New Labour have launched a veritable war on asylum seekers over the last few weeks, ably helped by their friends in the media. This government is preparing for the biggest assault on the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees that this country has ever seen, with the fourth "crack down" on asylum and immigration that we have seen in a decade.
The response of New Labour to the rise of the far right across Europe is to repeat the lies of the racists. But such a pandering to prejudice by the governmental parties is partly responsible for the growth of the BNP and their like in other countries in the first place.
Their racist and reactionary policies give credibility to the idea that asylum seekers are to blame for the real problems that other poor people experience – unemployment, bad housing, lack of services. In fact migrants contributed more in taxes in the financial year 1999-2000 than they used in services.
We need to build on campaigns like that in Sighthill in Glasgow, where after the murder of a young Kurdish asylum seeker the local community united with the asylum seekers who had been dumped in the area, behind the banner Sighthill United against Racism and Poverty.
Blair and Blunkett don’t tell us that Britain takes far fewer asylum seekers than much poorer countries like Iraq and Pakistan.
The press doesn’t point out that the number of refugees and immigrants who came to Britain last year make up a minuscule 0.12 % of the population and that the number of people seeking asylum in Britain fell last year.
Armed by Britain
Nor are we reminded that many refugees and asylum seekers – fleeing from wars our government has backed, or that have been fought with arms sold by Britain are being locked up in soul-destroying immigration prisons.
And those that are fleeing poverty and starvation are also often running from the effects of policies imposed by governments of the rich and powerful countries and the institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, which they control.
Globalisation has meant an increasing gap between rich and poor. Structural adjustment has led both to the decimation of what little public services existed in many parts of the world, but also to mass starvation as crops are diverted to export in order to pay off debts, rather than to feed local people.
But then when refugees and asylum seekers flee this devastation in search of a better life – sometimes in search of any life, they are met with draconian laws and with racism.
Already under the previous law brought in by new Labour:
Asylum seekers, including women and children, are imprisoned in detention centres and prisons though they are not accused of any crime
Although the hated voucher system is being abolished, people are left to live on only 70% of impossibly low income support levels.
Asylum seekers are being forcibly moved to parts of the country where they are isolated from their own communities and have no support services.
The proposals in the new Immigration and Asylum Bill currently going through parliament are even worse.
u As well as increasing the number of people who are in detention so that at any one time 4000 people will be imprisoned,
u They want to segregate children of asylum seekers into separate schools
u They plan to use the RAF to beef up deportations, and the navy to police the seas
u They seek to disperse children and young people who have fled to this country on their own.
u The immigration service is being told that it can reject applications from particular countries – reintroducing the Tories’ hated "white list" (which Labour opposed when they were in opposition) through the back door.
u Quotas are being set for the numbers of deportations.
But the fight back is only just beginning. …