Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls (2000)

195 Pages·2001·1.32 MB·English

by  Teresa Hayter

OPEN BORDERS
The Case Against Immigration Controls
T H
ERESA AYTER
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
First published 2000
by PLUTO PRESS
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Teresa Hayter 2000
The right of Teresa Hayter to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hayter, Teresa.
Open borders : the case against immigration controls / Teresa Hayter.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–7453–1547–X (hard) — ISBN 0–7453–1542–9 (pbk.)
1. Europe—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. 2.
Immigrants—Government policy—Europe. I. Title.
JV7590 .H39 2000
325.4—dc21
00–009580
ISBN 0 7453 1547 X hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1542 9 paperback
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Migration, and migratory myths 8
World migration 8
Postwar migration to industrialised countries 10
Migration to Britain 13
2 Border controls 21
Racism 21
Early history of British immigration controls 36
Controls on Commonwealth immigration 43
Fortress Europe 57
3 Refugees: Tightening the screw 64
The debasing of refugee rights 64
Legislation and legal processes in Britain 76
The criminalisation of refugees 95
Destitution 105
Detention 112
Campsfield immigration detention centre 123
4 Resistance 134
Resistance in Britain 134
The sans-papiersmovement 142
5 Re-open the borders 149
Immigration controls and human rights 149
Immigration controls do not work 152
Immigration and jobs, wages and conditions 155
Immigration and public expenditure 161
v
vi Open Borders
Immigration controls and racism 163
Migration and the Third World 166
Free Movement 171
Bibliography 173
List of organisations and campaigns 177
Index 181
TABLES
1.1 Foreign population as a percentage of total resident
population in European countries, 1997 10
1.2 Estimated net immigration from the new Commonwealth
from 1953 to the introduction of controls in mid-1962 19
1.3 Net migration to/from Britain, 1871–1991 20
3.1 Asylum applications in Britain in the 1990s 70
PREFACE
This book was written thanks to a grant from the Joseph Rowntree
Charitable Trust, for which I am extremely grateful. The trust accepted my
proposal to take a radical look at immigration controls. The Joint Council for
the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) very kindly supported my application and
gave me freedom to express my opinions. I am particularly grateful for the
help and support of Don Flynn.
The book is also based on over six years of campaigning against
Campsfieldimmigrationdetentioncentre,asamemberoftheCampaignto
Close Campsfield. A good many of my examples of the mistreatment of
refugeesaretakenfromtheexperiencesofthosewhoareorhavebeenlocked
up in Campsfield. I believe that Campsfield exemplifies this mistreatment,
and that it is not extreme or untypical. I can report on it from first-hand
experience.NineofuswereoutsideCampsfieldwithplacardswhenitopened
on 26 November 1993, and I have been to nearly all the monthly demon-
strations ever since. I have had the great good fortune to meet many
refugees, both inside and outside Campsfield, and of course am indebted to
them for much that is in this book. I hope they approve. I have visited
refugees not just in Campsfield but also in Winson Green, Rochester,
Blakenhurst and Bullingdon prisons and at Harmondsworth detention
centre.IhavebeentoseveralappealsandbailhearingsinBirminghamand
Londonandtalkedtomanylawyers.Elevenasylumseekershavestayedin
ourEastOxfordhouse,forperiodsrangingfromafewdaystoovertwoyears,
and have been unfailingly considerate and good to have around. I do not
acceptthemoraldistinctionbetweenpoliticalrefugeesandthosewhocross
frontiers in search of work. But, for what it is worth, my experience is the
reverseofthatoftheHomeSecretaryJackStraw,whotoldTheEconomist,as
itreportedon14February1998,that‘OfalltheasylumapplicationsIhave
dealtwithinmyconstituency,onlyonewasgenuine.’Ofthemanyasylum
seekersIhavemet,onlytwowerenotrefugeesinthenarrowpoliticalsense.
One, who entertained us in our house for several months, was straightfor-
wardlytryingtoimprovehislife.Theotherwasayoungandverydistressed
Peruvian.AssoonashestartedtalkingtousinCampsfield,hetoldushewas
not in fact a member of Sendero Luminoso, but the oldest of six children
lookedafterbytheirmother.ShehadraisedthemoneytosendhimtoBritain
vii
viii Open Borders
bymortgagingtheirhouse,inthehopehecouldsendbackmoneytosupport
them. He had got through immigration and found some cousins, who
advised him to go to Croydon and apply for asylum. He did so, and was
arrestedandsenttoCampsfield.
IamgratefulforthegenerousencouragementofBobSutcliffe,whourged
me to use whatever I wanted to from his book Nacido en otra parte, which
advocates‘therighttototalworldwidefreedomofmovementandresidence’,
whichunfortunatelyisstillonlyinSpanishbutfromwhichIhaveplundered
manyideasandfacts.NearlyallthequotationsofpoliticiansinChapter2are
fromPaulFoot’sextensiveresearchinHansardforhisbookImmigrationand
Race in British Politics, with his kind agreement. The section on Fortress
EuropeismainlybasedonamuchmoredetaileddocumentwhichDonFlynn
haswritten,andisavailablefromhimattheJCWI.Thesectiononthetrial
oftheCampsfieldNineismostlybasedonanarticleIwroteforRedPepper.I
amverygratefulforcommentsonthefirstdraftfromFrancesWebber,Bob
Sutcliffe, Bill MacKeith, Pritam Singh, Steve Cohen, Robin Cohen, Rohini
Hensman,AnnDummett,MeenaSingh,TonyRichardsonandDonFlynn.I
hopeIhavedonesomejusticetothem.ThanksalsotoAnneBeechandPluto
PressforcommissioningthebookandtoBillMacKeithforhiscopy-editing.
Note on translation: The translation of the proceedings of the FASTI
conference is by Bill MacKeith. The rest, from French and Spanish, are by
the author.
Bibliographical note: The figures in Chapter 1 are mostly from Sutcliffe. The
quotations of politicians in Chapter 2 are from Hansard, nearly all of them
from Foot; a few are from Spencer (see Bibliography).
INTRODUCTION
Human beings have migrated throughout their history. People and their
rulers have at various times and in different ways tried to exclude others from
their territories, or to expel them once they are there. Most people now
appear to take immigration controls for granted, at least in the rich indus-
trialised countries of the West. But comprehensive controls to stop
immigration are a recent phenomenon. A hundred years ago they did not
exist; it was the people who advocated them who were condemned as
extremist. Immigration controls are a function of nation states which
themselves have existed for not much longer, and which are now said to be
in decline. Unlike nations, border controls are flourishing, and they are
becoming ever more extensive and oppressive. The state powers to which
the governments of industrialised countries most tenaciously cling are their
powers to keep people out of their territories. Their object, though not always
achieved, is to exclude poor people, and especially black people.
The right of free movement across frontiers is not a right enshrined in any
declaration on human rights. Its denial, on the other hand, gives rise to some
of the worst and most vicious abuses of human rights, and provides perhaps
the most fertile terrain for the agitation of the far right. Governments make
use of whatever measures they choose to deter, punish and eject the people
they do not wish to receive in their territories. Frequently they treat them in
ways in which they would not treat their own citizens, and which undermine
accepted norms of liberal democracy, the rule of law and human rights.
On 10 December 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations
proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13–1 of the
declaration states that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and
residence within the borders of each state’, and article 13–2 states that
‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to
return to his country.’ This freedom is qualified by ommission. People may
leave their own country, but the declaration is silent on their right to enter
another one. Unless they can prove they are refugees: article 14 states that
‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from
persecution.’ These asylum rights were incorporated, and given a restrictive
definition, in the 1951 United Nations Geneva Convention on Refugees and
in its 1967 Protocol. They are in theory still operative. But the governments
1
2 Open Borders
of the rich Western countries, more and more, do their utmost to stop
refugees coming to their countries to apply for asylum. They are now talking
of revising the convention to formally curtail those rights. They impose
increasingly harsh suffering on innocent refugees, who have often been
traumatised and tortured, in a partly vain attempt to deter others. In the
process they are flouting other rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration
and in other international agreements on human rights, such as the right
not to be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned and the right not to be subjected
to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (see Chapter 3).
For the rest of humanity, those who are fleeing poverty rather than
political persecution, or who simply want to migrate to improve their lives,
entry into the rich Western countries to settle and to work has since the
1970s become possible only in exceptional circumstances. If they are highly
qualified, and going to particular jobs, and if they are wealthy, they may be
allowed in. If they belong to the immediate family of people already settled in
these countries they may also be allowed in, providing they can surmount
the often brutal obstacles put in their way. If they are citizens of the European
Union they can go and work in another EU country. Within their own
countries they are actively encouraged to move around in search of work. As
Bob Sutcliffe comments in an article in Index on Censorship:
On your bike, as Margaret Thatcher’s minister Norman Tebbitt said, and you are a
saint shining with neo-liberal virtues. On your ferry, and you are a demon against
whom great European democracies change their constitutions in panic.
People trying to cross frontiers in search of work are branded ‘illegal
immigrants’, persecuted and vilified. Sometimes they are simply called
‘illegals’, as if a human being could be categorised as an illegal human being.
The term of abuse most frequently used against refugees themselves is that
they are in reality ‘economic refugees’ rather than political ones and
therefore ‘bogus’, ‘abusing the system’. There is no such thing as the free
movement of labour internationally.
This lack of freedom of movement may be one of the reasons why vast
internationalinequalitiesofwealthpersistandaregrowing.Thewealthof
Europe and other industrialised countries was built, from the sixteenth
century onwards, through the exploitation of the natural resources and
peoples of the rest of the world. Europeans used the labour of conquered
peoplestoproducerawmaterialsandprimaryproductsforconsumptionin
Europe,andtheydestroyedtheindustriesofthemoreadvancedcivilisations
theyencounteredintheirimperialexpansion.Theythenembarkedontheir
own industrialisation and they protected their new industries through
quotas,tariffsandprohibitions.Oncetheyhadestablishedtheirdominance,
they advocated free trade. The methods they used, and use, to prise open
marketsandsecurerawmaterialsthroughouttheworldrangefrommilitary
forcetothemoreobfuscatedpressuresoftheWorldBankandtheInterna-
tionalMonetaryFund.Sincethe1980sthemajorpowershaveembarkedon
Introduction 3
anorgyof‘liberalisation’.Theydemandandhavetoagreatextentachieved
theremovalofcontrolsnotonlyonimportsandexportsofgoods,butalsoon
capitalflows(especiallyoutflows)andinvestment.Accordingtotheeconomic
theoriesusedtojustifythesepolicies,economicliberalisationissupposedto
leadtogreaterwelfareforall.Inrealityithasledtopolarisationandcrisis,as
is the normal observable reality of markets. Although some countries,
especially in East Asia, grew fast in the last 20 years, others have become
poorer.Thegapbetweenthemandtherichercountriesisgrowingwider.
Integration into the world market, together with continuing high levels of
inequality and exploitation, have caused some enterprising people to attempt
to migrate in search of work, as market economics would predict. But the
logic of economic liberalisation has not been applied to the movement of
people. According to this logic, economic liberalisation should of course
include the free movement of labour as well as of goods and capital, and this
in turn, according to market theory, should lead to an equalisation of wage
levels internationally. This might or, more likely, might not turn out to be
the case in reality, just as within countries inequalities persist and often grow
in the so-called ‘free market’ (as a result, free marketeers would say, of
‘market imperfections’). But it is likely that polarisation is aggravated by the
denial of people’s right to move around the world in search of employment
and a better life. The aim of immigration controls is to ensure that there is no
such possibility. They are a market imperfection of an extreme variety, and
one more demonstration that the so-called free market does not in reality
exist. Samir Amin, the celebrated Marxist economist, argued in a lecture at
Wolfson College in Oxford on 23 February 1999 that it is no mere chance
that ‘globalisation’ has not resulted in the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin
America ‘catching up’:
I advance the thesis that polarisation is immanent to the global expansion of capital.
This is because the ‘world market’ in question remains deeply unbalanced by the
single fact that it remains truncated; constantly widening its commercial dimension
(trade in goods and services) and in the domain of international transfer of capital,
this market remains segmented with regard both to labour and to international
migrations of workers which remain subject to controls. ... A real coherent liberal
should insist on the opening of borders in every direction. ... The end result was ... a
globalisation of capital and not of the economy, which, on the contrary, differenti-
ates itself in the centre/periphery dichotomy that continues to worsen. (mimeo copy
of speech)
Yet obtaining labour for the growing needs of capitalist expansion has been
a continuing preoccupation of employers and governments. In their colonies,
though not in the metropolis, they resorted to force to obtain workers, from
the slave trade to indentured labour and forced labour in Africa and India.
After the Second World War, European governments set up recruitment
agencies to obtain foreign workers to work in their own industries and
services. The fact that for most of this period there was net emigration from