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

Re-open the Borders 155
Hensman wrote to the author, agreeing that ‘immigration controls may lead
to more migrant workers settling down and bringing dependants over’: ‘I
think the same is true of refugees, who by definition are unwilling migrants.
... I feel that many Tamil refugees, for example, would go back now that the
situation has improved, provided they had the option of coming out if it deteriorates
again, since things are still quite unpredictable. Lacking that option
they will stay where they are rather than risk being cast adrift again.’
The predominant fear of the authorities at the moment seems to be not
that there will be mass migration from the Third World, given the costs and
distances involved, but that there will be an unstoppable movement of east
Europeans across land frontiers in Europe. If this is a problem, it is one that
west Europeans have partly imposed on themselves by demanding cuts in
public expenditure to service foreign debt and the privatisation and closure
of state enterprises in east European economies, which have reintroduced
unemployment and extreme destitution in areas where they did not exist.
Nevertheless, except in the case of mass refugee movements such as have
occurred after the break-up of Yugoslavia, the migrants are still likely to be
young and ambitious people, mostly young men, whose labour is in any case
needed. In a few years’ time European countries may again be competing for
such people. Under extreme forms of repression and impoverishment, whole
Roma families have fled across Europe. But they too are a small proportion
of the total Roma population, and are only a few hundreds of people, who
badly need protection and sympathy. It could be argued that many millions
more people should migrate to seek refuge or a chance of economic
betterment in the rich countries of the West. But it will not happen.
IMMIGRATION AND JOBS, WAGES AND CONDITIONS
It is in any case doubtful whether the prevention or reduction of immigration
would serve the interests of the rich countries. Those who believe in the
necessity of immigration controls often argue that, without them, the jobs
and living standards of existing residents would be threatened. The
governments of rich countries claim that their concern is about ‘economic
refugees’, those who migrate to work or, allegedly, to live off the welfare state.
Since governments turn down most asylum applications, they claim in effect
that most people who migrate to Europe do so for economic rather than
political reasons. The great majority of those who migrate to Europe,
including refugees, would of course like to work. The governments’ favoured
category of people, the ‘genuine refugees’, might perhaps be supposed to be
more willing to live on welfare benefits, because of their desperation, than
those who are in governments’ terms ‘bogus’. But those who migrate to
Europe for economic reasons, which means these days either those who have
desired skills, or clandestine migrants, or perhaps some who claim falsely to
be asylum seekers, do not do so in order to live off welfare benefits. People