Most immigration debates focus on the border. But the real story starts much earlier — with trade deals, war, inequality, climate breakdown, corporate globalization, and political systems that force people from their homes while concentrating wealth and power into fewer hands.
This video explores why migration happens, how immigrant labor is exploited while immigrants are scapegoated for problems they didn’t create, and how systems like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and programs like the Immigration and Nationality Act 287(g) expand fear, surveillance, and repression across entire communities.
It also examines why division between immigrant and non-immigrant workers benefits the powerful, how solidarity can improve life for all working people, and what organizing for labor rights, community defense, economic democracy, and human dignity could look like in practice.
Watch the video:
Written by:Â Alexandria Shaner
Video production & narration:Â Dominick Conidi
Special thanks for editorial input from: Jennifer Wu, Matic Primc, & Michael Albert
Originally published by ZNetwork.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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