OPINION:
In the early 1900s, waves of European immigrants arrived in American cities carrying not just their luggage but also ideologies forged in Europe’s industrial turmoil.
Among them, anarchists and socialists were motivated by revolutionary politics long before they boarded ships bound for the United States. They believed the U.S. offered fertile ground for their radical ideologies and arrived radicalized and organized.
Today, these early radicals’ successors, the Democratic Socialists of America, have numerous immigrants and members from first-generation immigrant families in their leadership structure.
Immigrants come to the U.S. hoping for a new start. Not a few already know about the generous social services and benefits available to them upon arrival.
This international displacement, by economic or political hardship, creates opportunities for socialist political recruitment, and the DSA is there to provide them with a ready-made political home.
They target and prey on immigrant families by offering support to the newcomers trying to understand a new and unfamiliar land. They also project a collective identity of “caring” for these new arrivals, promoting the DSA’s warped Marxist vision of and for America.
These newcomers are fed a steady stream of U.S. foreign policy criticisms, economic populism, racial discord and the failures of our immigration system.
The immigrant appeal of today’s socialism is tragically real. A cursory look at the 27 members of the DSA’s National Political Committee, the organization’s governing body, shows a high representation of immigrants or individuals from first-generation American families.
The national co-chair is from a Muslim Bangladeshi immigrant family. The new co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, its youth wing, is a Cuban American university student from Miami. Both are committed and unrepentant Marxists.
One of the National Political Committee members is an immigrant from Bahrain. Another entered the country illegally from Chile, adjusted her immigration status and is now a professional union organizer. Still another is a nurse from the Philippines. The list goes on.
These immigrant communists promote the same statist ideologies that caused their families to leave their home countries in the first place. They are intent on dismantling the very Constitution under the protection of which they and their families were received in the first place.
This November, four more DSA members are highly likely to win seats and join their socialist colleagues in Congress. Two of the four are from immigrant families: one a Muslim convert from the Dominican Republic and the other born in Ethiopia.
In New Hampshire, a DSA immigrant from Bangladesh is mounting a strong Democratic Party primary challenge to the U.S. Senate seat. In Los Angeles, an Indian-born DSA member is challenging leftist Mayor Karen Bass. More are winning state and local elected offices.
These first-generation American DSA members operate within a different system than those earlier immigrant socialists. The digital age offers new tools for social media organizing, electoral campaigns, labor agitation and coalition-building.
These socialists are young, educated, tenacious, committed and apparently well-funded. They never stop because this is all they know how to do. Socialism replaces both their personal and political lives.
Even when their candidates lose, they gain valuable operational experience, new political contacts, fundraising and media exposure. A loss is never a loss because they are playing the long game.
Democrats and Republicans get energized every two or four years. DSA Marxists are active year-round, moving from campaign to campaign, issue to issue, constantly building.
The DSA is growing its international outreach, maintaining party relationships with communist governments, political parties and movements. It sends first-generation members on delegations to Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and other countries.
They also actively visit, speak and cavort with other communist leaders in their home countries, particularly anti-U.S. governments.
Early socialist immigrants from Europe played a major role in union strikes, labor agitation and bombings. They were rightfully perceived to be national security threats, and Congress enacted legislation to expedite deportation proceedings and exclusion laws against radicalized immigrants.
DSA leadership actively targets first-generation and immigrant communities. It is why immigrant rights figure prominently in the organization’s 2026 platform.
The socialists have made strong political inroads into our immigrant communities, and this merits scrutiny. We must also do a better job of screening sponsors and encouraging patriotic assimilation among newcomers.
We must remain as vigilant today as we were 100 years ago.
• Emilio T. Gonzalez is a retired U.S. intelligence officer who has served in senior positions in the U.S. Army, on the National Security Council and in the Department of Homeland Security.
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