Come to Britain?

Controlled immigration was the topic on Beyond Westminster on Radio Four yesterday and the usual voices with the usual lines were on it: Britain is the most densely populated nation in there’s a big Europe; difference between refugees and economic migrants; 70 million the magic population figure; the populations bulge; permanent vs temporary migrants; the jobs market and it’s fluctuations; what impact the recession; whether to use a points system to choose or to put a blanket cap on it; immigrants coming, working for less and taking the jobs of the local population; illegal immigrants; the benefits of their arrival set against the problems.  Damnit, they even had the BNP on. It was reasonably well researched and quite balanced, and ultimately, a pretty thorough programme.  Yet, as always in these debates / discussions, they missed one of the chief points on the matter.

For a start, it was a rather one sided debate: that economic migrants are coming here en masse and something must be done about almost all voices were talking of “them” coming here, and “we” having to deal with it.  Secondly, we heard all about “economic migrants” coming from the former Soviet Bloc, and occasionally Africa and the Subcontinent of India, not from the pre-2004 EU states, nor North America, China, Japan, alluding by ommission to a degree of xenophobia in the definition of what an economic migrant is, and the term illegal immigrant was neither challenged nor defined.

Moving to the major matters, the Class issue is vital.  While mentioned, the debate failed to concentrate on the matter – suggested by the report from Peterborough, but brought up only in the last few minutes, and not particularly satisfactorily discussed.  This idea that a “they” are coming over here and unfairly taking the jobs of British people by being willing to work for less, providing employers with a handy number and reducing people’s chance of getting a fair wage was also stirred about a little.  Yet no-one thought to note that this has always been happening, and that it continues to occur as a matter of course in the free market, regardless of immigration.  One obvious example is the exploitation by some employers of the place of interns, apprentices, and first time job seekers is a perfect example of this happening.  Indeed, this is the level at which the bulk of the problems occur – entry level jobs.  Generally when people are coming in on a skills based CV, they are earning the same as their indigenous peers, if not more to compensate for the trauma of moving.  It is in jobs like security, shop hand, machine worker, fruit pickers, etc. – the basic unskilled labour market seasonal and durational – where this matter is significant.  And what has been the mainstay employment of students and teenagers and people entering the market for the first time? Nobody saw fit to point out that middle class teenagers are coming into these areas to earn some handy money while in Uni, willing to work for less and are ultimately very disposable in legal terms – it works well for the kid going to Uni, it works well for the employer, but the worker relying on that job is losing out – their wage is kept artificially low by the nature of the market, and the proliferation of a continually renewed disposable market ensures that job security is completely at the discretion of the employer.

Most significantly within the show, there was almost no suggestion of the place of a responsibility towards those outside British (more properly speaking pre 2004 EU) shores beyond the Geneva Convention on Refugees (regarding political asylum), and the needs of the Market.  Amazingly the voice that came close to mentioning what I feel to be the most important matter was Simon Darby, the deputy leader of the BNP.  He “spoke of the looting the third world of all their best people.”  Needless to say, he got it backward.  Thanks to the colonial history of this country, and of imperial Europe in general, vast tracts of the world have already been looted of their natural resources for the good of their conquerors – initially the aristocracy, before the trickle down to the mercantile and middle classes, and finally down to the workers on a reduced and belated scale.  Needless to say, regardless of the level that these piracies were most benefical towards, the economy of the pirate nation state was also gaining.  After that reduction, and what were generally poorly conducted withdrawals in the 1950s and 60s by these crumbling powers, arbitrary domains of convenience to their former masters, marketed to the local peoples as de facto nation states had little chance of an economic future, especially when the price of that independence was often the continued control of the resources by corporations from the former overlords, already grown fat on the profit of these people’s labour.

And to this, we have added a new layer of exploitation.  We have crippled these “countries” economically by pillaging its resources, and we continue to pillage them.  Firstly by exploiting a labour force – starved of hard currency and unable in some cases to buy their native resources from a foreign corporation – compelling them to work in sweat shops and in jobs pulled from the company’s home country to find a cheaper alternative, often holding the host government to ransome for tax breaks, access to further resources and low rent, forever under threat of a sudden withdrawal.  Secondly, by relying on them to produce en masse the resources, products and services that are as opiate to the masses of the underclasses in lands of the old powers, ensuring that they do not challenge the system.  Thirdly by being a form of economic villain, either “destroying our industry” by having lower overheads for factories and a cheaper labourforce in broad terms, or in specifics coming over and “stealing our jobs” in person.  And finally, by promising a lifestyle similar to that on the films and television so aggressively marketed to them, film and television that tends not to point out the realities of how one is treated as an immigrant, especially one with a different skin tone or language, we set them up to break their spirit more comprehensively that we had ever managed with executions and curfews.

In many cases these people are refugees.  Like their political and religious counterparts over the years, they are forced to seek asylum in a different state in order to be able to live a life in full accordance with the UN Charter of Human rights, but on an economic basis.  These are the economic refugees.  And like the Irish in the 1840s, German Jews in the 1930s, Ugandan dissenters in the 1980s, they are not the worst off that can travel, but those who can.  These are the economic refugees fleeing from the economic oppression that has been inflicted upon them by the former great powers – we have built our riches on their resources, and their labour.  The scale may be different in different countries, but that does not dillute their status.  We desire to continue to benefit by our relationship with them, and yet we feel little responsibility to them.  I don’t believe in apologising endlessly for the sins of our forefathers, especially where it was the few who made (and continue to make) undemocratic decisions on behalf of the many.  However, we who come from Western Europe, North America and certain other spots dotted around the world, we continue to benefit on a daily basis from these petty exploitations, and to feel that we owe them nothing is to subscribe to a version of the old Nazi concept of the Untermenschen.

Tags: BNP, Britain, Capitalism, class, Economics, free market, Hypocracy, Immigration, imperialism, migration, refugee, responsibility, sweatshops, U.N., work, xenophobia