A staff writer for the Militant newspaper and associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, Calero was visiting New Zealand as part of an international “Fight to Win” tour following his successful campaign against U.S. immigration authorities’ efforts to deport him. A permanent resident of the United States, he was arrested Dec. 3, 2002, at Houston Intercontinental Airport while returning home from reporting assignments in Cuba and Mexico. He was jailed by immigration agents as the first step in proceedings to deport him to his native Nicaragua on the basis of a plea-bargain conviction 15 years earlier for selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. After a public campaign won widespread backing for his fight, the U.S. government decided to drop the case in May. The government had waived this conviction in granting him permanent residence.

Calero thanked them for signing a petition calling for his release from jail. “I strongly believe that, if not for your and others’ signatures, I would still be in jail and would have been deported,” he said.

Solomon commented on Calero’s description of the struggle for fishing rights by the native Cheam in Canada, whom he had met during a recent visit there. “The same thing is happening over there as over here. It’s not a fight between races, but between Maori people and the Crown [state],” he said.

“Are you going round the world telling people about your experiences, or just thanking them?” asked Gloria Mau.

“Both,” replied Calero. He explained, “every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers are deported. Every single capitalist country is doing the same thing. It’s a way to divide us, to create a super-exploited layer they pay less, and by doing that to put pressure on the wages and benefits of everybody. My victory clearly came out of the political price they saw my fight was making them pay for trying to deport me. We want to speak about how we did it so others can do the same.”

“Good on you mate!” responded Mau.

Ian Clarke, the union delegate in the boning room, added that members of the Maori rugby team from New Zealand had recently been refused entry to Canada to tour there because of criminal convictions. “One had a drunk driving conviction,” he said. Another “hadn’t even been up in court. They were only playing sport, not staying there.”

Calero also addressed a lunchtime meeting of 17 students at the School of Visual Arts at the Manukau Institute of Technology. Jonathan Field, a student who had helped organize the meeting, chaired the session. He thanked Calero for coming to share his “amazing story—unprecedented in winning a case against the U.S. government.”

One participant asked if anyone had followed the steps Calero had taken and also won. Calero described some of the many immigrants threatened with deportation he had met in the course of his fight, and noted some that have successfully followed his example of waging a public fight. These victories show the limitations of the rulers, he said, and that they are not as invincible as they present themselves.

Another student said he thought that if countries like New Zealand opened their borders to immigrants it could create other problems, and there would be too many people and not enough resources or jobs. Calero replied that the bosses don’t want to get rid of immigrants; there are not massive deportations or concentration camps today. Attacks on immigrants are done in a selective and arbitrary way that keeps the sword of intimidation hanging over workers, so they can keep this layer divided from other working people and less combative. He said there were enough resources in countries like New Zealand to go around several times, but the problem is how this distribution is organized. The fight for the defense of immigrant rights has to go hand in hand with the fight for jobs, he added.

That evening, Calero addressed a meeting of 26 people at the Pathfinder Press Bookshop in Auckland. Included in the audience was George Arulanantham, the president of the New Zealand Tamil Society, who has protested new “anti-terrorism” laws that threaten the ability of Tamils in New Zealand to support their struggle for self-determination in Sri Lanka.

Fourteen supporters of the Róger Calero defense campaign came to a meeting hosted by the Militant Labour Forum at the Workers Educational Association premises in Christchurch August 30 to hear Calero draw the lessons of his fight. Immigrant workers are the first targets in attacks on the rights of working people to due process, legal aid, access to evidence, and civilized treatment, he explained. But the aim of the imperialist ruling classes is broader; their target is all working people, and the torture and degradation of detainees at the U.S. base at Guantánamo show what the rulers have in store for the working class. The way to respond is to fight back, turning to workers currently in struggle, and drawing on the accumulated experience of the workers’ movement, he said.

A fund appeal raised $1,050 (NZ$=US$.58) nationally to help defray the costs involved in fighting Calero’s case, which were inititally met by the Political Rights Defense Fund. This will also help ensure the fund is replenished and ready for the next fight.
 

“My fight reflects the possibility of turning back the rulers attack against immigrant workers and all working people,” Calero told the participants of an August 24 meeting. “In Montreal a partial victory was also won by Algerian refugees against attempts by the Canadian government to deport them back to Algeria,” he continued, even though some are still under threat of deportation.

Joining Calero on the panel were Mike Barker, from the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), Shahdin Farsai of the Free the Cuban 5 Committee, and Joe Yates of the Communist League, the Canadian sister organization of Calero’s party, the Socialist Workers Party. Natalie Stake-Doucet chaired the meeting on behalf of supporters of the Róger Calero Defense Committee.

Barker spoke about the fight by HEU members against hospitals and health centers where union members are being dismissed and their jobs given to private contractors.

Farsai talked about a tour in October of Aleida Guevara and Irma Fernández, daughter of René González, one of five Cuban revolutionaries locked up in U.S. jails on conspiracy charges. The Cuban Five were in the U.S. gathering information on the activities of ultrarightist groups that operate on U.S. territory with the complicity of Washington and have a record of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba.

After the meeting Calero attended a supper hosted by eight meat packers in Abbotsford, 70 kilometers outside of Vancouver. They discussed the ruling-class offensive and the struggle against low wages, increased line speeds, and high injury rates on both sides of the border. Calero pointed out that his fight joined with others resisting the bosses’ attacks—coal miners, defenders of immigrant rights, and others—many of whom he has met on his international tour.  
 
 
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