[Keynote Speech] STAND-UP, UNITE AND FIGHT BACK!
Eni Lestari’s, IMA Chairperson, speech at the IMA USA political conference.
DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS, IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND PEOPLE OF COLOUR FROM FASCIST ATTACKS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Good morning and good evening from Asia!
Warmest militant greeting from the International Migrants Alliance to each one of you who are here in this political conference. On behalf of the alliance, I convey my deepest appreciation to the organizers of this event - International Migrants Alliance - USA Chapter, Tanggol Migrante Movement and Bayan USA - for initiating this historical gathering in the midst of relentless fascist attacks of the Trump’s administration against migrants, refugees and other working peoples in the United States of America.
What is IMA?
Before I begin my presentation, let me first introduce the International Migrants Alliance and the works that we do. IMA was established in 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis as the first ever global alliance of grassroots migrants, immigrants, refugees, and displaced people. IMA aims to defend the democratic rights and promote the self-representation of migrants, immigrants, and refugee workers. We currently have 250 member organizations in over 35 countries with chapters in all global regions as well as national chapters. The grassroots consists of 80% of our total membership.
IMA advocates for migrants and refugees rights around the world and also takes a position to expose and oppose neoliberalism and imperialism as the root causes of forced migration and the super-exploitation of migrants and refugees in the world today. Our strategy principally relies on the power of collective action or the mass movement of migrants and refugees. In short, IMA is about building an international people’s movement of migrants and refugees in solidarity with people’s movements in host countries, home countries and around the world.
Why is your initiative to organize this political conference very critical and significant for all of migrants, refugees and people of colour in the USA and around the world?
First, under Trump’s second leadership, the attacks against migrants, refugees and working people in the United States are the most blatantly fascist and most desperate attempts to save itself from the crises. The so-called “zero tolerance” policy is an attack on the rights, freedom, livelihood and lives of migrants and immigrants. It is a deliberate act to scapegoat the migrants and refugees for every social and economic crisis that the US faces i.e. poverty, income inequality, high cost of living, housing crisis, unemployment, access to healthcare, food insecurity and violence. It puts the blame to the people who are actually one of the first to be hit by the crisis to cover up the fact that concentration of wealth to only a few has been very rapid; leaving the majority to contend with low wage, long working hours, privatised services, constricting public education and health, gentrification, and insecure and unsafe communities.
Second, in the attempt to respond to these attacks in the most effective way, this conference also helps to unite people from various backgrounds and formulate collective strategies of resistance.
Third, this conference is proof of your readiness and commitment to fight back - as a movement - and stop the fascist attacks of the US government against the millions of immigrants, refugees and people of colour. Moreover, through this event, you also raise the awareness of our fellow and even working people in the US by educating them on the relation between the super exploitation of migrants and refugees with neoliberalism and imperialism - the very system behind our suffering.
Fourth, your initiative will also inspire and motivate the movement of migrants and refugees in other countries to stand up, unite and fight back against any forms of discrimination and exploitation. As migrants and refugees organize and protest around the world, the global movement of migrants will become stronger too.
Why does the US government relentlessly attack migrants, refugees and people of colour if their economy has been dependent on our cheap labour?
To address this question, we must dive deeper into the history and development of capitalism itself, which first emerged in Europe then in the US. When we say capitalism, it means a system driven for profit. Those who own capital or capitalists do not participate in the production, they are not everywhere in the factory and farm, but instead they purchase and use the labor - power of the working class and sell their products. The cheaper the workers are the better, so they can accumulate as much profit as they want. On the other hand, a tiny fraction of the population own and control the means of production such as machines, factories, and finance.
In the 1900s, when capitalism reached its highest stage of monopoly capitalism or we call it imperialism, the drive for superprofit has resulted in even more exploitation. The competition for markets and sources of cheap materials and labor has become more intense. The US, as the major imperialist then and now, leads the pack in cornering markets with goods produced by cheaper and cheaper labour. This drive has brought the US companies to bring workers from distant parts of the country or even from distant parts of the world to work in the factories, plantations, construction, fishing, tourism, caregiving and other service industries. The US economy is dependent on migrant labor - especially within the service sector where migrants are brought to work in factories, fast food, hospitals, and farmlands. The Philippines, for example, operates the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) that recruits Filipinos to work overseas, facilitating more forced migration to countries like the US which cooperates in this migrant labor export program. The H2A Guest Worker Program recruits migrants from over 80 countries, though the majority are from Mexico, and allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
In the 1970s, when neoliberalism - an economic framework imposed to protect the interest of the global elite - was introduced and accepted globally in the 1980s, the US moved productions to other countries that provide cheap resources and labour and left the US economy in service sectors. The passing of neoliberal agreements such as the Bracero Program in 1942 where 4.5 million Mexican men over 22 years were permitted to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts, predominantly in the agriculture industry depleting the workforce in Mexico. Migrants were brought to the USA to work as teachers, nurses, construction workers, plantation workers, fishing, and so forth. Migrants have been brought in to fill low-wage, precarious jobs under conditions that deny them rights and dignity.
In short, at the heart of imperialism lies the drive for super profit, and cheap migrant labor has always been central to this pursuit. Migrants are drawn in to produce wealth for corporations and ruling elites, yet the very system that exploits their labor is built on hating them—treating them as expendable, segregating them in society, and ultimately disposing of them when no longer needed. This dual nature of imperialism ensures that while migrants generate immense value, they are simultaneously subjected to discrimination, repression, and denial of rights.
What has been the record of US government treatments toward migrants?
Throughout the past century, the US has continued to rely on importing cheap and disposable labor, while at the same time criminalizing the very workers it exploits. From the Great Depression in the late 1920’s to the present, the historical treatment of migrants in the United States has been marked by exploitation and dehumanization. The U.S. economy was first built on the forced labor of enslaved Africans who were brought in to develop its wealth.
Afterwards, exploitation of workers including people who become migrants later on, has persisted. Whether through slavery, coercive labor programs, or the criminalization of today’s migrant workers and asylum seekers, the U.S. has consistently subjected those who seek livelihood or refuge to conditions of servitude and repression, sustaining its economic growth at the expense of their freedom and dignity.
Alongside this, repression has become common through waves of crackdown, arrest, detention, and deportation, practices that intensified under the Trump regime, which weaponized xenophobia and state machinery to scapegoat migrants for the crises of U.S. capitalism. In the first half of 2025 alone, the government has deported about 70,000 - 80,000 migrants causing thousands of children losing their parents and denied tens of thousands of asylum seekers applications. More are being arrested and deported even to third unsafe countries. Therefore this political conference is timely to respond to this dire situation.
The past 25 years have seen the rise of new forms of fascism in the United States, with anti-migrant sentiment embedded not only in public narratives but also in laws, policies, and entire systems of governance. At its core remains the same logic of exploitation: extracting the barest minimum cost from migrant workers—whether Braceros in the past, or Asian, African, and other racialized communities alongside poor whites today—while securing maximum profit for corporations and the state. This has been institutionalized through policies such as anti-terrorism laws, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the expansion of ICE, all of which criminalize and repress migrants. The result is a regime of systemic mistreatment: raids, detention, deportation, family separation, and daily harassment, which expose how deeply exploitation and racism are woven into the fabric of U.S. imperialism.
Why should migrants, refugees and people of colour around the world be concerned and support migrants in the US?
We cannot take lightly the attacks against migrants and immigrants in the US. An attack to one is an attack to all, as the US government’s actions will set a precedent for other host countries to follow.
It will make acceptable the false narratives on migration that the Trump government is using to justify its violent war against migrants. These false narratives include picturing of migrants as job-stealers or migrants as free loaders to social services or migrant communities as breeding grounds of crimes, anti-social and illegal practices, are sprouting left and right.
As economic and social crises deepen, more people become vulnerable to these unfair and false accusations. Unemployment, dwindling social problems, and social ills have existed as systemic problems and not because migrants created them. We, ourselves, are also victims of such problems both from the country where we come from and in the country where we try to make a living for us and our family.
The US situation is also a reflection of exploitation against migrants at a global level. The biggest portion of the 280 million migrants all over the world can be found in the US. It is also notable that the biggest migrant corridor is still the US-Mexico border.
The situation in the United States is also a reflection of the global exploitation and repression faced by migrants. Across the world, scapegoating and anti-migrant narratives have intensified, particularly with the rise of right-wing governments in migrant-receiving countries such as the UK, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, and Canada. These governments fuel xenophobia to justify harsher policies, leading to the steady erosion of migrant rights and the normalization of repression. At the same time, freedom of expression and organizing is increasingly curtailed, silencing migrants who speak out against abuse and exploitation. What happens in the U.S. is not an exception but part of a broader international system that thrives on migrant labor while denying migrants their dignity, rights, and voices.
Can we stop people from migrating?
The answer is NO!
Since the inception of neoliberal projects in the 1970s, the forced migration of peasants and workers from underdeveloped countries has continuously increased. The plunder of resources from our country to feed the industries of more developed capitalist countries also meant that the developed economies needed a vast army of cheap, skilled but docile labor force.
Economic displacement, unemployment and underemployment, landlessness and lack of social services especially education and health, force millions to migrate. Millions more are displaced due to wars, proxy or direct, instigated by powerful countries, chiefly the United States. Even militarism in rural areas by fascist governments to suppress dissent and revolutionary movements, results in displacement from countryside to urban areas. But the urban centers of colonies and semi-colonies can never absorb the displaced people, and many will go for overseas employment. Similarly, those displaced by climate change, climate change-induced disasters find themselves becoming part of the ever-increasing army of the unemployed and underemployed who compose the would-be migrants of origin countries.
But migration is not only about being displaced, but about being sold as commodities. The vulnerability of the poor is exploited by governments of countries of origin to institutionalise labor export programs. The LEP is a systematic program of governments to seek labour markets where they can “sell” workers - not much different from other commodities for export but immensely more profitable.
LEP is developed to generate remittance as a lifeline of an economy that does not generate foreign earnings as its exports are confined to lower priced raw and semi-processed products, while its imports are more expensive. Remittance ensures that a section of the population will still have purchasing capacity and can pay for the privatised health education - even if this means indebtedness or doing 2-3 backbreaking jobs.
Remittance is so huge that it has been eyed for years as a source of development finance. Just recently in the Financing for Development Conference, the plan to create a so-called Diaspora Fund has been upheld. This means that governments will ensure that not only will remittance be sent more systematically and regularly, but that remittance is contributed to fund development programs.
Aside from remittance, governments also earn from state exaction - various fees imposed to multiple documents required for migration. They invent requirements and each requirement carries a payment. Even services to migrants that are a responsibility of governments are transferred to us through deceptive government welfare programs.
Not only governments, more and more from the private sector are going into the business of migration. From recruitment agencies to private clinics; from banks to schools; from money-lenders to remittance centers; from real estate developers to insurance companies, many companies want a share of the hard earned income of migrants.
Indeed, migration is a very profitable business. Thus, even in the face of crackdowns or arrests and massive deportation, countries of origin will continue to spin out thousands, tens of thousands, millions of migrants while countries of origin will just keep on replenishing their migrant population with cheaper, younger, stronger migrants who are not anymore immigrants or cannot be immigrants but who they can exploit for many many, many more years.
Why can’t international bodies and conventions stop the fascist attacks and exploitation against migrants?
Under a neoliberal regime, fascism is a tool for the ruling class, the elite, the rich to perpetuate their economic, political and social dominance. They utilise the full coercive apparatus of the state to silence protest, crush dissent, and discredit agents for revolutionary change.
With neoliberalism in full swing, the migration design is made to serve the system. Fascism is employed to impress the point that migrants are disposable with nothing to conditional rights. It is used to drive a divide among the working people and present migrants not as workers and even not as people.
In 2016, I was here in the US to speak in front of State members of the United Nations in the first UN Summit on Migrants and Refugees. It is important to note that even back then, the US refused to join discussions that would later lead to the process of coming up with a Global Compact on Migration and a Global Compact on Refugees.
But did IMA put our hope that the summit will solve our problems? No, we did not. We spoke there to drive our point against forced migration and against commodification.
GCM and other international conventions are meant to beautify what is an, otherwise, ugly and inhuman migration. It uses human rights languages while treating migrants not as human beings but goods for sale. It promises protection while letting policies that make migrants vulnerable to exploitation, flourish. It speaks of beautiful promises but refuses to make countries accountable to making migrants as disposable workers, 2nd class or 3rd class citizens, and modern-day slaves.
Governments and even the UN systematically refuse to acknowledge the real issues raised by migrants, while migrants themselves continue to articulate their struggles and assert their own analysis of the root causes of forced migration and exploitation. The United States, with its long record of criminalizing and exploiting migrants, is being set up as the blueprint for global standards of treatment normalizing repression, surveillance, and disposability of migrant workers worldwide.
What can we learn from the resistance of immigrants in the USA? What is the importance of the Tanggol Migrante and Defend Migrants campaign?
For the past months, we in the IMA have seen so many inspiring actions by migrants and their communities in the US. Just last August 24 at the start of the IMA Global Solidarity Week for US migrants, we heard not only the horror stories of arrest, detention and deportation, but also stories of courage, of unity and of struggle.
What can we already learn from the past few months of campaign and struggle of our fellow migrants and migrants?
First is the importance of a united ranks of migrants. Migrant unity has always been the greatest power to defend rights and well-being. Historically, migrants and people of color have organized and resisted exploitation—from the Filipino and Mexican farmworkers who led the Delano grape strike, to migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong who fought for rest days and labor protections, to refugee communities mobilizing across Europe against detention and deportation.
Second, the importance of a united front with other sectors. We’ve heard stories of how workers organisations, community groups, faith communities and many other sectors who are supportive of their migrant neighbours, families, friends and co-workers have been standing up and presenting a wall of resistance against arresting forces of the State. Our solidarity and unity especially with fellow workers should be sustained and advanced.
Third, defending our rights also means the effective combination of legal and community/collective actions. It is important that we study what are our rights, what is due process, and what legal action and remedies we can get. Thus, it is crucial that we also get the support of people in the legal profession, service organisations, and other groups who can respond to immediate crisis situations. But alongside and even beyond this, is collective action. We know the power that a united action can bring outside of courts and into the streets.
Fourth, the importance of bringing forward the responsibility of the government of the country of origin. Our vulnerabilities stem from the fact that for us, migration is not a choice. Governments of countries of origin have major responsibility in setting the objective economic, political and social conditions that force us to leave and try to brave the new and insecure environment of overseas work. It is right that in the face of what we are facing, governments of countries of origin should be put to task to give service, assistance and protection to their nationals. They should exhaust all means possible to do this.
Today, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), as the largest global alliance of migrants, refugees, and displaced peoples, embodies this spirit of collective resistance, linking struggles across borders. Movement building means forging solidarity among migrants and with the broader working class, transforming scattered grievances into a powerful force that confronts exploitation, asserts dignity, and fights for genuine social change.
Long live migrants and refugees movement
Long live peoples movement
Long live international solidarity
