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

Refugees: Tightening the Screw 65
least to reduce their numbers, their stated objective is to keep out not refugees,
but people who they claim are economic migrants posing as refugees. Thus
‘genuine’ refugees are okay, but ‘bogus’ asylum seekers and ‘economic
migrants’ are to be cracked down on.
The claims that most asylum seekers are ‘bogus’ are grossly unjust. The
Home Office, for example, turns down 96 per cent of the initial applications
of Sri Lankans. As Rohini Hensman comments in Journey Without a
Destination, based on many interviews with Sri Lankan refugees:
If there is no fear of persecution, why do hundreds of thousands of Tamils suddenly
decide to leave Sri Lanka? The Home Office explanation, apparently, is that they are
in search of better jobs and economic prospects. In the case of Sri Lankan refugees,
this is really the ultimate irony. Those who have been able to get to Britain are
precisely those who come from relatively affluent families in Sri Lanka, most of which
own at least their own home, and often additional land as well. ...
The idea that all these people with a comfortable standard of living in Sri Lanka,
and sometimes with prestigious, high status jobs too, should come to Britain
voluntarily in order to be unemployed, or to do unskilled jobs in petrol stations, shops
or other workplaces, is grotesque. The media as well as the politicians who repeat this
story ad nauseam are either shamefully ignorant (‘shamefully’ because they ought to
make sure they are better informed before making statements in public), or even more
shamefully dishonest, spreading untruths which they know will be used as a pretext
for vicious attacks on helpless people.
This is not to imply that there is anything wrong in coming to Britain in search of
employment or economic security. But the fact is that for Sri Lankan refugees, the
very opposite is the case: most of them come to Britain leaving employment, property,
status and economic security because their lives are at risk; and the allegation that
they are economic migrants who have left their country voluntarily must be exposed
for the contemptible lie that it is.
Who is considered to be a ‘genuine’ refugee, and who is not, is entirely within
the discretion of governments. Governments can vary the numbers of people
they accept for settlement without infringing the various conventions on
refugees, since these theoretically guarantee the right to seek and enjoy
asylum, but not the right to obtain it. The British and other governments’
assertions that most asylum seekers are bogus is based simply on the fact
that they turn down most of their claims. Thus the Conservative home
secretary Michael Howard, asked in the House of Commons on 20 April
1995 for an estimate of the numbers of ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bogus
asylum seekers’ currently in the United Kingdom, replied as follows:
There are no official estimates of the number of illegal immigrants into the United
Kingdom. By its very nature, illegal immigration is difficult to measure and any
estimates would be highly speculative. It is also difficult to estimate the precise extent
of the abuse of asylum, but in 1994, around 80 per cent of asylum decisions,
amounting to some 16,000, were outright refusals.