07.04.2004

No respect for borders

Every worker legal - unity coalition must take the lead

Tabloid and Tory Britain has the scent of blood in its nostrils. First they claim the scalp of the immigration minister, Beverley Hughes. Even better, with the June elections looming, the headlines are dominated by lurid stories about migrants and asylum-seekers - always natural, and fertile, territory for Tories. Keep the pressure on, they must be thinking, and maybe the New Labour crown will start to slip.

Indeed, it must surely be bliss to be alive at the moment if you are a hard-core reactionary. Much to the rejoicing of ‘middle England’, a humiliated David Blunkett last week described the day on which Hughes resigned as the “worst day of my political life”. Furthermore, there appears to be a small stream of malfeasant (and most decidedly not apolitical) civil servants ready - almost on demand - to supply David Davis, the shadow home secretary, with potentially damaging details about how governmental departments handle and process immigration and asylum applications. Naturally, it will only be a coincidence if more of these details come to light just days before June 10.

The government’s immigration headache began a few weeks ago with the self-styled whistleblower, Steve Moxon, a civil servant working for the immigration and nationality directorate in Sheffield. Moxon was suspended from the IND after he went public with his claims that he was told to waive key checks on visa applications from certain nationals of the 10 ‘accession’ countries due to join the European Union on May 1. In other words, says Moxon, immigration controls are being deliberately relaxed, or “rubber-stamped”, in order to clear the backlog and hence avert a tabloid-generated controversy over the supposed influx of migrant come May 1. The slightly oily, and distinctly rightwing, Moxon is arguing that his actions fall within the remit of the 1988 Public Interest Disclosures Act - as well as doing the chat show circuit, appearing on Tuesday’s edition of the BBC’s Now you’re talking! (the truncated successor to Kilroy!) and heavily hinting that there are more revelations to come.

The current wave of tabloid-driven outrage has centred on migrants from Bulgaria and Romania. James Cameron, the British consul in Bucharest, leaked letters and emails to the Tories showing how he had warned British government officials 18 months ago of scams involving the use of forged documents. According to Cameron, despite the obviously fraudulent nature of the applications, visas were been granted to thousands of long-term unemployed Bulgarians and Romanians (though the notoriously poor language skills of British diplomats and officials may well play a part in this as well). In the words of the upright consul, this showed “organised crime and UK immigration policy at its worst”.

Subsequently, newspapers chronicled how ‘dodgy’ lawyers in Sofia were charging €3,000 in order to virtually guarantee a successful application for their hopeful clients. In this part of the world, the business of ‘human trafficking’ is booming - or, at least, was until last week, when a defensive Blunkett hurriedly froze all visa applications from Bulgaria and Romania. Some 5,000 Bulgarians were granted European Communities Association Agreements visas last year, enabling them to set up their own small business in Britain. Proportionately so far this year, that figure has doubled. Hardly surprising - the odds are that if they remain in Bulgaria or Romania, these impoverished workers will just rot away.

Furthermore, and far more seriously for the government, there have been persistent allegations that Blair himself did a secret deal with his Romanian counterpart, Adrian Nastase, to relax immigration controls if Bucharest would curb the number of asylum-seekers (Romania is not due to join the EU until 2007). This sounds eminently plausible, of course - legitimate workers are nice; illegitimate ones nasty.

In response to the Bulgarian/Romanian ‘scandal’, Donald Davis has called for a full, independent inquiry into the matter. Quite predictably, at the weekend Michael Howard told Welsh Tories, “Labour have lost control of our borders”. As for the government, there is a slight air of panic. This week Blair held a hastily convened ‘immigration summit’ or, if you prefer, a “cross-government assault” on the immigration and asylum issue. The main focus of the ‘summit’ was on “sham marriages” (estimated at some 15,000 last year) and “sham students” (numbers unknown) applying for college and university courses. The government also announced that those who employ illegal migrants could soon be facing fines of up to £20,000 - up from the present £5,000.

Naturally, throughout all this, the tabloids have been having chauvinistic fun with stories about one-legged roofers, one-armed brickies, fingerless electricians, and so on. Inevitably, these stories have been retold - and considerably embellished - throughout the pubs and bars of Britain, with drinkers shaking their heads and muttering, ‘It’s not right - why can’t we look after our own?’ (and I have little doubt that my local is just like yours).

This of course only exposes the toxic - and noxious - nature of the immigration question. As a recent editorial in The Guardian put it, “Immigration - not the Iraq war or the condition of the NHS - is the single most volatile issue in British electoral politics today, the one that causes most concern to most people and the one that swings most votes” (April 3).

Communists and socialists recognise that the whole immigration question is a conduit for reactionary and backward ideas to spread like wildfire and gain a political and ideological hegemony over the working class. Whether we like it or not, in the popular mind immigration is directly associated with asylum-seekers, which in turn is linked to ‘bogus asylum-seekers’ - who are a threat to ‘our’ national identity.

A recent Mori poll gave us a stark lesson in political realities. Asked whether they agree with the simple statement, “There are too many immigrants in Britain”, 56% said yes. That figure rose to 91% among what Mori describes as the “traditional poor” - it was only 11% amongst “liberal intellectuals”. Since 1997 those who admit that they are concerned about asylum applications to Britain rose from below 5% to nearly 40% in January 2002 - despite the fact that the number of asylum applicants arriving in Britain was virtually cut in half.

These statistics alone should tell us that we need to urgently address and confront this question. After all, as the events of the last week or two clearly show, we can point to the fragile nature, even on the establishment’s own narrow terms, of the difference between legal and illegal migrants. What better time for the left to intervene with its own principled, internationalist call for open borders and to defend the rights of all workers? Real communists and socialists do not draw bogus distinctions between legals and illegals, or between non-economic and economic migrants. Presented in the right way - with conviction and clarity - this could be a powerful message to cut through the chauvinist fog and put clear red water between us and the mainstream parties. Unlike Howard, Blair and Kennedy, we have no respect for the borders of the bourgeoisie.

Regrettably, we are not yet in that position. As should now be obvious, Respect shot itself in the foot when its January 25 launch conference flatly rejected the demand for open borders and the free movement of peoples. Disgracefully, our Socialist Workers Party comrades, and its ignominious little assistants, took the lead in scuttling this right and proper demand - in the process turning its back own its own history, which was one of support for the principle of the free movement of peoples.

Of course, Respect is committed to “defend the right of refugees and asylum-seekers” and opposes the “anti-European, xenophobic right wing”. But, then again, Howard or Blair would say exactly the same. So what is Respect going to say about the rights of the ‘illegals’ to come to the UK?

This is a very concrete question, not some ‘ultra-leftist’ abstraction or infatuation, or a case of utopia-mongering on our part. It is almost certain that the row over eastern European migration - particularly from Bulgaria and Romania - will still be rumbling as Respect canvassers and supporters hit the streets for our election campaign. When on the doorstep - or the Newsnight studio floor - our candidates will have to give direct, no-nonsense, answers to questions on immigration and asylum. Will the SWP’s John Rees really tell Jeremy Paxman that Respect too thinks that Bulgarian workers - whether one-legged or not - should be kept out of the UK if they have failed to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops? But of course we communists have no doubt that comrade Rees will inform his astonished interlocutor that Respect stands for ‘Neither London nor Sofia’ and upholds the socialist principle of free movement of peoples.

The Guardian has made a plea for “our political leaders” to recognise that, when it comes to migration, “we have a common interest in containing the debate and achieving a principled consensus on it for years to come” (April 5). Let us do our best to dash the liberal hopes of the Guardian leader-writers and ensure that the reactionary consensus we have now is shattered - to be replaced with a rival, internationalist ideology that genuinely reflects the interests of the working class and humanity itself.