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

60 Open Borders
this was a country other than that in which the applicant had applied for
asylum the applicant could be removed to that country. The agreement
caused many problems, and was not ratified by all states until 1997. It fails
to comply with the UN Convention on Refugees, which states that all
signatories are obliged to consider requests for asylum, rather than passing
responsibility to another country. It means that someone whose asylum
application is turned down by one member state is automatically excluded
from the EU as a whole. It also raised questions of ‘burden sharing’. Asylum
seekers who had entered via southern European countries, for example, in
the hope of claiming asylum in other countries where they might have
relatives or communities, could be returned to those southern countries.
Northern governments then had a tendency to say it was the latter’s fault
for allowing them in in the first place, ignoring the fact that they were not
illegal immigrants, but refugees, who had a right to protection.
In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty, officially the Treaty on European Union,
was signed. It came into force in November 1993 and established the
European Union. It had three ‘pillars’ (as in a Greek temple), in which
decisions were to be made jointly by governments and the European
Commission, and could be adopted on a qualified majority. The ‘third pillar’
was concerned with justice and home affairs issues, including free
movement, asylum policy, immigration controls, drug addition, fraud, and
judicial, customs and police cooperation. The treaty failed to secure the goal
of a frontier-free Europe by January 1993, set by the Single Europe Act.
Member states failed to agree on security measures at external frontiers. The
Portuguese, Czech and other governments were reluctant to engage in the
expense of a full system of border controls. Harmonisation of visa and asylum
procedures and the abolition of controls on the movement of third-country
nationals across internal borders were thwarted by governments intent on
preserving sovereignty over their borders, of which the British government
under John Major was the most vociferous. The Conservative government
was supported without qualification by the Labour opposition, whose
shadow foreign secretary Robin Cook proclaimed British immigration
controls to be ‘non-negotiable’. Tory and Labour leaders vied with each other
to prove their commitment to the sanctity of British border controls.
Thatcher was accused by Labour of having ceded sovereignty on this issue
when she signed up to the Single Europe Act, while the Tories maintained
that she had won a cast-iron ‘opt-out’ from any such concession on frontiers.
The flavour of the British position is to be found in an article by Kenneth
Baker, former Conservative home secretary, in the Mail on Sunday of 19
February 1995 headlined ‘Fight for Our Frontiers’, in which he said that:
In my view, the autonomy of a country in policing its borders is just as vital in
preserving national sovereignty as currency or any other matter.
For the first right of any country is who should, and should not, have the privilege
of living in that country. Britain is a sovereign nation, not a hotel. ...