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

152 Open Borders
rather than of the peoples of the world as a whole. It is taken for granted that
the former should take precedence. The governments and peoples of the rich
countries see nothing immoral about arguing (whether or not this is in fact
the case) that immigration controls are necessary to preserve their special
privileges. Instead, it is somehow considered immoral for people to cross
national frontiers to seek work or even refuge. And governments are
prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to stop them doing so. It is from the
denial of people’s rights to travel to and settle in the place of their choice that
some of the worst abuses of human rights in Western liberal democracies
have sprung.
IMMIGRATION CONTROLS DO NOT WORK
If freedom to migrate meant that movements of people were so large that
they led to catastrophic disruption, chaos and decline in living standards in
the rich countries, then, however admirable the ideal, it would be understandable
that it should be opposed. But the abolition of immigration
controls, although it would doubtless lead to some increase in migration,
would not have an overwhelming effect on numbers. This is, first, because
immigration controls do not work. In spite of the ever-increasing paraphernalia
of repressive measures, during the 1990s the numbers of asylum
seekers have remained roughly constant. European governments and their
officials are beginning to recognise that immigration controls will never be
made to work. They are engaged in a last-ditch defence of what remains of
national sovereignty, in a period of growing power of international private
capital. The attempt to maintain freedom of movement for capital and
prevent the movement of labour will not indefinitely resist the pressures of
so-called ‘globalisation’. The water metaphors commonly applied to
immigrants can be applied to controls: controls are like a dam; when one
hole is blocked, another one appears somewhere else. Migrants and those
who facilitate their migration resort to staggering feats of ingenuity, courage
and endurance to assert their right to move and to flee. The question is how
much suffering will be imposed on innocent people, and how much racism
will be stoked up, in a vain attempt to deny the right to freedom of movement
before governments finally abandon the effort.
Second, officials despair at their inability to deport people. Having put
refugees and migrants through months and sometimes years of suffering and
uncertainty, possibly in detention centres and prisons, governments then
cannot deport the great majority of those to whom they refuse the right to
stay. This is because the governments of their countries of origin will not
provide them with papers or agree to readmit them, because they have
developed family links in Europe, because they cannot be found, or even
because protesters succeed in stopping their air flights. There are not enough
detention centres to lock up all those whose cases are turned down, and most