Don't let New Labour divide and rule

If you can’t beat them, you can always imitate them. That was the message yesterday from prime minister Gordon Brown when he returned to his “British Jobs for British workers” theme in a speech on immigration.

New Labour is clearly intending to oppose the neo-fascist British National Party by stealing some of their rhetoric and policies. That’s the only explanation for Brown’s “get tough” speech on immigration– his first on the subject since becoming prime minister – and home secretary Alan Johnson’s “admission” that the government has “got it wrong” on the issue.

Not that New Labour has been soft on asylum seekers, refugees and people wanting to work in Britain. Since 1997 there have been no fewer than seven major pieces of legislation that one way or another target immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Only last month the government implemented significant cuts to the amount of money it currently gives to asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their claim. Rates were set at 70% of income support. But from October 5, single destitute asylum seekers over 25, received even less, with rates falling from £42.16 to £35.13 per week. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, so are restricted to the amount set by the government.

Yesterday Brown announced that more than 250,000 skilled engineering, care and catering jobs are to be closed to non-European overseas workers next year and that local vacancies should as far as possible go to local recruits. Foreign students will also find it tougher to get into Britain.

A draft immigration bill published after Brown’s speech included proposals to replace the deportation process with a general power to expel failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants. Families who have been told to leave but who are unable to be returned will have cash welfare payments replaced with a plastic pre-paid card while others will lose benefits altogether.

Refuge and Migrant Justice said that buried in the bill was provision to give ministers the power to overrule bail decisions made by judges in immigration and asylum cases.

Donna Covey, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council and Chair of the Asylum Support Partnership said: “We are appalled that the government has moved to cut support to asylum seekers, who are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Of course, these are hard times for everybody and no-one should receive preferential treatment, but we must remember that many of these people have experienced torture, persecution, war and human rights abuses and most live in already deeply impoverished circumstances.”

Unlike bankers, asylum seekers and refugees have no clout and are easy targets for unscrupulous politicians who are queuing up to play the race card during the run-up to the general election. The money the state will save is miniscule compared to the vast sums spent on bail-outs. Cynically, New Labour is playing to the right-wing press and trying to win voters away from the BNP by showing it can “get tough” on the most vulnerable. This is nothing but scapegoating in search of votes.

Meanwhile, thousands of people continue to lose their jobs in the banking sector while BT is axing 15,000 from its payroll. The merger between British Airways and Iberia will undoubtedly lead to a jobs massacre. Millions have been forced into part-time working or taken pay cuts to avoid joining the dole queue. None of this is to do with immigration and everything to do with the global crisis of capitalism. The old trick of divide and rule is being used by New Labour to divert attention away from our common enemy – the bankers and corporations who between them have produced the greatest economic disaster in history.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Unions should act on asylum rights

The sinister underside of New Labour’s racist, dehumanising immigration policy came to light at a trade union and community conference over the weekend. It is a Kafkaesque world of state-organised disappearances, unlimited detention, rapid expulsions, exploitation and destitution designed to divide communties and win cheap votes at election time.

Real life experiences related to the conference make a mockery of the claim by New Labour’s Border and Immigration Agency chief Lin Homer last week that: "We operate a firm but humane system, supporting those who are vulnerable with accommodation and assistance.” She was responding to the publication of a year-long investigation by the Independent Asylum Commission , led by an ex-senior judge, John Waite which said that “treatment of some asylum seekers was a shameful blemish on the UK’s international reputation”.

Speakers at Saturday’s conference included a representative from the All African Women’s Group based at Crossroads Women’s Centre, and asylum seekers Robinson Baldeon and Alphonsus Okafor-Mefor. They and others from around the country painted a grim picture which backed up the detailed research published by the Asylum Commission, but also documented how asylum seekers are courageously organising, inside and outside detention centres, to defend their rights.

John McDonnell MP, whose constituency includes the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres, revealed some of the most grotesque aspects of government policy. He believes that more than 800 people are currently being held at these two locations alone, although no one knows the exact figures. Some migrant workers are being picked up by immigration authorities and police and handcuffed while signing on at Job Centres. Some are even taking suitcases with them when they go to sign on in fear of arrest and deportation.

McDonnell denounced the sinister tactics adopted by the immigration authorities, which meant that those he and other MPs were trying to help often simply disappeared off the radar: “Often the only appeals which the authorities recognise at all are from MPs, but people are being shifted around the country. It is extremely difficult to find where they have been taken and MPs like myself are often told that the asylum seeker is no longer in their constituency, so that they cannot represent them.” There was an entire separate population sleeping rough, some in churches, some on friend’s floors or in the open, and a policy of brutality to young people who can now also be deported before they reach the age of 18, McDonnell said. He called on the trade unions to recruit asylum seekers and mount a national campaign on their behalf.

Alphonsus Okafor-Mefor showed the reality of the statistic that four out of every ten asylum seekers are destitute. Thanks to his own determination and community support, Alphonsus managed to receive “leave to remain”, but he said that the life of an asylum seeker was a “life of despair and hopelessness, with no right to work, medical care, good accommodation or education”. The experience of detention debased humanity, he said. “I am one of thousands who don’t have the chance to speak out.”

Robinson Baldeon, a refugee from Ecuador, said that as an “illegal” worker “it is a crime to go sick”. The 90,000 Ecuadorians who live in the UK are “invisible”, he added. Another speaker said that a woman had been held for four days in a police cell near Victoria station, without legal representation, money, adequate food, or chance to shower before being secretly deported. Under the new “fast-track” system, Britain is reportedly deporting one asylum seeker every eight minutes.

And it is not only the government which is denying basic rights to immigrant workers. Chinese workers in central London, who recently held a demonstration against dawn raids, want to hold a rally in Trafalgar Square. Jabez Lam from Chinese Immigration Concern Committee (CICC) said that Greater London Authority officials had told him that it was only possible to hold a rally in the square if there was a “special reason” and if the organisers took out a public liabilities insurance policy of £80,000.

Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win