Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

78 Open Borders
4 inhumanely denies refugees the means to live,
5 creates the unprincipled and impractical white list,
6 removes the right of appeal to third country decisions.
They then quoted a number of business sources arguing against making it
a criminal offence to employ people without entitlement to work in Britain,
and pointed out that ‘Far from saving money, the withdrawal of benefits may
actually lead to an increase in costs’, that more people who applied for
asylum after entry were granted asylum than those who applied immediately
on entry, and that the policy was inhumane.
Once in government Labour proceeded to do the same, and worse. Its
promises of clearing up the ‘shambles’ of Conservative immigration and
asylum policy were, wrongly, taken by some to mean that it would institute
procedures which would improve the situation of asylum seekers and
ameliorate the harshness, arbitrariness and long delays of the system. In July
1998, a year after the Labour government took office and after much delay,
it produced a white paper which confirmed fears that in reality the Labour
government would be harsher in its treatment of asylum seekers than its
predecessor was. The white paper, laughably entitled Fairer, Faster and
Firmer – A Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum, included provisions
to deny welfare benefits to all asylum seekers rather than to some of them
and substitute food vouchers and one ‘no choice’ offer of accommodation,
and other measures to toughen procedures. There was a period of ‘consultation’,
during which a large volume of reasoned objections were put forward
by organisations which support refugees, including the Refugee Council,
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) and Amnesty International.
The Refugee Council, in particular, believed that a public campaign
would jeopardise their access to ministers behind closed doors. Their representations
went almost completely unheeded. The white paper was turned
into a bill which went to the House of Commons early in 1999. No Labour
MP voted against the bill at its second reading on 22 February 1999, and
only Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn abstained; all the Liberal Democrats and
two Scottish Nationalists voted against it. Labour MPs were told they could
only be on the committee to debate the bill if they voted for it; their criticisms
in committee, and those of Liberal Democrats and some Tories from the left,
achieved minimal concessions, including an increase in asylum seekers’
weekly cash allowance to £10. The concessions were nevertheless said to
have mollified the rebels. At the bill’s third reading on 16 June 1999 it was
passed by 310 votes to 41. The 41 included seven Labour MPs and one Plaid
Cymru MP; all the others, and the two tellers, were Liberal Democrats. The
major revolt, which some Labour MPs predicted would eclipse the resistance
to cuts in welfare benefits, thus failed to materialise. On 20 October 1999
the House of Lords passed an amendment, voted for by 161 peers of whom
104 were Tories, to the effect that normal welfare benefits should be restored
until the government had met its own six-month target for processing