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

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Refugees: Tightening the Screw 101 workplaces and street searches resulted in a doubling of the number of illegal immigrants caught between 1993 and 1994. Under Labour’s new act powers are to be extended to immigration officers to check, presumably in the street as well as elsewhere, the immigration status of people who are already within Britain, rather than merely at frontiers. The withdrawal of benefits and the consequent destitution of many asylum seekers itself has the potential to criminalise them, to turn them and their children into social outcasts and to drive them into begging or worse. When refugees are detained, this means in the eyes of many that they are criminals; hence the banners, made by protesters inside and outside Campsfield immigration detention centre for example, proclaiming ‘REFUGEES ARE NOT CRIMINALS’. Deportations are on the increase, and sometimes involve considerable violence against asylum seekers. In May 1999 Aamir Mohammed Ageeb, a Sudanese asylum seeker, died when border police at Frankfurt airport put shackles on his hands and feet and forced a motor-bike helmet onto his head. Frances Webber in Crimes of Arrival says: Deportations of rejected asylum seekers have involved the use of sedative injections, straitjackets, stretchers, face masks, handcuffs, leg irons, surgical tape. Face masks were introduced in the Netherlands after surgical tape wound round the head and face of a Romanian deportee resulted in his suffering brain damage. ... After the death of Kola Bankole in Germany, while being sedated for deportation, the Nigerian embassy accused the German authorities of responsibility for 25 such deaths. Several dozen Zairean deportees were said to have been handcuffed and bound with tape throughout their journey, on two specially chartered planes, from France. The appeal of special chartered flights for deportation is obvious; passengers travelling to a third world destination for profit or pleasure don’t want to see distraught deportees, sometimes shouting, lashing out and having to be restrained, or already under restraint, drugged or bound and gagged. They might be moved to intervene, as passengers have on occasion, refusing to travel unless deportees were taken off the plane. ... The entry into force of the Schengen agreement resulted in the first joint mass deportation, in which the French, Dutch and German authorities chartered a plane to deport 44 Zaireans, in the spirit of solidarity and burden-sharing. After Bankole’s death the German Medical Council issued a statement warning doctors that those who sanction forced deportations are in breach of medical ethical codes; its president stated that ‘all measures using direct force are a danger to life and, as such, constitute bodily harm’, and warned the government not to resort to sedation. The World Doctors’ Association passed a resolution which states that ‘If somebody resists, one is not allowed to make him fit for travel with drugs.’ Some protesters resort to the tactic of persuading pilots and passengers to refuse to fly with deportees. French protesters have engaged with the Air France trade unions, and Belgians have demonstrated in airports to persuade passengers to refuse to sit down until deportees have been removed from planes.
102 Open Borders The more measures governments introduce to detect and punish asylum seekers and other migrants, the more elaborate, ingenious and expensive the countermeasures by refugees have to become. Their only alternative to this is to stay where they are and face possible imprisonment, torture and death. And the more the dangers and the controls, the greater the potential for exploitation. There are of course examples of friends and family members organising escapes. Some of the agents who organise the procurement of false passports and other aspects of escape may act more like travel agents than criminals, even possibly with humanitarian purpose. Jeremy Harding in his London Review of Books article ‘The Uninvited’ (now a book) describes with admiration the exploits of the scafisti or boatmen who evade coastguards to land refugees and migrants safely in Italy. But refugees are often forced to put their lives in the hands of unscrupulous people, most of whom act for profit. One estimate of the total annual income derived by those who profit from organising escape and migration, quoted by John Morrison in The Cost of Survival, is that it is between US$5 and US$7 billion a year. The British authorities triggered this industry in the 1950s, when their attempts to persuade the Indian government not to issue passports to intending migrants resulted in the creation of forged passports, which were sold in Indian villages. Governments are themselves responsible for the growth of the international criminal networks which they condemn. These in turn exploit people desperate to flee, and sometimes cause extreme hardship for them. One of the consequences is a growth in media stories which, while exposing scandals, also have the effect of further feeding prejudice against migrants and asylum seekers. The Daily Mail of 24 November 1998 carried an article on a ‘Briton, “the Godfather of human smuggling”’, alleging that he had smuggled 12,000 Indians into the United States and ‘netted £133 million in just three years’. Their journeys ‘often took months or even years’; ‘Once inside America they were kept in houses until relatives paid the £17,500 smuggling fee. Those who failed to pay were expected to work off their debt. The [US Immigration and Nationality Service] said it had a list of 1,000 US employers who used the illegal immigrants as a form of cheap labour.’ The Guardian of 12 October 1999 reported that four members of a Chinese gang were convicted of taking part in an extortion racket in which immigrants were kept prisoner and beaten in order to extract money from their relatives in Chinese villages, although they had already paid up to £18,750 to be brought to Britain. The Guardian of 18 May 1999 carried a full-page article entitled ‘Highway robbery’, which described the ‘sinister effect’ of lorry drivers’ financial problems: ‘they are causing a boom in the secret trade in contraband and refugees from mainland Europe’. Some lorry drivers, the article said, stick to ‘beer and baccy’; but others are tempted by the larger sums available for smuggling drugs and people. A random 3 per cent of incoming lorries are diverted to ‘the pride and joy of Eurotunnel security, Britain’s biggest X-ray machine’. If the drivers get caught, even if
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OPEN BORDERS The Case Against Immig
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CONTENTS Preface to the First Editi
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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION This b
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION The f
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Preface to the Second Edition xi Th
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Preface to the Second Edition xiii
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Preface to the Second Edition xv An
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Preface to the Second Edition xvii
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Preface to the Second Edition xix o
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Preface to the Second Edition xxi a
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Preface to the Second Edition xxiii
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Preface to the Second Edition xxv r
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INTRODUCTION Human beings have migr
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Introduction 3 an orgy of ‘libera
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Introduction 5 of people coming fro
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Introduction 7 merely led to demand
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 9 fo
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 11 I
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 13 o
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 15 p
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 17 i
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Migration, and Migratory Myths 19 T
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2 BORDER CONTROLS RACISM Many, prob
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Border Controls 23 Mrs Thatcher’s
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Border Controls 25 some 80,000 Prot
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Border Controls 27 be a blessing fo
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Border Controls 29 abilities or ski
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Border Controls 31 streets for fear
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Border Controls 33 MP for Dover had
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Border Controls 35 black people and
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Border Controls 37 efforts to contr
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Border Controls 39 more crucially,
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Border Controls 41 But Labour’s i
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Border Controls 43 Sir Edward Boyle
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Border Controls 45 when asked about
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Border Controls 47 Even, it was arg
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Border Controls 49 whelmingly as yo
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Page 78 and 79: Border Controls 53 middle class the
Page 80 and 81: Border Controls 55 the guestworker
Page 82 and 83: Border Controls 57 entitled only th
Page 84 and 85: Border Controls 59 detention centre
Page 86 and 87: Border Controls 61 Any Colombian, R
Page 88 and 89: Border Controls 63 The most substan
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Page 92 and 93: Refugees: Tightening the Screw 67 s
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Page 160 and 161: Resistance 135 had made. Abdul then
Page 162 and 163: Resistance 137 movement against rac
Page 164 and 165: Resistance 139 1994 by Sir William
Page 166 and 167: Resistance 141 In the 1950s and 196
Page 168 and 169: Resistance 143 have been many organ
Page 170 and 171: Resistance 145 victory and, some ar
Page 172 and 173: Resistance 147 • The arguments wh
Page 174 and 175: 5 RE-OPEN THE BORDERS IMMIGRATION C
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Re-open the Borders 151 comparable
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Re-open the Borders 153 countries a
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Re-open the Borders 155 Hensman wro
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Re-open the Borders 157 maintain th
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Re-open the Borders 159 levels of i
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Re-open the Borders 161 IMMIGRATION
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Re-open the Borders 163 over £5,00
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Re-open the Borders 165 and the maf
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Re-open the Borders 167 goods and s
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Re-open the Borders 169 Subsequentl
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Re-open the Borders 171 public assi
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APPENDIX: MANIFESTO OF THE NO ONE I
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Appendix 175 state. Under immigrati
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Appendix 177 tions - that is the tr
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Appendix 179 Second, we are critica
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Appendix 181 and that both have a s
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Appendix 183 In France the sans-pap
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Bibliography 185 Cohen, S. (1988),
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Bibliography 187 Kindleberger, C. P
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ORGANISATIONS AND CAMPAIGNS Amnesty
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Organisations and Campaigns 191 Imm
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INDEX Abbott, Diane MP 85, 111 acco
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Index 195 demonstrations/protests 2
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Index 197 International Covenant on
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Index 199 racist violence 24, 25, 2
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Index 201 Women Against Rape (WAR)/
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Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

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