Green Party Leader opposes Government approach to immigration.
The Government's Crackdown on Illegal Immigration Will Benefit Nobody - Natalie Bennett.
This week, the government announced plans to crack down on illegal immigration, introducing a raft of measures which include confiscating the wages of those who work in the UK without a visa.
These plans do nothing but illustrate the government's lack of compassion, lack of perspective and ultimately their lack of will to genuinely address the economic anxieties of the people of Britain.
The measures Cameron has announced will criminalise those working here illegally, allow their wages to be seized, and expand the scope of the 'deport first, appeal later' system. They are designed to appease the government's critics as the ONS revealed that net migration has risen to 380,000 - another clear failure of the government to meet its own arbitrary target. The new policy announcement, however, is at best totally illogical: the figures announced yesterday are for legal immigration, and will not be affected in the slightest by tightening laws on illegal immigration.
At worst, however, this is the most dangerous kind of scapegoating; linking overall immigration figures in both the media and the public consciousness with illegality reinforces the already pervasive idea that all immigrants are somehow illegitimate, needing constant supervision and strict regulation.
These measures are also deeply worrying in that they represent a significant step-up in the government's willingness to force those who are 'undeserving' into poverty. Thus far, they have been content to steadily withdraw benefits, refusing to help many of those who need it on the grounds that that help has not been earned. Now, however, they are going further: confiscating earnings on the grounds that they should not have been earned in the first place. These policies are the product of a party more concerned with appeasing anti-immigrant sentiment than on ensuring the well-being of the people it governs.
In the end, this policy will benefit nobody. Not those who are trapped, often through no fault of their own or through life events that might happen to any of us, in irregular immigration status; not those who are here legally and find themselves increasingly branded as a problem; and not the British-born workers whose wages are being depressed not by migration but by the failure of big businesses to pay their staff a living wage - and the failure of the government to make them.
This is a victory only for ignorance - a victory of rhetoric over logic, of posturing over compassion. It is a victory for those who seek to demonise immigrants, who seek to pull up Britain's drawbridge and banish diversity from our society.
If we are to really address people's concerns about immigration, we need to do two things. First, recognise and communicate that pressures on schools, hospitals and other public services are not the result of immigration but of harsh government cuts; that wages are low not because of foreign-born workers but because our welfare system and low minimum wage subsidies companies, allowing them to pay inadequate wages; and that jobs are not 'stolen' by migrants but are lost when the government fails to invest in industries and public services. And second, we need to create an immigration policy that is fair and compassionate, that does not discriminate, and that allows people to feel invested in our society instead of alienated from it.
I agree with the views expressed in this blog, but I feel there is a need to frame it as a convincing argument as to why the Green party approach is not only more humane but also in the interests of our society and people as individuals. It is not enough to appeal only to justice. Please refer to the following article:
ReplyDeleteDon Flynn 26/5/15 ‘Cameron’s new crusade against criminal wage-workers’ at CLASS (Centre for Labour and Social Studies). In this piece Flynn points out how this legislation is also aimed at giving messages about the sort of person who is acceptable in the Britain Cameron wants to build. So the debate about migration also carries a hidden agenda.
I would add that this also can be linked to the continuation of repressive legislation against unions, the attempt to disempower workers through privatization, the attrition of human rights in the name of fighting terrorism, the steamrollering of local communities into accepting fracking. In other words this bears upon the lives of all of us and if we take no notice and do nothing we will find ourselves in an Aldous Huxley world.
I am sure that policies need to be explained in terms of how they effect people personally and individually, or how they affect their view of the kind of society they want their children to live in.
There is also greater need to base Green arguments in hard evidence. Do we know the figures on illegal immigration? Do we know why legal immigration is taking place and in what numbers? These figures are readily available and we need some graft somewhere in the Green Party to get basic research done, otherwise our policies will ever by wish lists based upon some intuitive concept of justice. I don’t think that will persuade those who are not taking the Green Party seriously.
On the other hand we need to be aware of the other side of the argument and I think that Migration Watch is one place to see what these are (Migration Watch also has latest figures, as does Office for National Statistics).
More later
Chris Heywood
Link to Don Flynn article: http://classonline.org.uk/about/authors/don-flynn
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