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ARCHIVIO >
THE
MANIFESTO OF THE NO ONE IS ILLEGAL GROUP
(UK)
NO
ONE IS ILLEGAL!
FOR
A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS!
NO IMMIGRATION CONTROLS!
Defend
the outlaw!
Immigration
controls should be abolished. People should
not be deemed 'illegal' because they have
fallen foul of an increasingly brutal and
repressive system of controls. Why is immigration
law different from all other law? Under
all other laws it is the act that is illegal,
but under immigration law it is the person
who is illegal. Those subject to immigration
control are dehumanized, are reduced to
non-persons, are nobodies. They are the
modern outlaw. Like their medieval counterpart
they exist outside of the law and outside
of the law's protection. Opposition to immigration
controls requires defending all immigration
outlaws.
Beware
the fascist! Understand the enemy!
Immigration
controls are not fascism. Detention centres
are not extermination camps. However immigration
laws are different from other laws in one
other significant way. They are the result,
at least in part, of organised fascist activity.
This country's first controls were contained
in the 1905 Aliens Act and were directed
at Jewish refugees fleeing anti-semitism
in Eastern Europe and Russia. A major, perhaps
the major, reason for the implementation
of this legislation was the agitation of
the British Brothers League. This was a
proto fascistic organization which was formed
in 1901 specifically around the demand for
controls, which organized major demonstrations
in London's East End and which can legitimately
be viewed as the main force behind the legislation.
The first controls directed against black
people - the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants
Act - quickly followed events in Notting
Hill and Nottingham in 1958. These were
the so-called "race riots" - so-called
to give a spurious impression of both spontaneity
and non-political street fighting. The reality
was that these physical and political attacks
on black people were engineered by explicitly
fascist organizations such as Oswald Moseley's
Union Movement and Colin Jordan's White
Defence League. And these organizations
had a specific demand - immigration controls.
Fascist front organizations such as the
British Immigration Control Association
subsequently continued the agitation until
legislation was enacted. Oswald Mosley himself
was quoted in the left-wing Reynolds News
(5/11/61) as claiming the Bill leading to
the 1962 Act was the "first success"
for fascist activity in this country.
Immigration laws are inherently racist,
since their purpose is to exclude outsiders.
And they feed and legitimise racism. Far
from being a natural feature of the political
landscape, they are a relatively recent
and disastrous distortion of it, explicable
only by racism. This, together with the
fascist origins of such laws, renders problematic
the notion of "reform", as opposed
to abolition, of immigration controls.
Immigration
controls are more than they seem
Immigration
controls deny people's right to freedom
of movement and the right to decide for
themselves where they wish to live and to
work. They also deny people access to rights
such as the right to work and the right
to social and legal protections enjoyed
by some of the current inhabitants of the
place to which they migrate. In the process
they cause intolerable suffering to many
people. The sole purpose of this suffering
is to deter others who might come to this
country to claim asylum, to work or to join
family here. People are thus punished not
for anything they have themselves done,
but for what others might do in the future.
Controls are not simply about exclusion
and deportation. They are a total system.
A system of extremes of pain and misery.
They are international in the sense that
virtually all countries, particularly all
industrial countries, use controls. They
are also international in the way the old
British Empire was international. British
Embassies, British High Commissions, British
Consulates encircle the globe denying visas
or entry clearance to the unchosen. A vast
edifice of repression is built to prevent
the movement of people. Those who attempt
to flee wars and repression, or to improve
their situation through migration, are forced
to resort to buying false papers from agents
or, worse, to travel clandestinely, again
usually with the help of often unscrupulous
agents. In the process many of them suffer
great hardship, and thousands die. The answer
is not to abolish agents, unscrupulous or
otherwise. It is to abolish the controls
on which the agents, the pain and the misery
breed.
Controls are also internal to the modern
state and in particular to the modern British
state. They require the expansion of repressive
and violent activities such as surveillance,
security, prisons and policing, changes
which threaten to permeate society as a
whole. The deaths of Joy Gardner and others
at the hands of immigration officers are
a portent for the future.
Immigration officers have become part of
what Karl Marx's colleague Frederick Engels
described as 'the armed bodies of men' who
constitute the state. Under immigration
laws around 2,000 immigrants and asylum
seekers who have not been charged with any
crime, including children, babies and pregnant
women, are locked up without trial, without
time limit, and with minimal access to bail.
Asylum seekers who are not detained are
no longer allowed to work. Since 1996 employers
have become an extension of the immigration
service, responsible for the immigration
status of their workers and liable to criminal
sanction for employing undocumented workers.
Over the last two decades entitlement to
most welfare state benefits and provision
has to some extent or another become linked
to immigration status. Those without the
required status go without. They are excluded
from virtually all non-contributory benefits,
child benefit, social housing and homelessness
accommodation, in-patient hospital treatment,
significant areas of community care legislation
relating to the destitute, the sick, the
elderly and the otherwise vulnerable, protection
under child care legislation, state education
provision in prisons and detention centres
and in the proposed new accommodation centres.
So much for the idea that those coming from
overseas obtain priority treatment! Instead
since 1999 asylum seekers from overseas
have been deliberately transformed into
an under-class subject to a regime that
is the direct copy of the nineteenth century
poor law. Like the poor law there is maintenance
below subsistence level (seventy per cent
of income support). Like the poor law there
is forced dispersal into accommodation over
which those dispersed have no choice. Under
legislation introduced in 2002 many asylum
seekers are no longer to have even this
miserable entitlement, neither supported
by the state nor allowed to work.
Immigration controls are not only about
refugees. This is just the latest government
myth. Migrants and immigrants - those coming
to work and those wanting to join family
here - along with visitors and students
are all equally subject to controls along
with refugees. Except unlike refugees they
are not even entitled to the fake safety
net of the poor law. History is important.
It is the immigrant communities, especially
of the Indian sub-continent and the Caribbean,
who from the 1970s launched a direct attack
on immigration control by organizing around
campaigns against deportations and for family
reunion. It is these campaigns which laid
the foundations for the present movement
in defence of refugees.
Can
there be non-racist or fair controls?
Immigration
controls are racist. The first post-war
controls, contained in the 1962 Commonwealth
Immigrants Act, were directed at black people.
However all those subject to immigration
control are not black. Within the last decade
there has emerged or re-emerged a racism
against those from Eastern Europe often
combined with an anti-Islamic racism which
ensures controls are directed against all
those from Bosnians to Serbs to the Roma
to the nationalities of the new Russian
empire. There is nothing new about this.
The first immigration controls, contained
in the 1905 Aliens Act, were imposed against
refugees - Jewish refugees fleeing persecution
in Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia. Controls
were again imposed on Jews attempting to
escape Nazism. In short the first half of
the twentieth century was about controls
against Jews, the second half about controls
against black people and the last decade
has been about controls against anyone fleeing
war, poverty or mayhem or anyone wanting
to join family here.
Today there exists, however fragmented,
a movement against immigration control -
a movement which challenges deportations,
which opposes detention centres, which offers
solidarity to refugees. The great strength
of this movement is that it has united and
formed a coalition between liberals and
socialists, between reformists who don't
challenge controls on principle and socialists
who are opposed to all controls - and who
argue no-one is illegal. The greatest weakness
of this movement is that on the level of
ideas liberalism dominates. Many of those
critical of controls believe that such controls
can somehow be sanitized, be rendered fair,
be made non-racist. Even socialists are
sometimes reluctant to raise the demand
for the abolition of all immigration controls
or to take this demand to its logical conclusions,
in case this alienates potential allies
against the abuses that follow from them.
The result is that the argument against
controls is simply not presented. Many people,
perhaps most fair-minded people, if they
are presented with the case, do agree that
in principle immigration controls are wrong,
but may also believe that to argue for their
abolition is unrealistic.
But ideas matter and so too does the struggle
for ideas. Wrong ideas can at best lead
to confusion and dead-ends and at worst
collusion with the present system. It is
our position - a position which denies anyone
is illegal, a position that is for a world
without borders - that immigration restrictions
can never be rendered fair or non-racist.
This is for the following reasons. First
controls are inherently racist in that they
are based on the crudest of all nationalisms
- namely the assertion that the British
have a franchise on Britain. Second they
are only explicable by racism. Their imposition
is a result of and is a victory for racist,
proto-fascist and actual fascist organizations.
It is impossible to see how legislation
brought into being by such means, legislation
accompanied by the most vile racist imagery
and assumptions, can ever be reconfigured
and rendered "fair". Third the
demand for "fair" controls simply
ignores the link between immigration controls
and welfare entitlements. This link is itself
intrinsically unfair - and racist. Finally
controls can never be "fair" to
those who remain subject to them.
The demand for no controls - based on the
assertion that no one is illegal - is frequently
derided as utopian and is compared adversely
to the "realism" of arguing for
fair controls. However this stands political
reality on its head. The struggle against
the totality of controls is certainly uphill
- it may well require a revolution. However
the achievement of fair immigration restrictions
- that is the transformation of immigration
controls into their opposite - would require
a miracle.
More
problems with arguments for reforms.
The
proclamation, our proclamation, that No
One Is Illegal means what it says - it does
not mean some people are not illegal or
only some people are legal. The demand for
no controls means no collusion with either
the arguments for controls or with controls
themselves. However controls have become
so politically legitimised over the relatively
short period of their existence that it
has become all too easy to accept their
existence whilst simultaneously opposing
them. Here are some examples of what we
are arguing against - deliberately difficult
and we hope provocative examples:
First we are absolutely and unconditionally
in favour of campaigns against deportation.
However we are critical of the emphasis
given to so-called "compassionate"
grounds - in particular the re-occurring
themes of sickness, age, vulnerability of
children, violence towards women and destruction
of family relationships. Of course we accept
that these issues have to be presented,
and presented forcibly, to the Home Office
in private as part of any legal argument.
The present balance of power - with the
Home Office having most of the power - requires
this presentation. However this does not
require campaigns against deportation to
construct themselves politically and publicly
around such compassionate grounds. What
this does is make a distinction between
the "worthy" and the "unworthy"
- between those with compassionate grounds
and those without. It legitimizes the racist-inspired
obligation that people feel to justify their
presence here. In doing this it transforms
what is normally undesirable - for instance
ill health - into something highly desirable
in order to try to remain here. Under the
guise of gaining support on humanitarian
grounds it actually dehumanizes individuals,
and denies them their dignity, by reducing
them to the sum total of their disabilities
and vulnerabilities. It creates a competition
between those subject to immigration controls
as to who has the more "compassionate"
grounds. Ultimately it makes it virtually
impossible for young, fit, childless, single
people without an asylum claim to fight
to stay. This is why we support the slogan
'Solidarity not Pity'. We support unconditionally
the right of all people to stay here if
they wish to, and irrespective of their
personal circumstances.
Second we are absolutely in favour of exposing
the lies and hypocrisies of those advocating
immigration controls - such as the lie that
people coming here are a "burden"
on welfare or are "flooding" the
country. It is important to reject the notion
that if immigration controls were abolished
this country would be invaded by the populations
of entire continents; the reality is that
the vast majority of people prefer to stay
where they are if this is at all possible.
However we are opposed to building a case
against immigration controls on the grounds
that immigration is in the economic self-interest
of the current inhabitants of this country,
both because such an argument is wrong in
principle and because the situation can
change. For example although it was true
until recently that more people left this
country than came here, this is no longer
the case. And while migrants, immigrants
and refugees are currently net contributors
to the welfare system, supposing it could
be shown that new arrivals are somehow accessing
a "disproportionate" percentage
of welfare, would that mean we now have
to support controls? Statistics are useful
to refute distortions and lies, but cannot
be the bedrock of our opposition to controls.
Statistics can be a hostage to political
fortune. Principles cannot. This is why
we support the principle of No One Is Illegal.
Third we recognize the many contributions
made to British society by migrants, immigrants
and refugees stretching back centuries.
Britain has been constructed out of waves
of migration - the very idea of there being
an "indigenous" population is
both politically racist and historically
nonsensical. However we are opposed to all
arguments that seek to justify the presence
of anyone on the grounds of the economic
or cultural or any other contributions they
may make. It is not up to the British state
to decide where people should or should
not live, or anyone else but migrants and
refugees themselves. We support the unfettered
right of entry of the feckless, the unemployable
and the uncultured. We assert No One Is
Illegal.
Gains
for some mean exclusion of others. No 'equal-opportunities'
immigration controls!
An
obvious, if often overlooked feature of
immigration control and the struggle against
it, is that defining who may be excluded
from it by necessity entails defining who
is included in it. No One Is Illegal means
that reform of immigration control, in whatever
way such reform is presented, is at best
problematic, at worst unacceptable because
it would leave some people subject to control.
It would still leave immigration outlaws.
The degree to which any demand falling short
of total abolition of controls is acceptable
can only be measured by the degree in which
it takes up the fight for all outlaws. All
specific demands gainst controls need to
be put in the context of and worked out
through a position of opposition to all
controls. Again we present some deliberately
controversial examples:
First we are critical of the demand for
a government "amnesty" against
immigration outlaws. The level of our criticism
will depend on the level at which the amnesty
is pitched. Who is to be included in this
demand? More importantly who is to be excluded?
What gives anyone opposed to controls the
right to define who is to be excluded? No
One Is Illegal means what it says - anyone
in the entire world who wishes to come or
remain should have the right to do so.On
a pragmatic basis amnesties have to be criticised
as they will be used by the Home Office
to entrap those not included in the amnesty..
This is precisely what happened when in
1974 a Labour government declared a tightly
defined amnesty - deporting many of those
who applied under the mistaken belief they
fell within the definition.
Second we are critical of demands which,
however well meant, leave even more vulnerable
and exposed to immigration controls those
not contained within the demand. An example
is the demand that women coming here for
marriage who are subsequently subject to
domestic violence should not be subject
to the requirement that they remain living
with their partner for twelve months in
order to acquire full immigration status.
After years of campaigning this demand has
now been met in part. As such it is clearly
a tremendous gain for those women who otherwise
would have the impossible choice of remaining
in a violent relationship or being deported.
However where does this leave all those
women not subject to violence who wish for
whatever reason to leave the relationship?
For them not being battered by their partner
has now become a positive disadvantage for
immigration purposes. This is yet another
example of how something morally outrageous
- abuse of women - has become something
highly desirable in immigration law. It
is simply not a tenable position to argue.
The only tenable position is to fight for
the right of all, men or women, to remain
irrespective of their personal situation.
Third immigration controls are not just
racist. In their nationalism they encompass
virtually all reactionary ideology. So unsurprisingly
they are homophobic. Until recently there
has been no provision for a gay partner
to come or remain. However we are critical
of the campaign for 'equality' with heterosexual
relationships for gay relationships within
immigration control. There cannot be equal
opportunities immigration controls - unless
one is in favour of the equality of the
damned. For the last forty years immigration
control has systematically attacked, undermined
and wrecked tens of thousands of mainly
black extended families from the Indian
sub-continent, the Caribbean and Africa.
Demanding equality with heterosexual couples
simply ignores the inherent racism of controls
and therefore the relationship between racism,
sexism and homophobia. An additional problem
is that the demand for the rights of gay
couples elevates romance into a political
goal - what about the single gay person,
the celibate, the lonely, those of no sexual
orientation or the promiscuous of any sexual
orientation? Including gay couples within
immigration law and its spurious "rights"
means that all these other people are by
definition excluded. Their status as outlaws
is intensified. The way forward is to fight
for the rights of all gay women and men
along with everyone else to be able to come
and remain irrespective of personal circumstances
or relationships. The only equal opportunities
immigration controls are no immigration
controls.
Fourth, demanding to be "included"
within controls - in the sense of demanding
specific provision for gay couples - seems
itself quite strange in that everyone else
is fighting to be excluded from the tentacles
of controls. However this contradiction
only exists because, given the existence
of controls, then absolutely everyone is
already "included" in them to
a greater or a lesser extent - in that everyone
remains liable to investigation as to whether
or not they are subject to them. In this
sense women experiencing domestic violence
still very much remain subject to controls
- as they are obliged to undergo the humiliation
of reliving the violence by having to prove
its existence. The only political answer
to these issues is to fight for no controls.
Fifth, each piece of immigration legislation
going back to 1905 (and dramatically intensified
in the last decade) can be seen as another
brick in the wall - the wall preventing
entry of the undesirable, the unchosen.
It is therefore not sufficient to demand
the repeal of the latest piece of legislation,
to remove the latest brick - the whole wall
has to go. Otherwise all those excluded
by previous legislation remain outlaws and,
what is worse, forgotten outlaws. Simply
demanding the repeal of the most recent,
and only the most recent, laws only serves
to legitimize those preceding them. An example
is the agitation against that part of the
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act
2002 (the latest legislation) which denies
support to asylum seekers who make "late"
asylum applications - thus rendering these
refugees destitute. However in 1999 there
was a campaign against the then latest legislation
- the Immigration and Asylum Act. This was
the legislation which created the poor law
of forced dispersal and below-subsistence
support. But now the agitation is to include
late asylum applicants within the poor law!
Again this is not a tenable political position.
At the same time there is being forgotten
all those undocumented non-asylum seekers,
migrants and immigrants, who have effectively
been without any support due to provisions
in various pieces of legislation prior to
1999. These statutes were themselves once
new, were once campaigned against and are
now forgotten - along with those subject
to them.
No One Is Illegal means fighting to destroy
immigration controls in their entirety and
at the same time fighting to break the link
between welfare entitlement and immigration
status.
Socialism
Many
if not all of the arguments used to justify
immigration controls are simply ludicrous
and are more the result of racist-inspired
moral panic than of any connection with
reality. Such is the notion that the entire
world population would come to this country
if there were no controls: even if such
an absurd notion were true, it should prompt
concern for their reasons for coming rather
than fear. Nonetheless these objections
to open borders need to be answered and
they require a socialist and anti-imperialist
analysis. The objections about "overcrowding"
can only be answered by discussing socialist
use of resources - use based on needs not
profits. The objection, the surreal objection,
that migrants, immigrants and refugees obtain
luxury housing and endless welfare compared
to British workers needs to be answered
both by pointing out the truth (namely that
just the opposite is the case) but also
by a recognition that benefits and welfare
are woefully inadequate for everyone - both
for the documented and the undocumented
and that both have a shared interest in
fighting for better welfare. The objection
that those fleeing the devastation of the
Third World have no right to come here can
be met by pointing out the imperial responsibility
for this devastation, both in the past and
currently. As the Asian Youth Movement used
to say "We are here because you were
there". The objection that a state
has the right to control its own borders
can only ultimately be answered by questioning
the nature of the nation state and borders.
We agree and sing along with John Lennon
-"Imagine There's No Countries".
The
way forward - break the links, pull the
plug!
- To
build the widest possible alliance in
all struggles against immigration controls
amongst those of differing political views.
But to do this without collusion with
controls and without compromising with
the principle of no controls. To do this
on the basis of challenging and winning
over those involved to a position of opposition
to all controls. No One Is Illegal - No
Exceptions, No Concessions, No Conciliation.
- To
raise the demand for no immigration controls
within all actions and campaigns in support
of migrants and refugees. A no-controls
position should not be a necessary precondition
of support for any particular campaign,
but we should argue constantly within
all campaigns for such a position. We
should argue for campaign slogans to reflect
a position of opposition to controls,
not refugees are our friends or refugees
are welcome here but slogans which recognise
that we are in favour of freedom for all
as a right, not a charity: No One Is Illegal
- Free movement
No immigration
controls.
- To
support and build every single campaign
against deportation. To do this on the
basis of solidarity not compassion. No
One Is Illegal - No Need For Justification
of Presence!
- To
support and build every campaign against
detention/removal centres, since these
are one of the clearest and most outrageously
brutal and unjust consequences of immigration
controls. No refugees or migrants should
be detained simply because they want to
be in this country. All detention/removal
centres, and also all accommodation, induction
and any other repressive 'centres' designed
to enforce the unenforceable, should be
closed. No One Is Illegal - No detentions!
- To
fight against all forms of collusion with
immigration control and with the Home
Office. In particular this means local
authorities and voluntary sector organizations
refusing to implement the new poor law.
Local authorities should refuse to act
as sub-contracted agents providing accommodation
(often otherwise unlettible) for the forced
dispersal scheme. Voluntary sector agencies
should likewise refuse Home Office monies
to enforce the poor law either through
the provision of accommodation or advice.
No One Is Illegal - Break The Links Between
Welfare Entitlement And Immigration Status!
- For
workers within the welfare system to refuse
to comply with the denial of benefits
or provisions based on immigration status.
Most workers within the welfare state,
at either local or national level, entered
their jobs in the belief they would be
providing some form of socially useful
service. Instead they now find they are
denying services and have become part
of the apparatus of immigration control.
No One Is Illegal - No Compliance, Be
In And Against The State!
- Of
course non-compliance by individual workers
would leave them absolutely vulnerable
to victimization and dismissal. Non-compliance
requires major trade union support. It
is manifestly important to try and win
trade unions to a position of no immigration
controls. To do this it is equally important
to form rank and file groupings within
unions of welfare workers who are being
obliged to enforce internal immigration
controls. No One Is Illegal - Workers'
Control Not Immigration Controls!
- For
a massive trade union campaign of recruitment
of undocumented workers - of immigration
outlaws. Such a recruitment campaign would
help break the division between the documented
and the undocumented. It would enable
a campaign to develop against sweated
labour and for the protection of migrant
rights - rights to a fair wage, right
to proper work conditions and, most of
all, the right to work itself - as now
it is unlawful to work without the correct
immigration documentation. It would also
provide another base for the undocumented
to resist deportation and to fight for
the regularization of their status. No
One Is Illegal - Everyone has the right
to work, the right to be in a union, and
the right to have proper working conditions!
We
are not alone!
No
One Is Illegal is a phrase first used by
Elie Weisel, a Jewish survivor from Nazi
Germany, a refugee and a Nobel prize winner.
He was speaking in 1985 in Tuscon, Arizona
at a national sanctuary conference in the
USA in defence of the rights of refugees
to live in the USA . The sanctuary movement
undertaken by religious communities in the
USA (and to a far lesser extent in the UK)
in support of those threatened by immigration
controls is one of many pieces of resistance
to controls. Over the last few years No
One Is Illegal groups have been formed throughout
Europe and North America - for instance
in Germany (Kein Mensch Ist Illegal), Spain
(Ninguna Persona Es Ilegal), Sweden (Ingen
Manniska Ar Illegal), Poland (Zaden Czlowiek
Nie Jest Nielegalny) and Holland (Geen Mens
Is Illegaal). In August 1999 anarchists
organised a demonstration in Lvov Poland
against the deportation of Ukranian workers
under the banner of No One Is Illegal. In
France the sans papiers campaign under the
slogan personne n'est illegal/e. There have
been No One Is Illegal/No Border camps at
the joint borders of Germany, Czech Republic
and Poland, and No Border camps at Frankfurt,
southern Spain and Salzburg. In June 2002
there was a demonstration against war, globalisation
and in defence of refugees under the same
slogan in Ottawa, Canada. In England groups
are emerging calling themselves No Borders.
The demand for no controls, rather than
being seen as extreme,operates as a rallying
call to the undocumented and their supporters.
Our aim in producing this, our initial manifesto,
is to encourage the formation of No One
Is Illegal/No Border groups throughout this
country - groups specifically and unreservedly
committed to the destruction of all immigration
controls.
Steve
Cohen (Manchester)
Harriet Grimsditch (Bolton)
Teresa Hayter (Oxford)
Bob Hughes (Bristol)
Dave Landau (London)
Contacting us:
Please contact us if you wish to add your
or your organisation's name as a supporter
of this manifesto -- or if you would like
a speaker at one of your meetings. If you
would like to help us financially in the
production of campaign material please make
cheques out, in sterling, to "The No
One Is Illegal Group".
Postal address:
No One Is Illegal, Bolton Socialist Club,
16 Wood Street, Bolton, BL1 1DY.
Email: info@noii.org.uk
Phone: 01865 726804
Web site: http://www.noii.org.uk
September
6th 2003
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