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

Border Controls 63
The most substantial of all these arrangements is that between Germany and Poland
signed on 7 May 1993. From 1993 to 1996, Germany spent DM 120 million on
‘financing material and equipment along Poland’s western border and creating a
Polish administrative system for refugees and deportation’. Now, the interest of
German authorities has spread further eastward to strengthening Poland’s border
with the Ukraine and Belarus. ...
It is important to note that none of these readmission agreements contain any
criteria for dealing with asylum seekers and refugees as opposed to illegal migrants in
general, or mention the state’s obligation towards refugees under international law.
Germany regards all of its neighbours, including Poland and the Czech Republic, as
‘safe places’ to return refugees interdicted at the border. ... 1,453 of those bounced
back to Poland were subsequently deported from Poland to its eastern neighbours
(Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine) or directly back to countries of origin (such as
Sri Lanka), mostly within 48 hours of being arrested. The concern ... is that the
‘domino effect’ of chain removal can result in refoulement to persecution.
Nevertheless there are signs that, even at semi-official levels, there is greater
openness towards the idea of immigration. A group of academics, the
Academic Group on [Im]migration – Tampere (AGIT), whose comments
were invited by the EU before its summit at Tampere in October 1999,
produced a document which recommended that, in response to ‘realities’,
‘new legal channels of immigration based on economic, social and other
needs should be created, in line with the European Union Member States’
own positive approach to the freedom of movement between them for
economic purposes’ and talked of ‘necessary and useful labour migration’. At
a Refugee Studies Programme seminar at Oxford University in 1999, the
speaker was Dennis de Jong, who worked for several years in the European
Commission and then returned to the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs. He
concluded his speech with the comments that, while this ‘whole range of
restrictive measures’ had had a small effect on reducing numbers of asylum
applications, the numbers were now rising again. His belief was that
governments ‘recognise that they won’t work’, since they go against the
grain of globalisation, and they might therefore decide to ‘give it all up’. He
proposed that governments should ‘give some air to immigration’ and should
not condemn economic migrants. North Africans, he said, had argued that
free movement should be permitted; the French government was now willing
to engage in discussions on the issue. In answer to the question why not
abolish controls altogether, he said that EU governments were fearful of
opening their borders to eastern Europe, but North Africa was a different
matter; the opening of borders from North Africa was on the agenda, in
particular because of the impossibility of returning ‘illegals’. ‘It will happen’,
he said. Meanwhile, European officials suggest that there will have to be at
least some relaxation of immigration controls in order to take the pressure off
the asylum determination system. The Dutch government is discussing the
possibility of giving all asylum seekers three-year permits to stay, and
examining their cases thereafter. Fortress Europe is not impregnable.