their scapegoats for their economic failures. Through the expansion of deportation forces like ICE in the US, and the enforcement of “Fortress Europe” in the EU, the heavy militarization of borders and the expansion of hostile immigration policies manufacture ‘illegality’ and justify the inhumane treatment of many undocumented migrant workers.
Furthermore, the ultimate hypocrisy and double standard of capitalist labor is evident, where the State enforces hyper-strict border controls, while actively and quietly utilizing those same undocumented migrants for ultra-cheap labor. Most of them work in agriculture, meatpacking, and construction industries while being in constant danger of deportation.
The recent surge of migrant workers’ resistance proves this fight is an inherently common struggle across borders . In Europe, migrant care workers in the UK are mobilizing en masse to protest exploitative visa schemes explicitly designed to trap them in decades of precarious, low-wage labor. While in Asia, migrant laborers in Taiwan recently staged a protest outside Manila Economic and Cultural Office and its Migrant Workers Office, explicitly condemning their own government’s representative for openly siding with medical manufacturer Taidoc on the union-busting issue. Meanwhile, in North America, the massive movement against ICE brutality and Trump’s draconian anti-immigration laws is gaining traction. Tens of thousands of workers, students, and community members call for a “national shutdown.”
This May Day, we affirm that the struggle of migrant workers is not an isolated issue but it is embedded in the broader historical struggle of the working class. The ruling elite dictates that local workers must suffer as a wage slave, while migrant workers are suffering in absolute slave-like conditions. When the local workers are taught to fear migrants as competition, wages fall for everyone. When migrants are denied basic rights, those rights become precarious over time. The only border that really matters is the one between the exploiter and the exploited.
We continue to forge our collective power, rise against exploitation, racism, and xenophobia, and fight back against every wall built to divide us. We must educate, arouse, and organize, not as separate struggles, but as one working class with one enemy and one future. All workers must unite – across borders, beyond legal status, destroying every false division.
Let’s stand united against imperialist exploitation and war!
Fight against racist borders! No to Imperialist Wars!
Onward to workers liberation!
