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The Home Office’s decision to increase the salary threshold for those entitled to work under a ‘skilled worker and health and care’ visa to £41,700 per year will leave dozens of Transport for London workers facing deportation from Britain.
The changes to visa salary and skills thresholds, which came into effect in July, are being implemented by a Labour government that appears to be buckling under pressure to restrict immigration to Britain by the rise of Reform and various far-right demagogues. Far from opposing the open racism of such forces, Labour ministers have enthusiastically promoted it, joining in the corporate media-sponsored orgy of flag-waving and pseudo-patriotism.
Meanwhile, the new visa conditions have left workers from countries including former British colonies like Nigeria – countries which Britain spent centuries looting and which are still under its neocolonial boot heel – at serious risk of deportation, having previously been given leave to settle in Britain to live and work.
In fact, while we are presented with a narrative which tells us that the pressure over immigration comes from ‘the right’ and is led by public sentiment, this dance is one that is ultimately directed by the ruling class. The British capitalists need to keep workers divided so they can keep pushing through ever deeper austerity and privatisation measures, and keep funnelling endless billions from the Treasury into the rapacious Nato/zionist war machine.
As we have seen recently in the USA, hyperbolic statements about the ‘threats’ posed by migrants and asylum seekers, alongside blanket media coverage given to theatrical acts of deportation, are being used to stoke social tensions, distract workers from the real cause of their problems, justify militarisation of the police, and encourage scapegoating.
All of which keeps migrant workers disciplined and fearful, while simultaneously fuelling the narrative amongst the rest of the working class that migration is responsible for all the social and economic problems they face.
Join the RMT in defence of our fellow workers
We congratulate the RMT for coming to the defence of these targeted TfL workers. History has shown that, too often in the past, trade unions have looked on passively, or even colluded, so that migrant workers were abandoned in their moment of need.
And this was despite the fact that many of them had come here in response to direct invitations from the British government and British employers, and were trying to build a better life than could be got in their home countries, thanks to continued imperialist control of their economic resources. And it was despite the fact that many were members of trade unions whose primary duty was to uphold their rights and build working-class unity and solidarity.
One prime example of this was in 1974, when workers from southern Asia who were working at the Imperial Typewriters factory in Leicester went on strike in protest against open and racist discrimination. The union that organised them, the Transport and General Workers Union (now known as Unite the Union), refused to make the strike official, with the district secretary of the union even claiming that the workers had no legitimate grievance.
Meanwhile in 2025, the TfL workers now in the crosshairs of a government planning to deport them are the latest victims of a capitalist-imperialist system that is falling apart at the seams. The ruling class’s flailing and chaotic response to its own crisis is aimed at passing the burden of its economic troubles onto the backs of the working class.
With this goal in mind, the ruling class has been working overtime to pit worker against worker in a constant blame game – even as it continues to import hyperexploitable workers from countries abroad to carry out insecure, dangerous and often undocumented work, with pay and conditions that are far below that of equivalent work carried out by other workers.
The trade unions have for decades allowed these glaring inequities to flourish. We must demand that union leaders end once and for all their collusion with the ruling class in the propagation of this two-tier workforce, and reject the system whereby workers carrying out equal work are rewarded differently because of their nation of origin.
Class against class, not worker against worker
We must recognise that the British ruling class views all working-class people with equal contempt, yet at the same time cynically divides us by offering some a few more crumbs from their table than others while telling us that our communities and public services are in inexorable decline because of an unrelenting wave of allegedly “uncontrolled” immigration.
This scapegoating of immigrant workers, and its latest manifestation in these arbitrary visa changes, is just another part of a huge exercise in deflection and diversion by the ruling class.
British capitalism in its latest stage, imperialism, is hollowed-out, decaying, parasitic and moribund. It has closed down factories, shipyards and coal mines, destroyed the country’s manufacturing base and offshored thousands of productive jobs to far-flung corners of the world in the endless quest to extract maximum profits.
But imperialism has also unleashed brutal and murderous wars on countries across the globe in its quest for domination and unfettered access to workers and raw materials. The imperialists demand absolute control over all nations; if a country will not bow before them, they will either destroy it (in the case of Yugoslavia) or plunge into complete chaos (in the cases of Libya and Syria).
It is a natural consequence of this drive for total domination that people from nations ravaged by war and destitution seek new lives elsewhere – especially here in Britain, where so much of the wealth of their homelands has been laundered by the high priests of finance capital in the City of London’s square mile.
We must reject the scapegoating of immigrant workers and work to build maximum unity in the ranks of our class, no matter what might be our country of origin, our religion or ethnic background. The cause of decay in our society is not other workers, but the ruling class and its system of exploitation, parasitism and war. It is this system that must be swept away once and for all.
But the only thing that can do this is an organised and unified working class fighting for socialism, a planned economy, and workers’ control of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
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