Monday saw yet another article in the Guardian by MigrationBotch front-man Alan Green, ostensibly in response to an Observer editorial, 'We're still a long way from an honest debate about immigration', the day before. However, it was really prompted by the criticism of Dave™'s, and consequently his and the right-wing anti-immigration press', peddling of the myth of the 70 million.
His little ditty 'How to tackle immigration', with its disingenuous subheading "With rising concern over immigration to the UK, it is important to examine its sources – and how we can limit them", merely rehearsed his tired rhetoric and showed up his lack of grasp of the concepts and terminology involved in the statistics, which he tries to wield in support of his bigotry.
The Observer editorial commenced with a typically liberal sentiment, "It is now generally recognised in British politics that expressing concern about the scale of recent immigration into the country is not necessarily a sign of racism." Unfortunately that is incorrect, as the corollary to it is that the situation that is causing that concern is the 'fault' of the 'excess' of migrants i.e. it is the migrants that are driving down wages (as the Daily Mail claims referencing the recent Equalities and Human Rights Commission report, 'The UK's New Europeans'), causing the lack of social housing, placing a 'burden' on the NHS, etc., etc. It is not the migrants driving down the wages, it is the employers who are willing to pay lower wages in order to maximise their profits. This is exactly the same process that has seen the industrial base in the UK exported to countries where the wages are lower and we do not seem to blame the workers in those countries for being willing to accept lower wages that the good old British worker, do we? It's capitalism stupid! [1]
In a similar fashion, it is every government since Thatcher's (along with every 'aspirational' council tenant who bought their council house) that are to blame for the lack of available social housing, the sort of council houses that were passed down the generations within families just as many manufacturing jobs had been before they moved abroad or disappeared otherwise. And as for the NHS, there would not be one if it had not been for the migrants in the 50's and 60's who kept it staffed and in existence, and it still only just gets by because of the 'imperialistic' drain on the skill base of the rest of the world.
That the Observer then uses the EHRC report, which flatly contradicts an Institute for Public Policy Research report 'The Economic Impacts of Migration on the UK Labour Market' from February last year, as evidence that "There is no doubting the impact of recent, sustained high levels of immigration" is bizarre. The paper erroneously claims that "One predictable effect, the study found, was to hold down wages for skilled and semi-skilled workers in Britain." The report does not even mention any effect on the wages of skilled workers (and the Observer article the same day 'Eastern European immigration 'has hit low-paid Britons'' also does not mention this 'phenomenon'). If they cannot get this simple 'fact' right, then clearly we are "still a long way from an honest debate about immigration."
One thing that this Observer editorial does not mention (though is hinted at in its article on the report, and is needless to say totally ignored in the Mail piece) is that "In many cases the new migrants have precarious employment and housing arrangements, are vulnerable to exploitation, or lack support networks and access to information." In fact, most are stuck in dead-end jobs with little or no prospects of moving up the 'job ladder'.
The Observer editorial ends: "Immigration will feature in the election campaign and rightly so. [2] Parties must explain their policies on a matter of concern to so many voters. But they must explain them honestly. Sadly, there is little chance of that happening. Labour and the Tories may have become freer in their discussion of immigration, but they show no sign of really wanting to dispel the fog of ignorance and prejudice that still shrouds debate on the issue." Obviously this a "fog of ignorance and prejudice" that the paper's editor also appears to suffer from.
Which brings us neatly to Alan Green's (never ending) contribution to the "fog of ignorance and prejudice". Here we have a man who, in his very comfortable retirement, has decided to ride his hobby-horse into the ground. He has become what he clearly appears to believe is a self-taught expert on immigration (we use the term immigration rather than migration because his interest in the subject is specifically that). Except that he constantly lets his ignorance slip. Sometimes it is simple things, such as claiming that "Over the past 50 years, their [the Office of National Statistics] projections at the 20-year range have been accurate to about 2.5% (sic). This actually means nothing. 2.5% of what? What he in fact means is that the estimates are accurate to within 2.5%. A small point, but a very telling one when he cannot even get the terminology right (just as Cameron did when he talked about 'net immigration').
Green follows this faux pas up with the claim that the ONS "have confirmed [in a recent parliamentary answer] that most of last year's fall in immigration has already been factored in to the latest projections." [our emphasis] This is blatantly NOT true. If you read the parliamentary answer and the methodology (which the article helpfully gives links to): "The assumptions for the 2008-based projections are based upon final estimates of long-term international migration up to the end of 2007, plus provisional International Passenger Survey (IPS) estimates of long-term international migration for the year ending December 2008. Thus the calculation of the assumptions took into account the decline in long-term international net migration indicated by the provisional IPS estimates published by ONS on 27 August 2009."
So, despite the fact that the figures were published in October last year and that "the 2008-based projections assume annual net migration from [A8 & A2 EU member states] declining from +25,000 for 2009-10 to zero for 2014-15 onwards," it actually says nothing about factoring in the 2008-09 figures as Green states. Nor does it say what estimates for the decline from a net migration figure of 163,000 in 2008 they used. [3]
In a recent blog we pointed out, as others have done, Green's claim that immigration is the major factor for future population growth. Here he repeats it again: "Nor it is correct to say that the birth rate is more crucial than net migration in determining population growth. If you take account of the children of future immigrants, then immigration accounts for 68% of population growth." The big problem is that he wants to have his cake and eat it. You cannot count the same figures twice. In population statistics, migration is migration and natural population growth (births minus deaths) is natural population growth.
Yes, future migrants will be younger and more fertile than the existing ageing UK population but that is totally irrelevant for these statistics. If future immigrants were all older and less fertile that the current population no doubt he would be using that as a stick to beat them with.
He then claims that: "The public are increasingly conscious of this – which is why 85% express concern that our population is projected to hit 70 million in 2029." [4] Yet a similar survey he frequently quotes from also found that 36% wanted a population of less than 50 million, whilst 40% did not know what the optimum population size for the UK should be. Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh! And it is 84% by the way.
He then goes on to give his options for cutting immigration: "The first thing is to exclude asylum from this discussion. Asylum seekers account for only 10% of net foreign immigration and only one-third of those are granted protection. [5] The rest face the quite different problem of removal," listing EU migrants (he hopes wont be too much of a 'problem' in the future); students (must leave after study unless they "entered a genuine marriage" or got a work permit); spouses and fiancées (reduce non-"genuine marriages by British citizens") but his big answer is a cap on economic migration at 20,000.
We are too bored with all this to examine his 'thoughts' any further, short to say his is the sort of discourse, despite his denials elsewhere, that Roland Schilling, the UK representative of the Office of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees, no doubt meant when he warned that the current disgraceful level of debate risked being hijacked by dangerous anti-immigrant groups [MigrationBotch, surely not?] and would push potential refugees further into the "shadowy world dominated by gangsters and people smugglers."
[1] "The recent migration may have reduced wages slightly at the bottom end of the labour market, especially for certain groups of vulnerable workers, and there is a risk that it could contribute to a ‘low-skill equilibrium’ in some economically depressed local areas." This is all based on "A relatively limited evidence base [that] suggests that eastern European immigration has brought economic benefits, including greater labour market efficiency and potential increases in average wages." [both quotes 'The UK's New Europeans']
[2] Just how much immigration will feature in the coming election rests largely on how the Tories approach the subject and, given that their own analysis showed that their attempts to exploit the immigration card backfired, they may have learnt their lesson and largely steer clear of the issue. The BNP, UKIP and Alan Green will however have something to say on the subject.
[3] Unfortunately, Green's Observer article gives a link to Population Trends No. 128, with figures only up to 2006, as a link to illustrate "last year's fall in immigration". About as useful as the proverbial chocolate teapot. In fact, in the first 3 months of 2009 there were 23,000 work permit applications from E8 workers (down from down from 48,755 in the same period in 2008) and 26,150 in the second quarter (down from 46,070 the year before).
[4] Not surprising really when the question "How would you feel about a population of this size?" Gave as answer options: Delighted / Wouldn’t mind / Slightly worried / Very worried / Don’t know.
[5] And of course asylum applications have been severely cut back on over the years, so it would be too obvious to hit them yet again. Though you could always increase the refusal rate.
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Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Friday, 22 July 2011
Demo Against New Family Detention Centre In Sussex, 30/07/11
Croydon NoBorders is calling for a demo in Haywards Heath from 1pm on Saturday 30th July to protest against a new detention centre for children and families which is due to open in late summer at nearby Pease Pottage.
Haywards Heath is the home of Mid Sussex Council which granted planning permission for the former Crawley Forest School to be converted into a migrant prison.
The migrant prison, known euphemistically as a "pre-departure accommodation centre", will be run by the infamous security firm G4S, who are facing charges for corporate manslaughter following the death of deportee Jimmy Mubenga on a BA flight in November. The prison will "normally" hold families for up to 72 hours but they could be held for up to a week in "exceptional circumstances".
"Play facilities" at the prison will be run by children's charity Barnado's. Campaigners have started a campaign against Barnado's for their involvement, disrupting a fundraising event and picketing Barnado's shops and head office.
In May 2010, the coalition government agreed to completely end the detention of children for immigration control purposes. However, now they want to open a new detention centre exactly for this purpose. Barnardo's support will not make a bad situation better for the detainees - it has helped create this bad situation in the first place, because Barnardo's cuddly image was used as propaganda by the Border Agency to get planning permission to build the jail. Whatever excuses Barnardo's give, they know they are making a mistake. As the recession causes financial difficulties for Charities, some abandon their principles and turn to the State for any contracts they can get their hands on.
At a time of savage public spending cuts, it is disgusting how the State finds no shortage of money to expand the military-prison-border complex. It starts a new imperial war "to protect civilians in Libya" - but without shame builds borders to prevent terrified civilians from fleeing war-zones and seeking sanctuary inside Fortress Europe. How soon before the State enforces mass deportations to Libya, in the same way it deports Iraqi and Afghan refugees?
The survival of the State is dependent on how long it can fool its citizens into blaming immigrants for unemployment, hunger and homelessness. This distracts us from recognising that Capitalism is a bankrupt economic system which can only create jobs for bomb makers, prison guards and deportation escorts. The assault against migrants is the sharp end of the knife that is being used to cut back support for vulnerable and poor people, young and old alike.
Another world is possible if people with and without papers struggle together to resist their mutual exploitation by the State and Capitalism.
Croydon NoBorders is part of a transnational network of groups and individuals campaigning for an end to immigration controls and for a world without borders, states and capitalism.
Please join us on Saturday 30th July with banners, placards and instrument to call for an end to detention and deportation. Gather at Muster Green park in Haywards Heath at 1pm.
Haywards Heath is the home of Mid Sussex Council which granted planning permission for the former Crawley Forest School to be converted into a migrant prison.
The migrant prison, known euphemistically as a "pre-departure accommodation centre", will be run by the infamous security firm G4S, who are facing charges for corporate manslaughter following the death of deportee Jimmy Mubenga on a BA flight in November. The prison will "normally" hold families for up to 72 hours but they could be held for up to a week in "exceptional circumstances".
"Play facilities" at the prison will be run by children's charity Barnado's. Campaigners have started a campaign against Barnado's for their involvement, disrupting a fundraising event and picketing Barnado's shops and head office.
In May 2010, the coalition government agreed to completely end the detention of children for immigration control purposes. However, now they want to open a new detention centre exactly for this purpose. Barnardo's support will not make a bad situation better for the detainees - it has helped create this bad situation in the first place, because Barnardo's cuddly image was used as propaganda by the Border Agency to get planning permission to build the jail. Whatever excuses Barnardo's give, they know they are making a mistake. As the recession causes financial difficulties for Charities, some abandon their principles and turn to the State for any contracts they can get their hands on.
At a time of savage public spending cuts, it is disgusting how the State finds no shortage of money to expand the military-prison-border complex. It starts a new imperial war "to protect civilians in Libya" - but without shame builds borders to prevent terrified civilians from fleeing war-zones and seeking sanctuary inside Fortress Europe. How soon before the State enforces mass deportations to Libya, in the same way it deports Iraqi and Afghan refugees?
The survival of the State is dependent on how long it can fool its citizens into blaming immigrants for unemployment, hunger and homelessness. This distracts us from recognising that Capitalism is a bankrupt economic system which can only create jobs for bomb makers, prison guards and deportation escorts. The assault against migrants is the sharp end of the knife that is being used to cut back support for vulnerable and poor people, young and old alike.
Another world is possible if people with and without papers struggle together to resist their mutual exploitation by the State and Capitalism.
Croydon NoBorders is part of a transnational network of groups and individuals campaigning for an end to immigration controls and for a world without borders, states and capitalism.
Please join us on Saturday 30th July with banners, placards and instrument to call for an end to detention and deportation. Gather at Muster Green park in Haywards Heath at 1pm.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding To Be Bulldozed?
Eviction cost already skyrocketing as groups announce human rights shield.
Dale Farm, Europe's largest Traveller community, and one featured in the TV series ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’, faces imminent eviction. Traveller representatives have been told that 28 days notice of eviction will be served on them on 14 March. Dale Farm is a former scrapyard in Basildon, and is owned by the Travellers. It consists of 100 family plots, half of which are set to be demolished.
In response, human rights groups have announced that they will be setting up a full-scale human rights monitoring camp at Dale Farm, before the eviction notice expires on 9 April. Hundreds of activists have pledged to form a human shield around the site to prevent bulldozers from demolishing homes.
Costs for the planned eviction are already skyrocketing. Basildon District Council has set aside 8 million pounds for the eviction itself and estimates that another 10 million pounds will be required. Their application to have the Home Office foot the bill has just been turned down. Taxpayers have already contributed £2.5 million to the Council’s legal and other related costs.
Ironically, the eviction costs are being blamed as one of the reasons why Basildon Council is controversially selling off playing fields in the green belt, and allowing developers to build on them to increase their value. The Council also looks set to announce a bank loan to cover the eviction bill at a special council meeting on March 14th. The skyrocketing costs are coming at a time when as many as 100 Basildon Council jobs are likely to be axed to help the borough cope with budget cuts which will leave it £2.3million short. Basildon is also cutting £505,000 to disabled services.
"Dale Farm residents are willing to move, at no cost to Basildon, but need the Council to identify suitable land," said Richard Sheridan, chair of the Gypsy Council. However this seems increasingly unlikely, as Council leader Tony Ball has promised to resign if the Traveller's are not evicted before the 5 May council elections. There is an obligation under international law for government to find suitable alternative accommodation for those being forcibly evicted.
"When we can find £18 million to evict families from their own land but can't find the funds to keep nurseries, libraries and youth centres open, something has gone terribly wrong," said Natalie Fox from Dale Farm Solidarity. The group is organising human rights monitors to stay at Dale Farm should their be an eviction. She called the eviction "ethnic cleansing", noting that 90% of traveller planning applications are initially rejected compared to 20% overall.
The eviction comes at a time of increased repression of Romani and Traveller communities in France and Italy. The eviction, which is expected to last up to three weeks will drive many Travellers back onto the road and their children will be forced to leave school.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights stated that ‘the practice of forced eviction constitutes a gross violation of human rights’. They went on to say that ‘to be persistently threatened or actually victimized by the act of forced eviction from one’s home or land is surely one of the most supreme injustices any individual, family, household or community can face’.
Contacts:
On behalf of
Dale Farm Solidarity: Yoshka Pundrik (07583761462)
Dale Farm Housing Association: Grattan Puxton (07888699256)
On behalf of Dale Farm:
Mr Richard Sheridan, chair of The Gypsy Council (07747417711)
Mary Ann McCarthy (07961854023)
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com
Notes for Editors
[1] Although being a runaway hit, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has been criticised by some in the Traveller community for it's biased portrayal of their lives:
http://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/blog.aspx?n=c6e13428-2329-462b-a0f8-f6ccab22ced7&h=False&c=f1b1c82c-0f3c-4edf-98cd-502ea80ed8fa
[2] 90% of Traveller planning applications are initially rejected compared to 20% overall -- Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (2006). Common Ground: Equality, good race relations and sites for Gypsies and Irish Travellers: Report of a CRE inquiry in England and Wales. London: CRE.
[3] In order to cover the cost of the eviction, Basildon council is selling off playing fields to cover the cost:
http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/county_news/8461127.__10m_policing_bill_to_evict_travellers_from_Dale_Farm/
Axing 100 staff:
http://www.halsteadgazette.co.uk/archive/2010/12/16/Basildon+News+%28basildon_news%29/8739399.Basildon_Council_to_shed_100_staff_and_cut_services/
and cutting disabled services:
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/8792420.Basildon_Council_cuts_target_disabled_services/
[4] For a list of some of the expenditures, see:
http://www.advocacynet.org/resource/1288
[5] UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights General Comment No. 7 on forced evictions, see:
http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/959f71e476284596802564c3005d8d50?Opendocument
Dale Farm, Europe's largest Traveller community, and one featured in the TV series ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’, faces imminent eviction. Traveller representatives have been told that 28 days notice of eviction will be served on them on 14 March. Dale Farm is a former scrapyard in Basildon, and is owned by the Travellers. It consists of 100 family plots, half of which are set to be demolished.
In response, human rights groups have announced that they will be setting up a full-scale human rights monitoring camp at Dale Farm, before the eviction notice expires on 9 April. Hundreds of activists have pledged to form a human shield around the site to prevent bulldozers from demolishing homes.
Costs for the planned eviction are already skyrocketing. Basildon District Council has set aside 8 million pounds for the eviction itself and estimates that another 10 million pounds will be required. Their application to have the Home Office foot the bill has just been turned down. Taxpayers have already contributed £2.5 million to the Council’s legal and other related costs.
Ironically, the eviction costs are being blamed as one of the reasons why Basildon Council is controversially selling off playing fields in the green belt, and allowing developers to build on them to increase their value. The Council also looks set to announce a bank loan to cover the eviction bill at a special council meeting on March 14th. The skyrocketing costs are coming at a time when as many as 100 Basildon Council jobs are likely to be axed to help the borough cope with budget cuts which will leave it £2.3million short. Basildon is also cutting £505,000 to disabled services.
"Dale Farm residents are willing to move, at no cost to Basildon, but need the Council to identify suitable land," said Richard Sheridan, chair of the Gypsy Council. However this seems increasingly unlikely, as Council leader Tony Ball has promised to resign if the Traveller's are not evicted before the 5 May council elections. There is an obligation under international law for government to find suitable alternative accommodation for those being forcibly evicted.
"When we can find £18 million to evict families from their own land but can't find the funds to keep nurseries, libraries and youth centres open, something has gone terribly wrong," said Natalie Fox from Dale Farm Solidarity. The group is organising human rights monitors to stay at Dale Farm should their be an eviction. She called the eviction "ethnic cleansing", noting that 90% of traveller planning applications are initially rejected compared to 20% overall.
The eviction comes at a time of increased repression of Romani and Traveller communities in France and Italy. The eviction, which is expected to last up to three weeks will drive many Travellers back onto the road and their children will be forced to leave school.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights stated that ‘the practice of forced eviction constitutes a gross violation of human rights’. They went on to say that ‘to be persistently threatened or actually victimized by the act of forced eviction from one’s home or land is surely one of the most supreme injustices any individual, family, household or community can face’.
Contacts:
On behalf of
Dale Farm Solidarity: Yoshka Pundrik (07583761462)
Dale Farm Housing Association: Grattan Puxton (07888699256)
On behalf of Dale Farm:
Mr Richard Sheridan, chair of The Gypsy Council (07747417711)
Mary Ann McCarthy (07961854023)
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com
Notes for Editors
[1] Although being a runaway hit, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has been criticised by some in the Traveller community for it's biased portrayal of their lives:
http://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/blog.aspx?n=c6e13428-2329-462b-a0f8-f6ccab22ced7&h=False&c=f1b1c82c-0f3c-4edf-98cd-502ea80ed8fa
[2] 90% of Traveller planning applications are initially rejected compared to 20% overall -- Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (2006). Common Ground: Equality, good race relations and sites for Gypsies and Irish Travellers: Report of a CRE inquiry in England and Wales. London: CRE.
[3] In order to cover the cost of the eviction, Basildon council is selling off playing fields to cover the cost:
http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/county_news/8461127.__10m_policing_bill_to_evict_travellers_from_Dale_Farm/
Axing 100 staff:
http://www.halsteadgazette.co.uk/archive/2010/12/16/Basildon+News+%28basildon_news%29/8739399.Basildon_Council_to_shed_100_staff_and_cut_services/
and cutting disabled services:
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/8792420.Basildon_Council_cuts_target_disabled_services/
[4] For a list of some of the expenditures, see:
http://www.advocacynet.org/resource/1288
[5] UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights General Comment No. 7 on forced evictions, see:
http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/959f71e476284596802564c3005d8d50?Opendocument
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Dale Farm Update & Thoughts
News is still sketchy but there were at least 2 arrests when around 50 bailiffs from the notorious Constant & Co., supported by 3 van-loads of police and a number of Basildon District Council officers, attempted to enter the Hovefields Drive site to evict families and their caravans from 7 sites. Bulldozers were used to tear up the ground works in order to prevent the caravans return.
The bailiffs were met by a number of protesters who had gathered in advance of their arrival to try and prevent the eviction but they were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. As one observer said: "The bailiffs came in at eight in the morning and told everyone they had to leave immediately. I think it's been pretty violent in how they were dealing with things."
One Hovefields resident, who managed to get a High Court injunction following last month's issuing of 28 days notice of eviction by the Council, remained on the site following the bailiff's action. As to the fate of the other residents forced out, some of the children involved were being sheltered by other Dale Farm residents but many of the families no doubt spent the night parked up on the side of the road somewhere nearby.
The whole Dale Farm saga is indicative not only of the nimby attitude of residents to gypsies, travellers and Roma in general, but also reveal a widespread racism that lurks just below the surface of polite society. This almost universal stigmatisation of Roma and travellers has lead to centuries of persecution and marginalisation within society, resulting in the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' of a whole group of peoples who just wish to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.
Yet, 'normal society' want them to assimilate, to settle down and be just like them. Failing that, to just go away. But 'society' refuses to accept any of the blame for creating 'the problem'. I Eastern Europe the centuries of persecution of Roma and traveller folk developed into official state policy, reinforcing and legitimising this racism. Even now, governments are struggling to undo this structural persecution, the condemning of a particular group of people to being second class citizens. Having their children singled out for sending to inferior schools, then being denied access to further eduction or jobs; denied housing and health care; access to the courts; all simply because of who their parents are. Basically Apartheid under another name.
Now this problem, which has existed on a smaller scale through out the rest of Europe* has move on to our doorsteps and the consequences have been played out in the headlines and T.V. news reports in France recently, and before then in Italy. In those cases, the Roma have moved in order to flee that persecution only to run into the same sort of racist resentment and stigmatisation, dressed up in the guise of protecting law and order.
In the Dale Farm situation exactly the same forces are in operation.
* One only has to think of how many derogatory terms for gypsies and travellers are in common usage to work out how true this is.
The bailiffs were met by a number of protesters who had gathered in advance of their arrival to try and prevent the eviction but they were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. As one observer said: "The bailiffs came in at eight in the morning and told everyone they had to leave immediately. I think it's been pretty violent in how they were dealing with things."
One Hovefields resident, who managed to get a High Court injunction following last month's issuing of 28 days notice of eviction by the Council, remained on the site following the bailiff's action. As to the fate of the other residents forced out, some of the children involved were being sheltered by other Dale Farm residents but many of the families no doubt spent the night parked up on the side of the road somewhere nearby.
The whole Dale Farm saga is indicative not only of the nimby attitude of residents to gypsies, travellers and Roma in general, but also reveal a widespread racism that lurks just below the surface of polite society. This almost universal stigmatisation of Roma and travellers has lead to centuries of persecution and marginalisation within society, resulting in the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' of a whole group of peoples who just wish to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.
Yet, 'normal society' want them to assimilate, to settle down and be just like them. Failing that, to just go away. But 'society' refuses to accept any of the blame for creating 'the problem'. I Eastern Europe the centuries of persecution of Roma and traveller folk developed into official state policy, reinforcing and legitimising this racism. Even now, governments are struggling to undo this structural persecution, the condemning of a particular group of people to being second class citizens. Having their children singled out for sending to inferior schools, then being denied access to further eduction or jobs; denied housing and health care; access to the courts; all simply because of who their parents are. Basically Apartheid under another name.
Now this problem, which has existed on a smaller scale through out the rest of Europe* has move on to our doorsteps and the consequences have been played out in the headlines and T.V. news reports in France recently, and before then in Italy. In those cases, the Roma have moved in order to flee that persecution only to run into the same sort of racist resentment and stigmatisation, dressed up in the guise of protecting law and order.
In the Dale Farm situation exactly the same forces are in operation.
* One only has to think of how many derogatory terms for gypsies and travellers are in common usage to work out how true this is.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Metro Targeted By Anti-Racist Spoof
London commuters were this morning surprised to find that their usual Metro paper was a bit thinner, yet more interesting and engaging, than usual.Tens of thousands of copies of a spoof newspaper that looked very similar to the free daily were distributed at 20 busy tube stations around the capital during rush hour. Thousands more were distributed in other cities around the country.
Under the headline 'Gordon Brown to be deported to Scotland' the frontpage story claimed the former prime minister was facing imminent removal back to his "home country," as the new coalition government introduced new immigration rules that imposed further restrictions on "non-English nationals". Alongside the story, a manipulated picture showed Gordon Brown being arrested by two policemen at beer festival in Cambridge.
Wearing a white T-shirt bearing the Metro logo and a blue baseball cap, one of the 50 or so distributors, who preferred to keep anonymous, said: "By replacing the word 'British' with 'English' when talking about 'British jobs' and the 'floods of illegal immigrants into Britain,' we hope people will realise how racist and absurd this rhetoric of immigration controls is."
In a witty attempt to highlight the racist and sexual violence experienced by immigration detainees at the hands of private 'detainee escorts', a fake advert claimed that G4S, the private security giant that runs a number of immigration detention centres in the UK and provides detainee escort services on behalf of the UK Border Agency, was looking for "strong men" to "escort women abroad."
The rest of the spoof paper featured a 60-Second interview with a real-life ex-detainee, a 'myth-buster' about asylum and immigration, an 'immigration newspeak' glossary, racist quotes from mainstream press and a couple of more in-depth articles on immigration controls and protests against them.
Many of those who picked up the paper initially seemed confused as to why the Metro had "shrunk." Realising it was a spoof, however, many commented that it was "very funny", "clever", "naughty" and "brilliant". Some even returned back and asked for more copies. Others, however, threw it away and wanted the thicker "real thing."
The Metro website has also been spoofed, with a layout similar to that of the paper's official website but with the spoof paper's content.
The 'spoofing operation' was part of 'two days of action against racist press', called by a coalition of anti-racist and migrant rights groups under the name Press Action.
A spokesperson for the anonymous group of spoofers said, "We are sick of being lied to; we are sick of being lied about. These lies, repeated everyday by free papers, tabloids and other corporate mainstream media outlets, have almost become a reality, where the most vulnerable victims of this screwed-up political-economic system are blamed for it."
Explaining why the group chose the Metro and not a 'more obvious target' when it comes to racist press, such as the Daily Mail or the Evening Standard, the anonymous spokesperson commented: "We wanted to highlight the fact that racism and anti-immigration bias is sometimes more subtle than the Daily Hate rants. Besides, the Metro seemed to provide a better vehicle due to its exploitation of the 'public' transport system, so we thought we'd reclaim that right for a day."
-ends-
For further information and enquiries, please contact: pressaction@riseup.net
Photos available on request.
Notes for editors:
1. A pdf of the spoof paper can be found at:
http://www.metr0.co.uk/images/metr0-e-edition.pdf
or http://pressaction.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/metro_spoof.pdf
2. The spoof Metr0 website is at http://www.metr0.co.uk
3. The callout for the Two Days of Action Against Racist Press can be found at:
http://pressaction.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/two-days-of-action/
or http://www.metr0.co.uk/article/days-of-action.html
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Just Who Is Responsible For UK's Worsening Treatment Of Migrants?
It looks like the Tories claims that Nu Labour's mythical 'open door' immigration policy and their supposed attempts at mass social engineering (read as eugenics) via a policy encouraging 'mass immigration', not to mention the creation of the 'multicultural society' (read as 'diluting our precious bodily fluids'), was as restrictive and mean spirited as the Tories themselves hope to be.
The evidence for this has been coming in in droves recently. Just today we have had the news that Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ), the charity that provides legal support to thousands of asylum seekers across England and Wales have been forced into administration because of the changes brought in by Nu Labour to the way that Legal Aid fees are paid. Paul Gray, the chair of RMJ: "It is with great sadness that RMJ's trustees took the decision . . . we are very concerned about the position of our 10,000 clients, and of our dedicated and highly professional staff."
Instead of being paid hourly rates with fixed fees for most cases , the previous government decided that it would be a good idea to save money by only paying the fees when cases were exhausted. The net result is that only law firms with large financial backing can afford to take on Legal Aid-funded cases and charities or small firms that fight social justice issues that do not have that backing have either to face going to the wall or give up on Legal Aid-funded cases altogether, especially those firms specialising in asylum cases. Paul Gray again: "This situation is caused by late payment of legal aid by up to two years, not inefficiency or even lack of income . . . Late payment has an unequal impact on charities because they cannot get bank loans to finance the cash gap."
So that was a good outcome for any government seeking to halt, in their eyes, vexatious claims from refused asylum seekers who might dare to seek full legal redress and use the courts to fully pursue their rights under the law to seek, just like anyone else is free to do, as long as they can afford 'justice'. So, despite extensive lobbying of the new government from across the political spectrum, RMJ have been forced to call it a day, leaving over 10,000 clients, including 900 lone children, in legal limbo and more vulnerable than ever of being fed through the Borders Agency mincer and on to the next deportation flight.
The Ministry of Justice's response when then possibility of RMJ having to close its was first announced: "If RMJ fails, we accept that there will be some disruption while their clients look for help from another adviser. However, [the Legal Services Commission] believe that capacity will not be adversely affected as clients and caseworkers will be able to transfer to other organisations, as has happened in similar situations." Except that they wont be specialists in immigration law and their potential clients wont get the best legal advice possible. Still, they will be cheaper. One up to Nu Labour.
Then there was the Tory-Whig Alliance's announcements both of the resumption of deportations of Iraqi asylum seekers directly back to Baghdad, a scheme that had failed miserably last time it was tried, and the plan to send Afghan children back to Afghanistan in direct contravention of any number of international laws and conventions (this was more of a leak than a planned announcement), a move that was roundly condemned by everyone from the UNHCR though the Refugee Council to Human Rights Watch. The tender for the £4m "reintegration centre" in Afghanistan designed to 'process' 120 adults and 12 boys aged under 18 who had been forcibly returned from the UK. Up to 150 teenagers would be sent back in its first year of operation.
The British plans forms part of a wider European move to plan the return of unaccompanied migrant children to Afghanistan. Norway wants to open their own reception centre in Kabul, whilst Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands are to follow suit soon. All this is as the direct result of Nu Labour circulated a policy paper on unaccompanied minors in February during a Brussels workshop that called for an "EU-wide presumption" that a child's best interest was to return. It also argued that formal safeguards such as guardianship were "immensely expensive to put in place", emphasising the cost cutting basis of the plan.
According to the Home Office, there are currently 4,200 unaccompanied child refugees in the country and a fair portion of these have had their asylum applications refused by the Home Office on the basis that they are lying about their true age, never mind actually accepting their reasons for fleeing persecution. However, child protection laws guarantee that they will not be left destitute and homeless and many of these children are currently living in care homes across the UK.
Amongst those who are highly critical of the plan is Kamena Dorling, legal and policy officer for the Migrant Children's Project at the Children's Legal Centre: "If a child has no family to whom they can be returned safely, then it is difficult to see how returning them alone to Kabul will be in line with the UK Border Agency's duty, under the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, to ‘safeguard and promote the welfare' of that child."
However the government's main interest is solely in presenting a picture of the UK as not being a 'soft touch', hence Damian 'The Omen' Green repeating the same tired old clichés focusing on the 'pull factors', such as they are, rather than the 'push factors': "No one should be encouraging children to make dangerous journeys across the world." Just how trite can one get?
We, and numerous others, have worked with these children who (along with their families) have been so desperate to escape their circumstances that they have spent months (if not years) travelling halfway around the world; often walking hundreds of miles through all weathers; risking life and limb; often being beaten, robbed or raped; often trusting their lives to people traffickers (sometimes paid by their families selling everything they own); all in the hope of reaching the relative safety of a land they have only ever seen on the TV or heard of on the radio. That Green should denigrate them with this tosh would be outrageous if it weren't totally to be expected.
The UNHCR also objected to the forced return of Iraqi asylum seekers that the UK and other EU countries have jointly carried out in the past 2 weeks whilst all that well-known snake oil salesman David Cameron could come up with was praise for "our brave servicemen and women fought and died" in Iraq. Yet the war that those troops have pursued in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is the very reason why many of these people were forced to become refugees. Strikes two and three for Nu Labour.
Days later the UNHCR released a report entitled 'Trees Only Move In The Wind' which further reinforce the general dangers that unaccompanied child migrants face, not only on their journeys to the EU, but also when they reach here. It makes for salutary reading.
On top of all this this week saw a report entitled 'Not Gone But Forgotten' from the Red Cross criticising the government's asylum system as "shameful" and "inhumane", and laying into the 'section 4' hardship provision. A survey carried out by the organisation suggested that 87% of the 11,000 plus destitute refused asylum seekers that it helped last year often lived on one meal a day.* Not particularly good PR for the government but no doubt of more concern to them is news from their own newly created Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of another report that effectively torpedoes the government's plans to cap migration.
The OBR's message is that the demographic time bomb of a falling birth rate and an increasing elderly population coupled with a massive cut in non-EU migration, the cutbacks, a weakening pound and a slowing economy will lead to a further decrease in migration. The net result will be even less of a tax intake to pay for the growing pensions bill and fewer people to fill the low paid carers jobs in the dwindling public and outsourced private sector care providers. Strikes four and five to Nu Labour but the last one is all down to the Tory-Whig Alliance, and from now on the buck will have to stop with them.
* See also the Guardian article 'The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week'.
The evidence for this has been coming in in droves recently. Just today we have had the news that Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ), the charity that provides legal support to thousands of asylum seekers across England and Wales have been forced into administration because of the changes brought in by Nu Labour to the way that Legal Aid fees are paid. Paul Gray, the chair of RMJ: "It is with great sadness that RMJ's trustees took the decision . . . we are very concerned about the position of our 10,000 clients, and of our dedicated and highly professional staff."
Instead of being paid hourly rates with fixed fees for most cases , the previous government decided that it would be a good idea to save money by only paying the fees when cases were exhausted. The net result is that only law firms with large financial backing can afford to take on Legal Aid-funded cases and charities or small firms that fight social justice issues that do not have that backing have either to face going to the wall or give up on Legal Aid-funded cases altogether, especially those firms specialising in asylum cases. Paul Gray again: "This situation is caused by late payment of legal aid by up to two years, not inefficiency or even lack of income . . . Late payment has an unequal impact on charities because they cannot get bank loans to finance the cash gap."
So that was a good outcome for any government seeking to halt, in their eyes, vexatious claims from refused asylum seekers who might dare to seek full legal redress and use the courts to fully pursue their rights under the law to seek, just like anyone else is free to do, as long as they can afford 'justice'. So, despite extensive lobbying of the new government from across the political spectrum, RMJ have been forced to call it a day, leaving over 10,000 clients, including 900 lone children, in legal limbo and more vulnerable than ever of being fed through the Borders Agency mincer and on to the next deportation flight.
The Ministry of Justice's response when then possibility of RMJ having to close its was first announced: "If RMJ fails, we accept that there will be some disruption while their clients look for help from another adviser. However, [the Legal Services Commission] believe that capacity will not be adversely affected as clients and caseworkers will be able to transfer to other organisations, as has happened in similar situations." Except that they wont be specialists in immigration law and their potential clients wont get the best legal advice possible. Still, they will be cheaper. One up to Nu Labour.
Then there was the Tory-Whig Alliance's announcements both of the resumption of deportations of Iraqi asylum seekers directly back to Baghdad, a scheme that had failed miserably last time it was tried, and the plan to send Afghan children back to Afghanistan in direct contravention of any number of international laws and conventions (this was more of a leak than a planned announcement), a move that was roundly condemned by everyone from the UNHCR though the Refugee Council to Human Rights Watch. The tender for the £4m "reintegration centre" in Afghanistan designed to 'process' 120 adults and 12 boys aged under 18 who had been forcibly returned from the UK. Up to 150 teenagers would be sent back in its first year of operation.
The British plans forms part of a wider European move to plan the return of unaccompanied migrant children to Afghanistan. Norway wants to open their own reception centre in Kabul, whilst Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands are to follow suit soon. All this is as the direct result of Nu Labour circulated a policy paper on unaccompanied minors in February during a Brussels workshop that called for an "EU-wide presumption" that a child's best interest was to return. It also argued that formal safeguards such as guardianship were "immensely expensive to put in place", emphasising the cost cutting basis of the plan.
According to the Home Office, there are currently 4,200 unaccompanied child refugees in the country and a fair portion of these have had their asylum applications refused by the Home Office on the basis that they are lying about their true age, never mind actually accepting their reasons for fleeing persecution. However, child protection laws guarantee that they will not be left destitute and homeless and many of these children are currently living in care homes across the UK.
Amongst those who are highly critical of the plan is Kamena Dorling, legal and policy officer for the Migrant Children's Project at the Children's Legal Centre: "If a child has no family to whom they can be returned safely, then it is difficult to see how returning them alone to Kabul will be in line with the UK Border Agency's duty, under the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, to ‘safeguard and promote the welfare' of that child."
However the government's main interest is solely in presenting a picture of the UK as not being a 'soft touch', hence Damian 'The Omen' Green repeating the same tired old clichés focusing on the 'pull factors', such as they are, rather than the 'push factors': "No one should be encouraging children to make dangerous journeys across the world." Just how trite can one get?
We, and numerous others, have worked with these children who (along with their families) have been so desperate to escape their circumstances that they have spent months (if not years) travelling halfway around the world; often walking hundreds of miles through all weathers; risking life and limb; often being beaten, robbed or raped; often trusting their lives to people traffickers (sometimes paid by their families selling everything they own); all in the hope of reaching the relative safety of a land they have only ever seen on the TV or heard of on the radio. That Green should denigrate them with this tosh would be outrageous if it weren't totally to be expected.
The UNHCR also objected to the forced return of Iraqi asylum seekers that the UK and other EU countries have jointly carried out in the past 2 weeks whilst all that well-known snake oil salesman David Cameron could come up with was praise for "our brave servicemen and women fought and died" in Iraq. Yet the war that those troops have pursued in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is the very reason why many of these people were forced to become refugees. Strikes two and three for Nu Labour.
Days later the UNHCR released a report entitled 'Trees Only Move In The Wind' which further reinforce the general dangers that unaccompanied child migrants face, not only on their journeys to the EU, but also when they reach here. It makes for salutary reading.
On top of all this this week saw a report entitled 'Not Gone But Forgotten' from the Red Cross criticising the government's asylum system as "shameful" and "inhumane", and laying into the 'section 4' hardship provision. A survey carried out by the organisation suggested that 87% of the 11,000 plus destitute refused asylum seekers that it helped last year often lived on one meal a day.* Not particularly good PR for the government but no doubt of more concern to them is news from their own newly created Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of another report that effectively torpedoes the government's plans to cap migration.
The OBR's message is that the demographic time bomb of a falling birth rate and an increasing elderly population coupled with a massive cut in non-EU migration, the cutbacks, a weakening pound and a slowing economy will lead to a further decrease in migration. The net result will be even less of a tax intake to pay for the growing pensions bill and fewer people to fill the low paid carers jobs in the dwindling public and outsourced private sector care providers. Strikes four and five to Nu Labour but the last one is all down to the Tory-Whig Alliance, and from now on the buck will have to stop with them.
* See also the Guardian article 'The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week'.
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
G4S Alert In Brighton: Want To Work For G4S??
G4S, the company contracted by the UKBA to take care of large chunks of the deportation and detention process, will have а booth at the City Future Job Fair in Brighton on the 4th of June from 10:00am-4:00pm, which happens to be the same week as the European-wide Week of Action against the Deportation Machine.
The job fair, organized by Brighton & Hove City Council, the Evening Argus, and Job Centre Plus (who also employ G4S Security in their Brighton office), is meant to give Sussex “the chance to visit over 30 key employers with hundreds of current job vacancies all under one roof.” G4S will be one of those 30 employers. (See: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/jobs-fair)
Groups throughout Brighton are issuing а statement to the Council that it is unacceptable to invite a company to participate in the job fair with such а horrendous and well-documented record of rights abuses towards migrants.
Join us in complaining to the City Future Job Fair sponsors, Brighton & Hove City Council and the Argus for allowing G4S to have а stall in this job fair. Also contact the Brighton Centre (run by the Council) for its role in hosting and organizing the event.
Brighton and Hove City Council
· Location: King’s House, Grand Avenue, Hove, BN3 2LS
· To make а complaint, online form: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1191434
· Online form: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=b1153064
City Employment Initiatives Team
· Brighton Town Hall, Bartholomew Square, Brighton, BN1 1JA
· Phone: (01273) 296397
· Email: futurejobs@brighton-hove.gov.uk
Argus (Brighton’s main local newspaper)
· Location: Argus House, Crowhurst Road, Hollingbury, Brighton BN1 8AR
· Phone: 01273 544 544
· Fax: 01273 566 144
· Editorial Editor: Michael Beard, editor@theargus.co.uk, 01273 544 501
· Letters to the Editor: letters@theargus.co.uk
Brighton Centre: Please contact Debbie Matthews, in charge of conferences
· Location: Kings Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 6GR
· Phone: 01273 290131
· Fax: 01273 779980
· Email: debbiematthews@brighton.gov.uk
The job fair, organized by Brighton & Hove City Council, the Evening Argus, and Job Centre Plus (who also employ G4S Security in their Brighton office), is meant to give Sussex “the chance to visit over 30 key employers with hundreds of current job vacancies all under one roof.” G4S will be one of those 30 employers. (See: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/jobs-fair)
Groups throughout Brighton are issuing а statement to the Council that it is unacceptable to invite a company to participate in the job fair with such а horrendous and well-documented record of rights abuses towards migrants.
Join us in complaining to the City Future Job Fair sponsors, Brighton & Hove City Council and the Argus for allowing G4S to have а stall in this job fair. Also contact the Brighton Centre (run by the Council) for its role in hosting and organizing the event.
Brighton and Hove City Council
· Location: King’s House, Grand Avenue, Hove, BN3 2LS
· To make а complaint, online form: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1191434
· Online form: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=b1153064
City Employment Initiatives Team
· Brighton Town Hall, Bartholomew Square, Brighton, BN1 1JA
· Phone: (01273) 296397
· Email: futurejobs@brighton-hove.gov.uk
Argus (Brighton’s main local newspaper)
· Location: Argus House, Crowhurst Road, Hollingbury, Brighton BN1 8AR
· Phone: 01273 544 544
· Fax: 01273 566 144
· Editorial Editor: Michael Beard, editor@theargus.co.uk, 01273 544 501
· Letters to the Editor: letters@theargus.co.uk
Brighton Centre: Please contact Debbie Matthews, in charge of conferences
· Location: Kings Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 6GR
· Phone: 01273 290131
· Fax: 01273 779980
· Email: debbiematthews@brighton.gov.uk
Thursday, 20 May 2010
At Last - Potential Light In The Labour Leadership Darkness
Since Gordon Brown announced that he was standing down as Labour leader it has been looking increasingly likely that the contest to replace him would take place between a bunch of middle class white male political apparatchiks whom one would find it difficult to squeeze a fag paper between them on policy or almost anything else. These prospective candidate clones had all been political researchers in the inner circle loop had also all made early noises off that the reason New Labour failed to stay fresh in the eyes of the electorate was because it had neglected its core constituency: working class voters.
Now, anyone with even a passing grasp of Labour history would know that the party had been ignoring the needs of the working class since the day it was formed. And this process was merely accelerated when the Blair/Brown plan to 'reinvent' as Nu Labour was first formulated. The plain fact is that Labour history has always been one of continuous movement towards the 'middle' of the political spectrum, and just like water going down a plughole, the nearer the middle they got the faster the rate of movement. Now they find Clegg and Cameron camped on what they though was now their home turf and they are stuck with two option: to try and elbow their was back to this mythical 'middle ground'[1] or to reconnect with what should be the needs of the party's core constituency.[2]
And their response? Well, initially it appeared that, rather than spending any time really analysing the 'whys and wherefores', the response would be straight out of the 'knee-jerk' school of politics: a quick coronation based around a common view that the voters blamed all their troubles on bloody foreigners 'over here stealing our jobs and homes and filling up our schools and doctors waiting rooms', therefore we should have been even tougher on immigration. Not that they weren't already turning the screws even tighter. Labour, for example, had planned to save £4.5bn by rendering destitute hundreds of thousands of people currently seeking indefinite leave to remain in the country but, according to ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas, the public didn't know about this 'tough cop' approach: "What we did was not too little, but it was too late. People felt we were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted." Thus it was all a failure to communicate.
So far, so bad. Then however, it appeared that some light be possibly be shone in the murk of all these recriminations as there appeared to be a chance that Jon Cruddas, who has often been at odds with his party's prevailing 'let's blame it all on immigrants' easy option, would stand. But that expectation proved fruitless and he passed up the chance to put forward arguments like:
"Immigration has been used as a 21st-century incomes policy, mixing a liberal sense of free for all with a free-market disdain for clear and effective rules. We have known this was a problem. Yet the answer for the government lay in a ratcheted-up rhetoric rather than solutions that may have challenged liberal assumptions and business lobbyists alike. Low pay and job insecurity, despite a minimum wage, has left people on the edge of society looking in on new levels of riches. This has happened while migrant workers are set against British workers by rogue employers looking to shave costs to make a bigger buck. This has not happened by accident. Labour actively took the decision not to better regulate for agency workers, and to not introduce living wage agreements."[3]
on the main stage of the leadership debate (though we can but hope that he continues to inject some sense into it even if his position is limited and often contradictory).
Then there is John McDonnell, another working class MP from the 'left' of the party but currently struggling to get the requisite number of nominations. He has been less vocal on the subject but has a history of supporting causes like the Yarl's Wood hungerstrikers, the SOAS cleaners and others struggling against immigration-related repression, and therefore might also contribute views counter to the Milibands, Burnhams and Balls of this world, resulting in some form of rational debate.
However, the piece de resistance must surely now be the announcement this morning that Diane Abbott, the first black MP and female to boot, would join the race. She certainly wont be trotting out the same tired hypocritical rhetoric that Nu Labour were 'tough on immigration and tough on the causes of immigration'. Instead, announcing her reasons for standing, she said that the immigration system is "inefficient and unfair and brings abuse" and that "nobody (else) will say we have to address the underlying issues behind black and white working class unease about immigration, about housing, job insecurity."
She wont win of course, the job is bound to go to one of the safe 'lets not rock the boat' apparatchiks, and the Labour Party's' default setting on immigration is unlikely to change. But then again we don't really care who does win, just as long as they actually try and reconnect with reality and somebody argues the point that it is not migrants that are to blame for the shortage of housing, education, training and meaningful jobs; it is them, the political classes, who have created the conditions that allowed this to happen. Ed Miliband is right, "immigration is a class issue". Just not in the way he meant it.
For example, it is not that immigrants are getting what public housing that is available ahead of the so-called 'indigenous' population, it is that successive governments have decimated that public housing stock that working class voters rely upon especially in areas like London and in the industrial heartlands where unemployment is rife. Instead they chose to follow the Thatcherite ethic, selling it off to subsidise the public coffers and remove the costs of maintaining it via direct works departments from local council budgets. At the same time no new public housing was built to replace it and the inevitable consequence is that the pressures on the ever dwindling council houses that were still available would increase.
This has also inevitably led to bigots wishing to pedal their race-hate agenda or sell their execrable daily newspapers being able to feed lies to and exploit the ignorance generated in the general public around immigration issues, such as immigrants jumping the housing queues. The simple truth is that, rather than jumping any queue, the houses that migrants are getting is ex-council properties in the hands of private letting agents, housing that is often in such a state of dilapidation that nobody would chose to live in them unless they had no other choice short of living on the streets.[4]
This is just one example of the sort of myth (along side blaming migrants for binging wages down, rather than as Cruddas suggests, the employers that pay the wages in the first place) that has the potential to go unchallenged in this 'debate'. One can but hope that it doesn't come down to that. The Tories and Lib Dems may have joined the Blair and Brown version of Labour in junking ideology in order to gain power but Labour have a chance to reject that option and fight for real working class values, not just those of their 'core vote' but for all workers, including migrants. And not to just fight for their own careers as Labour Party apparatchiks.
[1] The idea that everyone can occupy the middle ground is patently absurd ('how many pin-heads can one get on the head of an angel?). And one assumes that there must be a fence in the middle dividing off right from left, therefore, if everyone is sitting on this fence in the middle, it is bound to collapse at some point.
[2] The more paranoid commentators currently appear to think that this [the Tory-Whig coalition] is all some master plan by Cameron - push Labour to the wilderness of left-wing politics - rather than just some accident of history. And if Nu Labour do continue to try and occupy this 'middle ground', they might just as well join the coalition.
[3] We have to say that almost any argument would be more enlightening that the sort of one Ed Balls is putting forward: "Britain is not a racist country"! What is that meant to mean?
[4] And that only some property speculator would want to buy as they know they can make massive profits out of them from the government in just such a fashion without having to invest any money to bring them back up to any sort of acceptable housing standard.
Now, anyone with even a passing grasp of Labour history would know that the party had been ignoring the needs of the working class since the day it was formed. And this process was merely accelerated when the Blair/Brown plan to 'reinvent' as Nu Labour was first formulated. The plain fact is that Labour history has always been one of continuous movement towards the 'middle' of the political spectrum, and just like water going down a plughole, the nearer the middle they got the faster the rate of movement. Now they find Clegg and Cameron camped on what they though was now their home turf and they are stuck with two option: to try and elbow their was back to this mythical 'middle ground'[1] or to reconnect with what should be the needs of the party's core constituency.[2]
And their response? Well, initially it appeared that, rather than spending any time really analysing the 'whys and wherefores', the response would be straight out of the 'knee-jerk' school of politics: a quick coronation based around a common view that the voters blamed all their troubles on bloody foreigners 'over here stealing our jobs and homes and filling up our schools and doctors waiting rooms', therefore we should have been even tougher on immigration. Not that they weren't already turning the screws even tighter. Labour, for example, had planned to save £4.5bn by rendering destitute hundreds of thousands of people currently seeking indefinite leave to remain in the country but, according to ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas, the public didn't know about this 'tough cop' approach: "What we did was not too little, but it was too late. People felt we were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted." Thus it was all a failure to communicate.
So far, so bad. Then however, it appeared that some light be possibly be shone in the murk of all these recriminations as there appeared to be a chance that Jon Cruddas, who has often been at odds with his party's prevailing 'let's blame it all on immigrants' easy option, would stand. But that expectation proved fruitless and he passed up the chance to put forward arguments like:
"Immigration has been used as a 21st-century incomes policy, mixing a liberal sense of free for all with a free-market disdain for clear and effective rules. We have known this was a problem. Yet the answer for the government lay in a ratcheted-up rhetoric rather than solutions that may have challenged liberal assumptions and business lobbyists alike. Low pay and job insecurity, despite a minimum wage, has left people on the edge of society looking in on new levels of riches. This has happened while migrant workers are set against British workers by rogue employers looking to shave costs to make a bigger buck. This has not happened by accident. Labour actively took the decision not to better regulate for agency workers, and to not introduce living wage agreements."[3]
on the main stage of the leadership debate (though we can but hope that he continues to inject some sense into it even if his position is limited and often contradictory).
Then there is John McDonnell, another working class MP from the 'left' of the party but currently struggling to get the requisite number of nominations. He has been less vocal on the subject but has a history of supporting causes like the Yarl's Wood hungerstrikers, the SOAS cleaners and others struggling against immigration-related repression, and therefore might also contribute views counter to the Milibands, Burnhams and Balls of this world, resulting in some form of rational debate.
However, the piece de resistance must surely now be the announcement this morning that Diane Abbott, the first black MP and female to boot, would join the race. She certainly wont be trotting out the same tired hypocritical rhetoric that Nu Labour were 'tough on immigration and tough on the causes of immigration'. Instead, announcing her reasons for standing, she said that the immigration system is "inefficient and unfair and brings abuse" and that "nobody (else) will say we have to address the underlying issues behind black and white working class unease about immigration, about housing, job insecurity."
She wont win of course, the job is bound to go to one of the safe 'lets not rock the boat' apparatchiks, and the Labour Party's' default setting on immigration is unlikely to change. But then again we don't really care who does win, just as long as they actually try and reconnect with reality and somebody argues the point that it is not migrants that are to blame for the shortage of housing, education, training and meaningful jobs; it is them, the political classes, who have created the conditions that allowed this to happen. Ed Miliband is right, "immigration is a class issue". Just not in the way he meant it.
For example, it is not that immigrants are getting what public housing that is available ahead of the so-called 'indigenous' population, it is that successive governments have decimated that public housing stock that working class voters rely upon especially in areas like London and in the industrial heartlands where unemployment is rife. Instead they chose to follow the Thatcherite ethic, selling it off to subsidise the public coffers and remove the costs of maintaining it via direct works departments from local council budgets. At the same time no new public housing was built to replace it and the inevitable consequence is that the pressures on the ever dwindling council houses that were still available would increase.
This has also inevitably led to bigots wishing to pedal their race-hate agenda or sell their execrable daily newspapers being able to feed lies to and exploit the ignorance generated in the general public around immigration issues, such as immigrants jumping the housing queues. The simple truth is that, rather than jumping any queue, the houses that migrants are getting is ex-council properties in the hands of private letting agents, housing that is often in such a state of dilapidation that nobody would chose to live in them unless they had no other choice short of living on the streets.[4]
This is just one example of the sort of myth (along side blaming migrants for binging wages down, rather than as Cruddas suggests, the employers that pay the wages in the first place) that has the potential to go unchallenged in this 'debate'. One can but hope that it doesn't come down to that. The Tories and Lib Dems may have joined the Blair and Brown version of Labour in junking ideology in order to gain power but Labour have a chance to reject that option and fight for real working class values, not just those of their 'core vote' but for all workers, including migrants. And not to just fight for their own careers as Labour Party apparatchiks.
[1] The idea that everyone can occupy the middle ground is patently absurd ('how many pin-heads can one get on the head of an angel?). And one assumes that there must be a fence in the middle dividing off right from left, therefore, if everyone is sitting on this fence in the middle, it is bound to collapse at some point.
[2] The more paranoid commentators currently appear to think that this [the Tory-Whig coalition] is all some master plan by Cameron - push Labour to the wilderness of left-wing politics - rather than just some accident of history. And if Nu Labour do continue to try and occupy this 'middle ground', they might just as well join the coalition.
[3] We have to say that almost any argument would be more enlightening that the sort of one Ed Balls is putting forward: "Britain is not a racist country"! What is that meant to mean?
[4] And that only some property speculator would want to buy as they know they can make massive profits out of them from the government in just such a fashion without having to invest any money to bring them back up to any sort of acceptable housing standard.
Saturday, 10 April 2010
More On Jobs & Statistical Abuse
A few more articles, this time from the Guardian [1, 2], that you can examine to get a different slant on the rabid Tory press' junk statistics. Plus, Andrew Neil's own less than literate use of the statistics which he used in his handbagging of Woolas on Thursday has been shown up by quiet a few of the commentators on his BBC blog.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
The Mail Says: 'Foreign Nurses Forced To Take English Lessons'...
...So It Must Be True?
Ah yes! The Daily Mail, in its xenophobic Spitfires-over-the-cliffs-of-Dover and Churchill-fighting-the-damn-foreigners-on-the-beaches world, is at it again, revealing the startling news that (as the Telegraph puts it in its more sedate rehash of the Mail's story), 'NHS trust employs staff from 70 countries' - "Managers at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals in Oxford have arranged for employees to take English lessons after patients complained that they could not make themselves understood."
Except that the Mail's original version is slightly more sensationalist, 'Revealed: Hospital has staff from 70 countries as nurses who don't even understand 'nil by mouth' forced to take English lessons' [note the word 'forced'] - "An NHS hospital has staff from a staggering 70 countries on its payroll. The huge number of overseas nurses, cleaners and porters has forced health chiefs to send them on ten-week English courses because many do not understand basic medical phrases."
And how do we know this to be the case? You can bet your bottom dollar that the NHS Trust did not press-release the story. Of course not, far too obvious a target for Mail-like sensationalism. So, in sightly torturous English, the Telegraph reveals who did, "Many nurses and other front-line staff at the hospitals have such poor language skills that they are unable to read or write English, patient groups said."
The aforementioned 'patient group(s)' was, according to the Mail, the Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum, or to be more accurate, one Jacquie Pearce-Gervis,* who apparently "called last night for English lessons to be made compulsory rather than voluntary." The Telegraph, who appear to have checked her bona fides before publishing, identified her as spokeswoman for "Patient Voice, the Oxfordshire-based campaign group". And a quick search of the internet reveals that she was certainly a member of the 'Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum'** in 2006 (the most recent listing on the Trust's website) but most recently she has been a member of the Oxford-based or Oxfordshire-based group 'Patients Voice', depending on who one reads. Whether this is the same group as the pro-vivisection Oxford-based group Patients' Voice for Medical Advance we do not know.
However, it would appear that all one needs to do to get a story in the Mail, whatever group one claims to represent, is to ring up some dodgy Mail journo or the 'News' desk itself with some juicy titbit about damn foreigners causing good English stock some form of upset and Bob's your uncle (or aunty as the case maybe be, though she wouldn't get any favourable space if she were the later).
Anyway, to get back to the Mail: "Among the terms some workers from countries such as Burma, the Philippines and Poland can't follow are 'nil by mouth', 'doing the rounds' and 'bleeping a doctor'." Err! Why that particular choice of countries? Burma possibly, the Philippines less obviously, but Poland!? Clearly Poles (swan-eating shed-squatters) are now up there with the French (cheese-eating surrender monkeys, though they do want to ban the burqa) and Germans (the Boche - no can't use that word, its French - started WWI, WWII and the EU along with the French and always beating England on penalties at the World Cup) on the Mail's list of countries to hate.
Now here's the juicy bit, the meat (or TVP) in the sandwich of this story: "The lessons follow several 'near-disaster' cases, including one where a meal was delivered to a patient because a member of staff did not understand that 'nil by mouth' meant the man could not eat or drink." Disturbing, especially as the headline implied that this was due to "nurses who don't even understand 'nil by mouth'."
Reading on through the article, after learning that "all doctors from outside the EU must pass an English language test set by the General Medical Council before they can practise" and that "the same rules do not apply for other hospital workers", except that nurses and porters of course do not practice medicine and therefore do not have to take the GMC tests. "Instead, they are usually assessed on their grasp of the language at interview."
OK then? Except, "the problem has become so acute at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals that foreign workers are being encouraged to attend ten-week, taxpayer-funded 'English For Speakers Of Other Languages' courses, which are run by a nearby college."
So exactly how bad is this 'problem'? The Mail seems reluctant to actually say. It does reveal the interesting 'factoid' that "research has found that up to a quarter of nurses - more than 60,000 - working in London are foreign, with the largest number coming from the Philippines." What research this is the article does not reveal, or why the facts about London are relevant to Oxford and a hospital (or is that a hospital trust, not necessarily the same thing) that the paper clearly implies has much more of a 'problem' with foreign staff as they surely would be leading with the banner 'London hospitals employ staff from 70 countries' or some such rubbish?
Then we get a list of some hospitals in London and that "Manchester Royal Infirmary also has a high proportion of foreign staff from countries including India, Ghana, Spain, Germany, Iceland and the Yemen." Outstanding journalism! But probably nicked from a 2002 edition of the Independent.*** And its only then that we learn, both that this earth-shattering story is due to this Ms Pearce-Gervis calling "last night for English lessons to be made compulsory rather than voluntary."
And, wait for it, "There have been cases when porters have delivered a patient food despite the fact there is a clear sign on their bed saying "nil by mouth"." So it is NOT nurses who don't understand the phrase 'nil by mouth', it is porters delivering food to patients who apparently do not understand it. And even then we have no evidence that the food being delivered to the bed of someone due to have an operation was because the porters could not read English or because they got mixed up over who was having what meal, a mistake that we are sure no English-reading porters has ever made.
And even then, in the very next sentence, Ms Pearce-Gervis states "obviously this could have led to disaster but fortunately THE PATIENT [our emphasis] has been intelligent enough to point out that they are not allowed the food." So it was only one patient, as the Mail itself claimed earlier in the article. One case and even then there's no evidence presented of possible 'disaster' if the patient had gone ahead and eaten the food.
So what do Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust have to say on the subject? After a short anonymous quote from 'a member of staff at the trust' ("I think it should be compulsory. There can often be problems with common slang terms used on the ward." - something that 10 weeks of English lessons are not necessarily going to solve) and as many column inches of space dedicated to Dr Daniel Ubani, the German (naturally) GP involved in the death of a patient through the administration of a massive overdose of a painkiller he had never used before, but who also happened to have failed the GMC language test, their spokesperson, Rainy Faisey, deputy director of human resources at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, claimed that the courses were a way of giving staff in lower-paid jobs a chance to develop their skills.
"As an employer, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust offers a wide variety of training and development opportunities to its staff to help them to provide excellent care for our patients and further their career in the NHS. Like all good employers we give all staff the opportunity to develop their reading, writing and numeracy skills, whether their first language is English or not."
So, all in all, another xenophobic Mail non-story. And NO nurses are in fact being "forced to take English lessons."
* Who a back copy of the May 2004 issue of ORH News helpfully tells us "began work at the Radcliffe Infirmary as a shorthand typist when she was 17 and worked in the NHS for 20 years before re-training as a teacher in further education."
** As an aside, the Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum or Patient and Public Involvement Forum or the Oxfordshire and Berkshire Consortium for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (or even Oxfordshire and Berkshire Consortium for Patient and Public Involvement in Health depending on which NHS trust website one visits) no longer appears to exist in one or maybe all of its previous forms. Certainly neither of the websites [1, 2] are up and running and there is no mention of it in recent issues of the ORH News.
If, however, you live in the Oxford area, you can apply to join the panel by filling out this form. And maybe you'll get to meet the famous Ms Pearce-Gervis who the Mail is happy to dedicate so much of its valuable advertising space to.
*** This really does show up how little research goes in to this sort of story. No doubt the journo Google a few hospitals abd came up with the Independent article 'Why foreign nurses hold the nation's health in their hands', which contains the following information: "Indian nurses now account for one in ten of the infirmary's nursing workforce." Followed by: "In addition, a dozen other countries supply staff, including the Philippines, Australia, Spain, Ghana, Germany, Iceland and the Yemen."
Ah yes! The Daily Mail, in its xenophobic Spitfires-over-the-cliffs-of-Dover and Churchill-fighting-the-damn-foreigners-on-the-beaches world, is at it again, revealing the startling news that (as the Telegraph puts it in its more sedate rehash of the Mail's story), 'NHS trust employs staff from 70 countries' - "Managers at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals in Oxford have arranged for employees to take English lessons after patients complained that they could not make themselves understood."
Except that the Mail's original version is slightly more sensationalist, 'Revealed: Hospital has staff from 70 countries as nurses who don't even understand 'nil by mouth' forced to take English lessons' [note the word 'forced'] - "An NHS hospital has staff from a staggering 70 countries on its payroll. The huge number of overseas nurses, cleaners and porters has forced health chiefs to send them on ten-week English courses because many do not understand basic medical phrases."
And how do we know this to be the case? You can bet your bottom dollar that the NHS Trust did not press-release the story. Of course not, far too obvious a target for Mail-like sensationalism. So, in sightly torturous English, the Telegraph reveals who did, "Many nurses and other front-line staff at the hospitals have such poor language skills that they are unable to read or write English, patient groups said."
The aforementioned 'patient group(s)' was, according to the Mail, the Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum, or to be more accurate, one Jacquie Pearce-Gervis,* who apparently "called last night for English lessons to be made compulsory rather than voluntary." The Telegraph, who appear to have checked her bona fides before publishing, identified her as spokeswoman for "Patient Voice, the Oxfordshire-based campaign group". And a quick search of the internet reveals that she was certainly a member of the 'Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum'** in 2006 (the most recent listing on the Trust's website) but most recently she has been a member of the Oxford-based or Oxfordshire-based group 'Patients Voice', depending on who one reads. Whether this is the same group as the pro-vivisection Oxford-based group Patients' Voice for Medical Advance we do not know.
However, it would appear that all one needs to do to get a story in the Mail, whatever group one claims to represent, is to ring up some dodgy Mail journo or the 'News' desk itself with some juicy titbit about damn foreigners causing good English stock some form of upset and Bob's your uncle (or aunty as the case maybe be, though she wouldn't get any favourable space if she were the later).
Anyway, to get back to the Mail: "Among the terms some workers from countries such as Burma, the Philippines and Poland can't follow are 'nil by mouth', 'doing the rounds' and 'bleeping a doctor'." Err! Why that particular choice of countries? Burma possibly, the Philippines less obviously, but Poland!? Clearly Poles (swan-eating shed-squatters) are now up there with the French (cheese-eating surrender monkeys, though they do want to ban the burqa) and Germans (the Boche - no can't use that word, its French - started WWI, WWII and the EU along with the French and always beating England on penalties at the World Cup) on the Mail's list of countries to hate.
Now here's the juicy bit, the meat (or TVP) in the sandwich of this story: "The lessons follow several 'near-disaster' cases, including one where a meal was delivered to a patient because a member of staff did not understand that 'nil by mouth' meant the man could not eat or drink." Disturbing, especially as the headline implied that this was due to "nurses who don't even understand 'nil by mouth'."
Reading on through the article, after learning that "all doctors from outside the EU must pass an English language test set by the General Medical Council before they can practise" and that "the same rules do not apply for other hospital workers", except that nurses and porters of course do not practice medicine and therefore do not have to take the GMC tests. "Instead, they are usually assessed on their grasp of the language at interview."
OK then? Except, "the problem has become so acute at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals that foreign workers are being encouraged to attend ten-week, taxpayer-funded 'English For Speakers Of Other Languages' courses, which are run by a nearby college."
So exactly how bad is this 'problem'? The Mail seems reluctant to actually say. It does reveal the interesting 'factoid' that "research has found that up to a quarter of nurses - more than 60,000 - working in London are foreign, with the largest number coming from the Philippines." What research this is the article does not reveal, or why the facts about London are relevant to Oxford and a hospital (or is that a hospital trust, not necessarily the same thing) that the paper clearly implies has much more of a 'problem' with foreign staff as they surely would be leading with the banner 'London hospitals employ staff from 70 countries' or some such rubbish?
Then we get a list of some hospitals in London and that "Manchester Royal Infirmary also has a high proportion of foreign staff from countries including India, Ghana, Spain, Germany, Iceland and the Yemen." Outstanding journalism! But probably nicked from a 2002 edition of the Independent.*** And its only then that we learn, both that this earth-shattering story is due to this Ms Pearce-Gervis calling "last night for English lessons to be made compulsory rather than voluntary."
And, wait for it, "There have been cases when porters have delivered a patient food despite the fact there is a clear sign on their bed saying "nil by mouth"." So it is NOT nurses who don't understand the phrase 'nil by mouth', it is porters delivering food to patients who apparently do not understand it. And even then we have no evidence that the food being delivered to the bed of someone due to have an operation was because the porters could not read English or because they got mixed up over who was having what meal, a mistake that we are sure no English-reading porters has ever made.
And even then, in the very next sentence, Ms Pearce-Gervis states "obviously this could have led to disaster but fortunately THE PATIENT [our emphasis] has been intelligent enough to point out that they are not allowed the food." So it was only one patient, as the Mail itself claimed earlier in the article. One case and even then there's no evidence presented of possible 'disaster' if the patient had gone ahead and eaten the food.
So what do Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust have to say on the subject? After a short anonymous quote from 'a member of staff at the trust' ("I think it should be compulsory. There can often be problems with common slang terms used on the ward." - something that 10 weeks of English lessons are not necessarily going to solve) and as many column inches of space dedicated to Dr Daniel Ubani, the German (naturally) GP involved in the death of a patient through the administration of a massive overdose of a painkiller he had never used before, but who also happened to have failed the GMC language test, their spokesperson, Rainy Faisey, deputy director of human resources at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, claimed that the courses were a way of giving staff in lower-paid jobs a chance to develop their skills.
"As an employer, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust offers a wide variety of training and development opportunities to its staff to help them to provide excellent care for our patients and further their career in the NHS. Like all good employers we give all staff the opportunity to develop their reading, writing and numeracy skills, whether their first language is English or not."
So, all in all, another xenophobic Mail non-story. And NO nurses are in fact being "forced to take English lessons."
* Who a back copy of the May 2004 issue of ORH News helpfully tells us "began work at the Radcliffe Infirmary as a shorthand typist when she was 17 and worked in the NHS for 20 years before re-training as a teacher in further education."
** As an aside, the Oxford Radcliffe Patients' Forum or Patient and Public Involvement Forum or the Oxfordshire and Berkshire Consortium for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (or even Oxfordshire and Berkshire Consortium for Patient and Public Involvement in Health depending on which NHS trust website one visits) no longer appears to exist in one or maybe all of its previous forms. Certainly neither of the websites [1, 2] are up and running and there is no mention of it in recent issues of the ORH News.
If, however, you live in the Oxford area, you can apply to join the panel by filling out this form. And maybe you'll get to meet the famous Ms Pearce-Gervis who the Mail is happy to dedicate so much of its valuable advertising space to.
*** This really does show up how little research goes in to this sort of story. No doubt the journo Google a few hospitals abd came up with the Independent article 'Why foreign nurses hold the nation's health in their hands', which contains the following information: "Indian nurses now account for one in ten of the infirmary's nursing workforce." Followed by: "In addition, a dozen other countries supply staff, including the Philippines, Australia, Spain, Ghana, Germany, Iceland and the Yemen."
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Selected Lowlights Of The Yarl's Wood Inspection Report
As many of you probably cannot be bothered to read the full report on the unannounced full follow-up inspection of Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre on 9 – 13 November 2009 by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, we've chosen a few lowlights for you, with the odd comment of course.
Length of Detention:
Over the past six months, 420 children had been detained, of whom half had been released back into the community, calling into question the need for their detention and the disruption and distress this caused. Some children and babies had been detained for considerable periods – 68 for over a month and one, a baby, for 100 days – in some cases even after social workers had indicated concerns about their and their family’s welfare. Detailed welfare discussions did not fully feed into submissions to Ministers on continued detention. - Introduction. [This figure of only 50% actually deported was confirmed earlier this month.]
Now Phil Woolas has responded to this directly, on amongst other things Radio 4, and has claimed that, whilst half of all Yarl's Wood detainees are released at some point (he helpfully pointed out that "all the people we are talking about are appeal-rights exhausted"), almost all are subsequently removed from the country. Now, this raises a few interesting points.
Firstly, and our maths here may not be too hot, but if half of all detainees are released but almost all are subsequently removed then:
1] half are being detained before all legal avenues have been exhausted, be they appeal-rights exhausted or not;
2] in order to remove almost 100%, if half are removed at each subsequent detention, then 25% are detained twice before deportation, 12% detained three times, 6% four times, you get the picture.
Therefore the line that "whenever we [UKBA] take decisions involving children, their welfare comes first and we will always seek to act in the best interests of the child" and that the Home Office's only detains people when their removal is imminent or when there is a risk of them absconding, and when other alternatives have been considered, is clearly not true.
And just ask yourself, if you have been in the country for a number of years, you have a settled home life with your children in school, are you likely to go on the run? The Home Office clearly thinks so, despite them never having offered one scintilla of evidence that this is likely to be the response of families facing deportation.
So his statement in response to the report that "The sad fact is that some illegal immigrants refuse to comply with the decision of the independent courts and return home voluntarily. The alternatives to centres like Yarl's Wood include putting children into care – which would mean separating them from their parents and risking increased child trafficking and further illegal immigration," is a load of hogwash. [Note: he does not iterate the other alternatives.] And to bring child trafficking into the argument is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
None of the five families who had been held for 28 days or more [NB: reviews of continued detention have to be carried out after 28 days] and who were discussed during a conference call held during the inspection were removed and all were eventually released. - Main recommendation #2.
More than 10% of detainees had been held at Yarl’s Wood for more than six months. Of these, 13 had been held for six to eight months, eight for eight to 10 months and 11 for more than 10 months. Three detainees had been detained for two years and more. The average length of detention at the centre was 34 days for single female detainees (compared to 22 days in 2008) and 16 days for families. There were no statistics for length of detention across the estate and even those for length of detention at Yarl’s Wood were not easily accessible. The cumulative length of detention was highly relevant to the management of cases, including by the UKBA’s on-site office, so this lack of accurate statistics could adversely impact on detainees. - Immigration casework 3.15.
One Zimbabwean woman detained for nearly two years was awaiting a Court of Appeal hearing, but the monthly review letters failed to mention that there had been no forced removals to Zimbabwe throughout this period. In the case of another woman held for 13 months, it had taken a year to confirm her claim of having Nigerian nationality and the monthly review letters failed to identify the reason for lack of progress. There was no evidence in the case file that the detainee was not cooperating. In other cases, the reason for continued detention was highly questionable. One Nigerian woman who had been at the centre for 16 months was told that her continued detention was because she had been ‘assessed as posing a serious risk of harm to the public’ for committing the offence of possession of a false identity document for which she had served nine months in prison. - Immigration casework 3.17.
Health & Welfare Provision:
Provision of activities for them was among the poorest seen in any removal centre. It had been inadequate at the last inspection, and had declined even further. The absence of activity added to the depression and anxiety of women, many of whom were spending lengthy periods at Yarl’s Wood. The average length of stay had increased by 50% since the last inspection, and one in ten women had been detained for more than six months. There was some paid work, but only about a dozen jobs offered more than 10 hours a week. The quality and quantity of education was poor, except for some good arts and crafts work. - Introduction.
The conditions, activities and services for children, within the centre, had improved significantly, but this, while welcome, could not compensate for the adverse effect of detention itself on the welfare of children, half of whom were later released back into the community. - Introduction.
There had been no assessment of adult mental health needs. - Introduction.
Food:
None of the 5 previous recommendations regarding food had been achieved, though the percentage saying that "the food was good or very good" had risen to 17% from the previous only 7%, against the comparator standard of 27%.
Food lacked variety, could be of poor quality and was much criticised by detainees. - Respect HE.24.
Detainees did not work in the kitchen and were unable to contribute to the preparation of national dishes. - Respect HE.33.
Removals:
[Between August and October 2009], 845 detainees had left following issue of removal directions: 554 [66%] had been escorted by G4S inland and 143 of these removals (26%) had failed; 291 [34%] had been escorted by overseas escorts and 74 (25%) had failed. - Removal and release 10.18.
There were several examples of arrangements made to split the family for effective removal. This usually meant separating the family from the father, but in one case the proposal was to separate a five year old child from his mother on their journey to the airport. In another case, separating the father was described as ‘leverage over the mother’ and in another, separating the mother from her 18 year old son was described as ‘leverage to decrease the mother’s obstructive behaviour’. - Removal and release 10.26.
In January 2009, force had been used to split a family of six so that the father and two children could be removed. The youngest child had been removed by force from his father’s grip and a 10 year old child was taken by force into the departure area after refusing to leave his mother. In the same month, force was used on a pregnant woman. Her three year old son had been kept in the family care suite while she was taken to the legal offices to be given removal directions. On leaving the offices, she had refused to move further and called repeatedly for her son. She had been forcibly placed in, and held in, a wheelchair and taken to the family care suite where she was reunited with her son. - Removal and release 10.27.
Paid Work:
Paid work had expanded to 49 paid work roles, but this was still inadequate for the population. Only a quarter of roles offered work for more than 10 hours a week and there was a two to three week waiting list for jobs. The application process was unclear and work agreements that detainees were required to sign were not translated. Access to work could be vetoed for non-compliance with UKBA, which inappropriately mixed custodial and immigration functions. the child. - Activities HE.37.
The privileges of enhanced status were access to the clothing bazaar, 30 minutes a day internet access and the ability to apply for paid work, subject to UKBA approval (see section on work and learning and skills). Standard level detainees were restricted to 30 minutes a week of internet access, which inappropriately reduced the amount of their contact with the outside world. - Rewards scheme 8.15.
Further recommendations 8.16 Detainees should only be downgraded to the standard level for a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident, unless that incident is very serious. 8.17 Reviews should be regular and take place on time. 8.18 Reduced access to the internet should not be a penalty within the rewards scheme
Other findings:
A 65% increase in the use of force in first 9 months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.
Almost twice the numbers of incidents of temporary confinement under Rule 42 in first 9 months of 2009 compared to same period 2008.
A 37% increase in the number of complaints, nearly half were made about medical issues [32%] and ‘poor communication’ [16%].
After the 2008 inspection, the HM Inspectorate of Prisons made 128 recommendations, the same number as during the 2009 visit. Of those, only 59 [46%] were achieved by the second visit. Of those 43 unachieved and 16 partially achieved recommendations from 2008, 65 were carried over to this report to make 187 new or repeated recommendations to the operators of Yarl's Wood [156] and to UKBA [29], plus 2 jointly addressed.
But probably most damning of all:
There seemed to be no change in practice following the removal of the reservation to Article 22 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and no consideration of whether detention was essential or in the best interests of the child. - Childcare and child protection 4.28.
Length of Detention:
Over the past six months, 420 children had been detained, of whom half had been released back into the community, calling into question the need for their detention and the disruption and distress this caused. Some children and babies had been detained for considerable periods – 68 for over a month and one, a baby, for 100 days – in some cases even after social workers had indicated concerns about their and their family’s welfare. Detailed welfare discussions did not fully feed into submissions to Ministers on continued detention. - Introduction. [This figure of only 50% actually deported was confirmed earlier this month.]
Now Phil Woolas has responded to this directly, on amongst other things Radio 4, and has claimed that, whilst half of all Yarl's Wood detainees are released at some point (he helpfully pointed out that "all the people we are talking about are appeal-rights exhausted"), almost all are subsequently removed from the country. Now, this raises a few interesting points.
Firstly, and our maths here may not be too hot, but if half of all detainees are released but almost all are subsequently removed then:
1] half are being detained before all legal avenues have been exhausted, be they appeal-rights exhausted or not;
2] in order to remove almost 100%, if half are removed at each subsequent detention, then 25% are detained twice before deportation, 12% detained three times, 6% four times, you get the picture.
Therefore the line that "whenever we [UKBA] take decisions involving children, their welfare comes first and we will always seek to act in the best interests of the child" and that the Home Office's only detains people when their removal is imminent or when there is a risk of them absconding, and when other alternatives have been considered, is clearly not true.
And just ask yourself, if you have been in the country for a number of years, you have a settled home life with your children in school, are you likely to go on the run? The Home Office clearly thinks so, despite them never having offered one scintilla of evidence that this is likely to be the response of families facing deportation.
So his statement in response to the report that "The sad fact is that some illegal immigrants refuse to comply with the decision of the independent courts and return home voluntarily. The alternatives to centres like Yarl's Wood include putting children into care – which would mean separating them from their parents and risking increased child trafficking and further illegal immigration," is a load of hogwash. [Note: he does not iterate the other alternatives.] And to bring child trafficking into the argument is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
None of the five families who had been held for 28 days or more [NB: reviews of continued detention have to be carried out after 28 days] and who were discussed during a conference call held during the inspection were removed and all were eventually released. - Main recommendation #2.
More than 10% of detainees had been held at Yarl’s Wood for more than six months. Of these, 13 had been held for six to eight months, eight for eight to 10 months and 11 for more than 10 months. Three detainees had been detained for two years and more. The average length of detention at the centre was 34 days for single female detainees (compared to 22 days in 2008) and 16 days for families. There were no statistics for length of detention across the estate and even those for length of detention at Yarl’s Wood were not easily accessible. The cumulative length of detention was highly relevant to the management of cases, including by the UKBA’s on-site office, so this lack of accurate statistics could adversely impact on detainees. - Immigration casework 3.15.
One Zimbabwean woman detained for nearly two years was awaiting a Court of Appeal hearing, but the monthly review letters failed to mention that there had been no forced removals to Zimbabwe throughout this period. In the case of another woman held for 13 months, it had taken a year to confirm her claim of having Nigerian nationality and the monthly review letters failed to identify the reason for lack of progress. There was no evidence in the case file that the detainee was not cooperating. In other cases, the reason for continued detention was highly questionable. One Nigerian woman who had been at the centre for 16 months was told that her continued detention was because she had been ‘assessed as posing a serious risk of harm to the public’ for committing the offence of possession of a false identity document for which she had served nine months in prison. - Immigration casework 3.17.
Health & Welfare Provision:
Provision of activities for them was among the poorest seen in any removal centre. It had been inadequate at the last inspection, and had declined even further. The absence of activity added to the depression and anxiety of women, many of whom were spending lengthy periods at Yarl’s Wood. The average length of stay had increased by 50% since the last inspection, and one in ten women had been detained for more than six months. There was some paid work, but only about a dozen jobs offered more than 10 hours a week. The quality and quantity of education was poor, except for some good arts and crafts work. - Introduction.
The conditions, activities and services for children, within the centre, had improved significantly, but this, while welcome, could not compensate for the adverse effect of detention itself on the welfare of children, half of whom were later released back into the community. - Introduction.
There had been no assessment of adult mental health needs. - Introduction.
Food:
None of the 5 previous recommendations regarding food had been achieved, though the percentage saying that "the food was good or very good" had risen to 17% from the previous only 7%, against the comparator standard of 27%.
Food lacked variety, could be of poor quality and was much criticised by detainees. - Respect HE.24.
Detainees did not work in the kitchen and were unable to contribute to the preparation of national dishes. - Respect HE.33.
Removals:
[Between August and October 2009], 845 detainees had left following issue of removal directions: 554 [66%] had been escorted by G4S inland and 143 of these removals (26%) had failed; 291 [34%] had been escorted by overseas escorts and 74 (25%) had failed. - Removal and release 10.18.
There were several examples of arrangements made to split the family for effective removal. This usually meant separating the family from the father, but in one case the proposal was to separate a five year old child from his mother on their journey to the airport. In another case, separating the father was described as ‘leverage over the mother’ and in another, separating the mother from her 18 year old son was described as ‘leverage to decrease the mother’s obstructive behaviour’. - Removal and release 10.26.
In January 2009, force had been used to split a family of six so that the father and two children could be removed. The youngest child had been removed by force from his father’s grip and a 10 year old child was taken by force into the departure area after refusing to leave his mother. In the same month, force was used on a pregnant woman. Her three year old son had been kept in the family care suite while she was taken to the legal offices to be given removal directions. On leaving the offices, she had refused to move further and called repeatedly for her son. She had been forcibly placed in, and held in, a wheelchair and taken to the family care suite where she was reunited with her son. - Removal and release 10.27.
Paid Work:
Paid work had expanded to 49 paid work roles, but this was still inadequate for the population. Only a quarter of roles offered work for more than 10 hours a week and there was a two to three week waiting list for jobs. The application process was unclear and work agreements that detainees were required to sign were not translated. Access to work could be vetoed for non-compliance with UKBA, which inappropriately mixed custodial and immigration functions. the child. - Activities HE.37.
The privileges of enhanced status were access to the clothing bazaar, 30 minutes a day internet access and the ability to apply for paid work, subject to UKBA approval (see section on work and learning and skills). Standard level detainees were restricted to 30 minutes a week of internet access, which inappropriately reduced the amount of their contact with the outside world. - Rewards scheme 8.15.
Further recommendations 8.16 Detainees should only be downgraded to the standard level for a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident, unless that incident is very serious. 8.17 Reviews should be regular and take place on time. 8.18 Reduced access to the internet should not be a penalty within the rewards scheme
Other findings:
A 65% increase in the use of force in first 9 months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.
Almost twice the numbers of incidents of temporary confinement under Rule 42 in first 9 months of 2009 compared to same period 2008.
A 37% increase in the number of complaints, nearly half were made about medical issues [32%] and ‘poor communication’ [16%].
After the 2008 inspection, the HM Inspectorate of Prisons made 128 recommendations, the same number as during the 2009 visit. Of those, only 59 [46%] were achieved by the second visit. Of those 43 unachieved and 16 partially achieved recommendations from 2008, 65 were carried over to this report to make 187 new or repeated recommendations to the operators of Yarl's Wood [156] and to UKBA [29], plus 2 jointly addressed.
But probably most damning of all:
There seemed to be no change in practice following the removal of the reservation to Article 22 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and no consideration of whether detention was essential or in the best interests of the child. - Childcare and child protection 4.28.
Monday, 11 January 2010
'Mafia' Provocation Behind 'Race Riots' In Southern Italy
More details have emerged since the 'riots' in Rosarno at the end of last week and it now appears that the attack by local youths on Friday was the final insult in a long line of provocations.
The migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been a common site in Italy for decades. In southern Italy they move en masse from the grape harvest in Sicily, via the orange, tangerine and kiwi harvests in Calabria and the olive picking in Apulia. Local farmers have relied on them since the 'native' agricultural workforce evaporated. Instead, the 8000 or so 'clandestini' in Calabria pick fruit and vegetables for 12 to 14 hours a day for 20 to 25 euros and many are regularly forced to pay kickback of up to a quarter of their wages to local gangsters in the 'Ndrangheta, the regional version of the mafia.
They also have to pay for the squalid abandoned building that they are forced to sleep in. In Rosarno, for example, about 1,000 were living in a disused food warehouse with 8 chemical toilets, 3 showers, no electricity and, until last year, no running water. Many are paperless, are therefore illegally employed and therefore easy targets for exploitation by farmers and gangster alike. In the words of the anti-mafia priest Luigi Ciotti, "The mafia cynically exploits the immigrants. The criminal masterminds know that clandestine immigrants will not even try to revolt because they have no ID and no state protection." Robberies and beatings at gun-point are also common.
In December 2008, during the citrus harvest, an unidentified gunman walked into a factory where hundreds of the migrants were sleeping and shot 2 of them. One, a 21-year-old from the Ivory Coast, was seriously injured. As part of a peaceful protest in Rosarno, the 'clandestini' reported the attack to the police and complained about the routine robberies and shootings by 'Ndrangheta gangs they have to endure. Interestingly, one of the building they visited in that protest was the house of an old boss in the Pesce-Bellocco clan, a powerful local 'Ndrangheta, something the Calabrians would never do according to anti-mafia experts.
Now it appears that the local residents, who have for years lived peacefully alongside the seasonal migrants, turned to the 'Ndrangheta to try and drive the 'clandestini' out because of the lack of local field work. The violent reaction by the migrants to the provocation on Thursday allowed the towns people, who included a number of local 'Ndrangheta clan members according to the police, to exploit the situation and according to Luigi Manconi, a senator in the last Prodi government, turn Rosarno into "the only wholly white town in the world. Not even South African apartheid obtained such a result."
On Friday, ostensibly in response to the sit down protest by the migrants in the town square and to the cars damaged and the smashed windows, Rosarno residents occupied the town hall demanding the migrants be removed. Others armed with metal bars, wooden clubs and shotguns set up barricades and clashed with the police. Many conducted 'manhunts', beating up stray migrants. Two Africans were shot in the legs and 3 others ended up in hospital with serious injuries, one undergoing emergency brain surgery. In other incidents police arrested people for trying to run over migrants with cars and, in one case, even a bulldozer. All told, 67 people were injured: 31 immigrants, 19 police and 17 residents.
On Saturday townspeople cheered as the migrants left in buses laid on by the police, voluntarily at first but later police forcibly removed the remainder "for their own protection". Others left by train, many without collecting their pay. More than 800 were transferred to reception centres in Crotone and Bari. In Crotone, 170km away, more than half of those whose cases had been examined had temporary residence permits and will be released. The others however are destined for internment in CIEs and deportation. In scenes reminiscent of the 'Jungle' clearences in Northern France, the local Fire Brigade bulldozed the migrants' shacks and tents in the derelict factory, destroying the meagre possessions they had been forced to leave behind.
The locals were clearly happy to see the back of the 'clandestini', "We don't want them back," claimed one local landowner. "We gave the negroes clothes and food, we even gave them meals for Christmas." No one should "take us for racists" he added without recognising the irony of his comments. Also not recognising the irony of its comments, Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, asked on Saturday, "Rather than shooting negroes, shoot the mafia. Why won't Calabrians shoot the mafia? Immigrants are poor and weak, ugly and dirty, perfect targets ... Organised crime which keeps security forces in check is powerful, violent, revengeful and therefore must not be bothered." Clearly the Italian sense of humour does not translatte well.
Finally, on Saturday in nearby Gioia Tauro, a few miles from Rosarno, a group of men in a car shot another African man with an air rifle, showing that the 'problem' will not be solved by merely busing out the 'clandestini'. The locals may have wanted them gone but who will pick next year's harvest? Roberto Calderoli, a leading member of the Northern League suggests that with unemployment at 18% in the south, jobs should go to Italian citizens. Agricultural sector wages should be increased so that Italians would accept this type of work. Yet currently there is fruit rotting on the trees, fruit that the local farmers claim that they cannot afford to pay anyone to pick, even at slave-wage levels.
The migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been a common site in Italy for decades. In southern Italy they move en masse from the grape harvest in Sicily, via the orange, tangerine and kiwi harvests in Calabria and the olive picking in Apulia. Local farmers have relied on them since the 'native' agricultural workforce evaporated. Instead, the 8000 or so 'clandestini' in Calabria pick fruit and vegetables for 12 to 14 hours a day for 20 to 25 euros and many are regularly forced to pay kickback of up to a quarter of their wages to local gangsters in the 'Ndrangheta, the regional version of the mafia.
They also have to pay for the squalid abandoned building that they are forced to sleep in. In Rosarno, for example, about 1,000 were living in a disused food warehouse with 8 chemical toilets, 3 showers, no electricity and, until last year, no running water. Many are paperless, are therefore illegally employed and therefore easy targets for exploitation by farmers and gangster alike. In the words of the anti-mafia priest Luigi Ciotti, "The mafia cynically exploits the immigrants. The criminal masterminds know that clandestine immigrants will not even try to revolt because they have no ID and no state protection." Robberies and beatings at gun-point are also common.
In December 2008, during the citrus harvest, an unidentified gunman walked into a factory where hundreds of the migrants were sleeping and shot 2 of them. One, a 21-year-old from the Ivory Coast, was seriously injured. As part of a peaceful protest in Rosarno, the 'clandestini' reported the attack to the police and complained about the routine robberies and shootings by 'Ndrangheta gangs they have to endure. Interestingly, one of the building they visited in that protest was the house of an old boss in the Pesce-Bellocco clan, a powerful local 'Ndrangheta, something the Calabrians would never do according to anti-mafia experts.
Now it appears that the local residents, who have for years lived peacefully alongside the seasonal migrants, turned to the 'Ndrangheta to try and drive the 'clandestini' out because of the lack of local field work. The violent reaction by the migrants to the provocation on Thursday allowed the towns people, who included a number of local 'Ndrangheta clan members according to the police, to exploit the situation and according to Luigi Manconi, a senator in the last Prodi government, turn Rosarno into "the only wholly white town in the world. Not even South African apartheid obtained such a result."
On Friday, ostensibly in response to the sit down protest by the migrants in the town square and to the cars damaged and the smashed windows, Rosarno residents occupied the town hall demanding the migrants be removed. Others armed with metal bars, wooden clubs and shotguns set up barricades and clashed with the police. Many conducted 'manhunts', beating up stray migrants. Two Africans were shot in the legs and 3 others ended up in hospital with serious injuries, one undergoing emergency brain surgery. In other incidents police arrested people for trying to run over migrants with cars and, in one case, even a bulldozer. All told, 67 people were injured: 31 immigrants, 19 police and 17 residents.
On Saturday townspeople cheered as the migrants left in buses laid on by the police, voluntarily at first but later police forcibly removed the remainder "for their own protection". Others left by train, many without collecting their pay. More than 800 were transferred to reception centres in Crotone and Bari. In Crotone, 170km away, more than half of those whose cases had been examined had temporary residence permits and will be released. The others however are destined for internment in CIEs and deportation. In scenes reminiscent of the 'Jungle' clearences in Northern France, the local Fire Brigade bulldozed the migrants' shacks and tents in the derelict factory, destroying the meagre possessions they had been forced to leave behind.
The locals were clearly happy to see the back of the 'clandestini', "We don't want them back," claimed one local landowner. "We gave the negroes clothes and food, we even gave them meals for Christmas." No one should "take us for racists" he added without recognising the irony of his comments. Also not recognising the irony of its comments, Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, asked on Saturday, "Rather than shooting negroes, shoot the mafia. Why won't Calabrians shoot the mafia? Immigrants are poor and weak, ugly and dirty, perfect targets ... Organised crime which keeps security forces in check is powerful, violent, revengeful and therefore must not be bothered." Clearly the Italian sense of humour does not translatte well.
Finally, on Saturday in nearby Gioia Tauro, a few miles from Rosarno, a group of men in a car shot another African man with an air rifle, showing that the 'problem' will not be solved by merely busing out the 'clandestini'. The locals may have wanted them gone but who will pick next year's harvest? Roberto Calderoli, a leading member of the Northern League suggests that with unemployment at 18% in the south, jobs should go to Italian citizens. Agricultural sector wages should be increased so that Italians would accept this type of work. Yet currently there is fruit rotting on the trees, fruit that the local farmers claim that they cannot afford to pay anyone to pick, even at slave-wage levels.
Friday, 4 December 2009
This Septic Isle
A new poll has revealed just how ingrained anti-immigration sentiment is in the UK. In the latest Transatlantic Trends survey on immigration carried out by the German-Marshall Fund in 6 European countries, including the UK, plus USA and Canada, the Brits come out 'top of the racism pops' or, as the Guardian would have it, "more anti-immigrant and xenophobic than the rest of western Europe".
In he survey, 55% of UK citizens felt there were too many immigrants, the highest in the countries polled. 66% also felt that immigration was more of a problem than an opportunity, the highest of all countries (up from 61% in '08). 54% of Brits also agreed with the statement "immigrants take away jobs from native-born workers", and the UK was the only country where a majority thought this. 48% also agreed that immigrants bring down wages, one of only two countries (the other being Spain) where a majority held that view.
When asked to estimate the number of immigrants living in their country, British citizens estimated there to be 27%, while in reality it is 10% i.e. 2.7 times higher than the true picture. In fact all countries overestimated the numbers of migrants but only France, who estimated. 2.9 times and Italy (3.5) had higher percentage errors than the UK.
On the crime front, the UK was towards the bottom of spectrum when it came to adverse perceptions of the effects of immigration, with 36% feeling legal migration increased crime and 59% for illegal migration. In comparison, Italy and Spain were much more concerned about the effects of illegal migration on crime with Germany and the Netherlands most fearful of both.
Despite that fact that 71% said the government had dome a bad job managing migration (against 27% who had said that they had done a good/fair job), the highest in Europe (versus a 71% approval rating in Germany), 53% still wanted that government (or more likely one with more restrictive immigration policies) to retain control of immigration policy. Needless to say, the UK was the only European country polled that did not favour an EU formulated immigration policy (30% for as opposed to an European average of 56%).
This anti-European sentiment was further reinforced by the 47% that said that there are “too many” citizens of other EU countries living in the UK. And not being a Schengen member correlated with the fact that reinforcing border controls was seen to be the most effective means of combating illegal migration (44%, nearly 50% higher than in the USA and 76% higher than in the next highest EU country, the Netherlands).
Other stand-out statistics were:
One of the few bright lights in the survey was that most people support allowing individuals displaced by events linked to global climate change to settle in their countries. However, the country with the lowest level of support (57%) and the highest opposition (38%) is, yes you guessed it, Britain - though the majority still support such migration, so we have something to be grateful for.
So, apart from having such expected truisms 'as those who had suffered increased financial problems in the past year claiming that they were now more worried about immigration' (except in the USA for some reason) and that 'contact with immigrants is the most important predictor of opinions about integration' confirmed, we now also know that the 'Little Englander' stereotype is true. And that the country* that in the past has "welcomed Danes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Jews, Lombards, Roma, Huguenots, Palatines, Africans, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, Belgians, Poles and many others", to quote the Spectator, is even more racist than Italy!
* Or "This sceptical isle" as the Economist put it (more like septic isle if you ask us). Their take on some of the graphs is quiet amusing too...
In he survey, 55% of UK citizens felt there were too many immigrants, the highest in the countries polled. 66% also felt that immigration was more of a problem than an opportunity, the highest of all countries (up from 61% in '08). 54% of Brits also agreed with the statement "immigrants take away jobs from native-born workers", and the UK was the only country where a majority thought this. 48% also agreed that immigrants bring down wages, one of only two countries (the other being Spain) where a majority held that view.
When asked to estimate the number of immigrants living in their country, British citizens estimated there to be 27%, while in reality it is 10% i.e. 2.7 times higher than the true picture. In fact all countries overestimated the numbers of migrants but only France, who estimated. 2.9 times and Italy (3.5) had higher percentage errors than the UK.
On the crime front, the UK was towards the bottom of spectrum when it came to adverse perceptions of the effects of immigration, with 36% feeling legal migration increased crime and 59% for illegal migration. In comparison, Italy and Spain were much more concerned about the effects of illegal migration on crime with Germany and the Netherlands most fearful of both.
Despite that fact that 71% said the government had dome a bad job managing migration (against 27% who had said that they had done a good/fair job), the highest in Europe (versus a 71% approval rating in Germany), 53% still wanted that government (or more likely one with more restrictive immigration policies) to retain control of immigration policy. Needless to say, the UK was the only European country polled that did not favour an EU formulated immigration policy (30% for as opposed to an European average of 56%).
This anti-European sentiment was further reinforced by the 47% that said that there are “too many” citizens of other EU countries living in the UK. And not being a Schengen member correlated with the fact that reinforcing border controls was seen to be the most effective means of combating illegal migration (44%, nearly 50% higher than in the USA and 76% higher than in the next highest EU country, the Netherlands).
Other stand-out statistics were:
- 20% in the UK and 15% in Italy thought that immigration was the most important issue facing their country (versus 30% and 34% respectively who thought that the economy was more important);
- the Italians and British were most against giving 'illegal' migrants opportunities to normalise their status;
- apart from Spain and Italy, UK correspondents were most worried about illegal immigration (68%) but the most worried about legal migration (36%);
- along with the Netherlands, the UK was the least in favour of migrants being granted permanent leave to remain;
- the also UK had the lowest support rate (50%) and the highest opposition (47%) for the granting of social benefits to legal migrants, with 28% “strongly opposed” to the policy (Italy's figures were 87/11% pro/anti);
- but Britain had the lowest percentage (47%) of those who thought that “immigration negatively affects national culture” (whatever that is).
One of the few bright lights in the survey was that most people support allowing individuals displaced by events linked to global climate change to settle in their countries. However, the country with the lowest level of support (57%) and the highest opposition (38%) is, yes you guessed it, Britain - though the majority still support such migration, so we have something to be grateful for.
So, apart from having such expected truisms 'as those who had suffered increased financial problems in the past year claiming that they were now more worried about immigration' (except in the USA for some reason) and that 'contact with immigrants is the most important predictor of opinions about integration' confirmed, we now also know that the 'Little Englander' stereotype is true. And that the country* that in the past has "welcomed Danes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Jews, Lombards, Roma, Huguenots, Palatines, Africans, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, Belgians, Poles and many others", to quote the Spectator, is even more racist than Italy!
* Or "This sceptical isle" as the Economist put it (more like septic isle if you ask us). Their take on some of the graphs is quiet amusing too...
Friday, 20 November 2009
UNHCR Hypocrisy?
In a startling piece of double-think Wilbert Van Hövell, the regional representative of the UNHCR in Western Europe, claimed yesterday that “the situation of the migrants in Calais improved overall”* in the 6 months since their Calais office has been open. What planet is he living on?
He claims that “since the end of the 'Jungle', one notices that the number of migrants in Calais fell, which is a positive point”, and that “the fact of preventing very new squat also plays in the favour of this fall...The situation improved since October and the care is always accessible to the migrants… it is well.” What care? Being brutalised and detained every night by the CRS? Loosing all your possessions, your sleeping bag, clothes, money, mobile phone, etc. Only to be turfed out on the cold and wet streets the next day with only the clothes on your back. That's progress?
"Moreover, the town hall will place at the disposal a room for the great cold plan. It is positive…” But that happens every year and only operated when the daytime temperature remains below OºC.
And of course the UNHCR is having more migrants through their doors forced to contemplate taking the 'voluntary' repatriation grants offered and return to the various war zones around the globe that they fled originally because they have gotten the incredibly heavy-handed 'message' that they are not welcome...and of course it justifies all those UNHCR jobs in to the bargain. Its even been busy in the Loon-Plage 'Jungle' recently, prior to its destruction this week, running the gauntlet of the traffickers as the try to persuade the migrants to take the offer of voluntary assisted return. Its either that or forced repatriation somewhere down the line unless they can make it across the Channel, or die trying.
So what does he think are negatives about the 'Jungle' destructions? Not enough 'reception facilities', especially for minors, unlike Belgium apparently, where he is based. Not enough charter flights of course, and the fact that there are fewer migrants in Calais "from one point of view is a positive. The concern is that the problem is in the process of moving not only in France but also Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The situation is not resolved." Now that's a bit of realism on his part. As is the contradiction he highlights in saying "We urge these people to stop illegality by asking them to engage in, proceedings to which they will no doubt be refused. This is proof if any (were needed) of the difficult in applying EU asylum policy." Exactly.
In Wilbert Van Hövell's home city of Brussels some of those displace Calais migrants will no doubt be staying in the tent city recently built by 5 migrant aid groups in a public park near the city's Gare du Nord railway station. The action to erect the 15 tents to house refugees forced on to the streets by the lack of adequate housing is being "tolerated" by city authorities. There are a dozen "family" tents capable of sheltering 50 people, three tents for health care, legal and social advice, and food support. And by mid-afternoon Wednesday around 100 people were trying to enter the camp.
Belgium is obliged under its own laws to provide housing for asylum seekers but more than 1,000 asylum seekers currently have nowhere to go but the streets with winter rapidly approaching but the NGOs accept their camp is hardly the solution. "Days and nights have gone by, and still no assurance has been given for taking care of people who are sent out into the streets every day, as a result of lacking capacity to house them," a joint press statement from Medecins Sans Frontieres, Medecins du Monde, Caritas International, CIRE and Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen claimed.
* Apologies for the poor French-English translation through out.
He claims that “since the end of the 'Jungle', one notices that the number of migrants in Calais fell, which is a positive point”, and that “the fact of preventing very new squat also plays in the favour of this fall...The situation improved since October and the care is always accessible to the migrants… it is well.” What care? Being brutalised and detained every night by the CRS? Loosing all your possessions, your sleeping bag, clothes, money, mobile phone, etc. Only to be turfed out on the cold and wet streets the next day with only the clothes on your back. That's progress?
"Moreover, the town hall will place at the disposal a room for the great cold plan. It is positive…” But that happens every year and only operated when the daytime temperature remains below OºC.
And of course the UNHCR is having more migrants through their doors forced to contemplate taking the 'voluntary' repatriation grants offered and return to the various war zones around the globe that they fled originally because they have gotten the incredibly heavy-handed 'message' that they are not welcome...and of course it justifies all those UNHCR jobs in to the bargain. Its even been busy in the Loon-Plage 'Jungle' recently, prior to its destruction this week, running the gauntlet of the traffickers as the try to persuade the migrants to take the offer of voluntary assisted return. Its either that or forced repatriation somewhere down the line unless they can make it across the Channel, or die trying.
So what does he think are negatives about the 'Jungle' destructions? Not enough 'reception facilities', especially for minors, unlike Belgium apparently, where he is based. Not enough charter flights of course, and the fact that there are fewer migrants in Calais "from one point of view is a positive. The concern is that the problem is in the process of moving not only in France but also Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The situation is not resolved." Now that's a bit of realism on his part. As is the contradiction he highlights in saying "We urge these people to stop illegality by asking them to engage in, proceedings to which they will no doubt be refused. This is proof if any (were needed) of the difficult in applying EU asylum policy." Exactly.
In Wilbert Van Hövell's home city of Brussels some of those displace Calais migrants will no doubt be staying in the tent city recently built by 5 migrant aid groups in a public park near the city's Gare du Nord railway station. The action to erect the 15 tents to house refugees forced on to the streets by the lack of adequate housing is being "tolerated" by city authorities. There are a dozen "family" tents capable of sheltering 50 people, three tents for health care, legal and social advice, and food support. And by mid-afternoon Wednesday around 100 people were trying to enter the camp.
Belgium is obliged under its own laws to provide housing for asylum seekers but more than 1,000 asylum seekers currently have nowhere to go but the streets with winter rapidly approaching but the NGOs accept their camp is hardly the solution. "Days and nights have gone by, and still no assurance has been given for taking care of people who are sent out into the streets every day, as a result of lacking capacity to house them," a joint press statement from Medecins Sans Frontieres, Medecins du Monde, Caritas International, CIRE and Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen claimed.
* Apologies for the poor French-English translation through out.
'Bosses Exploit Migrant Workers' Shock Horror
The BBC News have a story today, headlined 'Hospital cleaners 'blackmailed''* on their website, about three manages from ISS Mediclean who have been arrested during a raid at Kingston Hospital. It appears that these 'senior managers' were 'blackmailing' junior members of staff by threatening to report the cleaners to the UKBA, we assume because they did not haver the correct documentation and were easy targets for exploitation.
Shock Horror! This goes on all the time. That is the handy role 'illegal' workers have fulfilled for years and, despite all the government posturing and law-making, will fulfil for years to come. It is also prevalent in the service industries and in particular those that have been privatised, where 'outsourcing' companies pay very low wages and employ clandestine workers that they they know they can fire if they 'get out of line', trying to organise in a union or demanding the sort of wages and conditions (e.g.: the SOAS cleaners) that any ordinary worker would consider to be standard. That is how these companies make their massive profits and pay large dividends to their shareholders.
And what does the ISS PR stooge put up to comment on the case have to say? "ISS deeply regrets any adverse reaction this incident may have had on the patients, staff and visitors to the hospital. It is our responsibility to work within the law and to ensure that our employees do the same, which includes demonstrating their right to work legally." Pull the other one!
Racist organisations and dullard tabloid newspapers are also constantly banging on about foreign workers coming over here stealing 'our' jobs, working for cheaper wages. Yet it is the people that run these companies and that are paying the low wages that are exploiting these people for their own ends. The foreign and undocumented workers do not turn up at factory gates and persuade the bosses to cut wages so they can employ them. It is the other way round and it is the bosses that the people should be targeting not scapegoating 'foreign workers'.
* Typically the Mail's take on the incident was 'Hospital cleaning bosses at major firm arrested over 'migrant fraud'', despite using the same Press Association-written story as the basis for their article and the first sentence of their piece being: "Three managers at an NHS hospital cleaning company have been arrested on suspicion of blackmailing foreign staff." Being arrested for blackmail of workers, 'illegal' or otherwise, obvioulsy doesn't make for a Daily Mail sort of headline that arrests for immigration offences does.
Shock Horror! This goes on all the time. That is the handy role 'illegal' workers have fulfilled for years and, despite all the government posturing and law-making, will fulfil for years to come. It is also prevalent in the service industries and in particular those that have been privatised, where 'outsourcing' companies pay very low wages and employ clandestine workers that they they know they can fire if they 'get out of line', trying to organise in a union or demanding the sort of wages and conditions (e.g.: the SOAS cleaners) that any ordinary worker would consider to be standard. That is how these companies make their massive profits and pay large dividends to their shareholders.
And what does the ISS PR stooge put up to comment on the case have to say? "ISS deeply regrets any adverse reaction this incident may have had on the patients, staff and visitors to the hospital. It is our responsibility to work within the law and to ensure that our employees do the same, which includes demonstrating their right to work legally." Pull the other one!
Racist organisations and dullard tabloid newspapers are also constantly banging on about foreign workers coming over here stealing 'our' jobs, working for cheaper wages. Yet it is the people that run these companies and that are paying the low wages that are exploiting these people for their own ends. The foreign and undocumented workers do not turn up at factory gates and persuade the bosses to cut wages so they can employ them. It is the other way round and it is the bosses that the people should be targeting not scapegoating 'foreign workers'.
* Typically the Mail's take on the incident was 'Hospital cleaning bosses at major firm arrested over 'migrant fraud'', despite using the same Press Association-written story as the basis for their article and the first sentence of their piece being: "Three managers at an NHS hospital cleaning company have been arrested on suspicion of blackmailing foreign staff." Being arrested for blackmail of workers, 'illegal' or otherwise, obvioulsy doesn't make for a Daily Mail sort of headline that arrests for immigration offences does.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Daily Mail Going Soft On Immigration?
Two articles in two days that that don't demand an end to all immigration or mass deportation or Alan Green to be made PM or the burka to be banned or all 'foreign criminals' to be hung or birched or castrated. What is the world coming to?
First we have Vince Cable slumming it and being very reasonable and very liberal:
"The politics of immigration is a minefield. Most politicians, therefore, avoid it, except for those on the extreme fringes who want to detonate a bitter argument on race."
He points up the misconceptions about lack of housing ('right to buy' policy to blame), Poles blamed for lack of building jobs (recession to blame), people who complain about 'illegal immigrants' when they mean black and Asians.
You can tell he's a politician when he brings out his "late wife was of Indian origin" to show what a caring, unprejudiced and experienced person he is, especially as he brought up a young family in the sixties and seventies when there were "Enoch Powell’s speeches and widespread hostility to non-white immigrants." Even though there was net emigration then, "the concern was really about the changing make-up of the British population."
But even now, "while most people are more comfortable about a diverse society, there is anxiety that immigration is ‘out of control’." Who's to blame? The government of course - claimed immigration was good for the economy, keeping wage inflation down and fuelled the economic boom.
Then he's back to the myths:
"One is that our ‘overcrowded’ island is absorbing population from the rest of the world. The opposite is true. There are more Britons living overseas – about 5.5million – than foreign-born people living in Britain.
A second myth is that the population will keep rising to 70million by 2030. But in periods of recession, as in the Seventies, as many people leave as arrive. A lot of East European construction workers have already gone back.
A third myth is that the immigrant population is an economic burden. Most, however, are young and of working age, so pay more in tax and take out less in healthcare and benefits. Many new arrivals create employment for others."
Then he points out both the students are the largest group on 'arrivals' (good for the economy again) but just in case you thought you'd stayed onto the comment page of the Guardian, we get a strange section of what can only be badly edited text (must be the Guardian): "But public anxiety is not without foundation. Illegal immigration is too high. In the decade to the end of 2008, only 114 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegal immigrants." Yes, employers do get away with employing undocumented workers, despite the Labour government's claims to be putting the onus on the employer to police their own workforces' immigration status. But that is what undocumented workers are for sure? Keep the wages down.
But Vince thinks we shouldn't tolerate these 'illegals', its not cricket after all. They are "cheats". They shouldn't be "cheats getting away with it" and that's why "a blanket amnesty wouldn’t be acceptable." But then he goes and contradicts himself by claiming that "to avoid a permanent illegal underclass, there has to be scope for earned citizenship."
And his solution for this "far more tolerant country than it was" and that has "anxieties about immigration (that) have to be addressed"? The "politicians must engage with the issue." Er, but isn't that what they have always done?*
The second, rather longer, article 'Welcome to heaven, how about a cup of tea? Mail on Sunday special investigation into why asylum seekers head to Britain'. It features a David Suchet look-a-like (very photogenic and not 'off putting' in a Daily-Mail-photo-of-foreigner-sort-of-way) telling his story of why he fled Afghanistan.
We get a fairly accurate picture too of his journey half way around the world to England. But then it gets rather surreal. The lorry he and the other migrants had crossed the Channel in is stopped by police: "As we stepped off the truck, they shook our hands and said, "Welcome to England." I was given 13 cups of tea as I was so thirsty. I was happy."
And it isn't till a third of the way through the 3,000 word piece that MigrationBotch get a mention, which is a definite relief for a Mail article. But we wont spoil it for you. Just read the article but DON'T read the nasty vituperative and just plain stupid comments ("The reason Asylum figures have dropped, is because they are near enough all here in the UK").**
* By the way, there are some great comments on this article on-line, and not all your usual standard BNP-lite tripe (though there are a few of those). Its great when the Mail reader tries to engage their brains rather than their knees or spleen. Our two favourite short put-downs (for various reasons) are: "When I need advice from a Liberal, I'll ask, but don't hold your breath." & "There are lies, damned lies and statistics and your article contains lots of statistics." Outstanding.
Oh, and there's even an idiot who comes out with the line, "Just go to Migration Watch for the correct figures."
** A selection of two more favourite comments on the second article:
"what about our human rights?
what about the human rights of my diabled nephew and my sister who cannot be houses because of lack of housing caused by immigrants?
what about the human rights of british people to be proud of our nationality?
what about our human rights that we must allow everyone elses freedom of speech yet remain silent ourselves?
what about the human rights to display our religeon proudly yet be told we can't?
what about our future when there are not enough schools, hospitals, housing and prison places when were stretched to the limit already?
what about our budget deficit yet we pay for all these people who have no right to be here?
Britain has failed the British people."
&
"The hidden agenda is more scary than we think. They appear to be following the 1928 manifesto of The Frankfurt School. [Note: A sort of modern version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except for communists rather than Jews]
1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
4. The undermining of schools' and teachers' authority
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
6. The promotion of excessive drinking
7. Emptying of churches
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits
10. Control and dumbing down of media
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family
The outrageous truth slips out: Labour cynically plotted to transform the entire make-up of Britain without telling us"
First we have Vince Cable slumming it and being very reasonable and very liberal:
"The politics of immigration is a minefield. Most politicians, therefore, avoid it, except for those on the extreme fringes who want to detonate a bitter argument on race."
He points up the misconceptions about lack of housing ('right to buy' policy to blame), Poles blamed for lack of building jobs (recession to blame), people who complain about 'illegal immigrants' when they mean black and Asians.
You can tell he's a politician when he brings out his "late wife was of Indian origin" to show what a caring, unprejudiced and experienced person he is, especially as he brought up a young family in the sixties and seventies when there were "Enoch Powell’s speeches and widespread hostility to non-white immigrants." Even though there was net emigration then, "the concern was really about the changing make-up of the British population."
But even now, "while most people are more comfortable about a diverse society, there is anxiety that immigration is ‘out of control’." Who's to blame? The government of course - claimed immigration was good for the economy, keeping wage inflation down and fuelled the economic boom.
Then he's back to the myths:
"One is that our ‘overcrowded’ island is absorbing population from the rest of the world. The opposite is true. There are more Britons living overseas – about 5.5million – than foreign-born people living in Britain.
A second myth is that the population will keep rising to 70million by 2030. But in periods of recession, as in the Seventies, as many people leave as arrive. A lot of East European construction workers have already gone back.
A third myth is that the immigrant population is an economic burden. Most, however, are young and of working age, so pay more in tax and take out less in healthcare and benefits. Many new arrivals create employment for others."
Then he points out both the students are the largest group on 'arrivals' (good for the economy again) but just in case you thought you'd stayed onto the comment page of the Guardian, we get a strange section of what can only be badly edited text (must be the Guardian): "But public anxiety is not without foundation. Illegal immigration is too high. In the decade to the end of 2008, only 114 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegal immigrants." Yes, employers do get away with employing undocumented workers, despite the Labour government's claims to be putting the onus on the employer to police their own workforces' immigration status. But that is what undocumented workers are for sure? Keep the wages down.
But Vince thinks we shouldn't tolerate these 'illegals', its not cricket after all. They are "cheats". They shouldn't be "cheats getting away with it" and that's why "a blanket amnesty wouldn’t be acceptable." But then he goes and contradicts himself by claiming that "to avoid a permanent illegal underclass, there has to be scope for earned citizenship."
And his solution for this "far more tolerant country than it was" and that has "anxieties about immigration (that) have to be addressed"? The "politicians must engage with the issue." Er, but isn't that what they have always done?*
The second, rather longer, article 'Welcome to heaven, how about a cup of tea? Mail on Sunday special investigation into why asylum seekers head to Britain'. It features a David Suchet look-a-like (very photogenic and not 'off putting' in a Daily-Mail-photo-of-foreigner-sort-of-way) telling his story of why he fled Afghanistan.
We get a fairly accurate picture too of his journey half way around the world to England. But then it gets rather surreal. The lorry he and the other migrants had crossed the Channel in is stopped by police: "As we stepped off the truck, they shook our hands and said, "Welcome to England." I was given 13 cups of tea as I was so thirsty. I was happy."
And it isn't till a third of the way through the 3,000 word piece that MigrationBotch get a mention, which is a definite relief for a Mail article. But we wont spoil it for you. Just read the article but DON'T read the nasty vituperative and just plain stupid comments ("The reason Asylum figures have dropped, is because they are near enough all here in the UK").**
* By the way, there are some great comments on this article on-line, and not all your usual standard BNP-lite tripe (though there are a few of those). Its great when the Mail reader tries to engage their brains rather than their knees or spleen. Our two favourite short put-downs (for various reasons) are: "When I need advice from a Liberal, I'll ask, but don't hold your breath." & "There are lies, damned lies and statistics and your article contains lots of statistics." Outstanding.
Oh, and there's even an idiot who comes out with the line, "Just go to Migration Watch for the correct figures."
** A selection of two more favourite comments on the second article:
"what about our human rights?
what about the human rights of my diabled nephew and my sister who cannot be houses because of lack of housing caused by immigrants?
what about the human rights of british people to be proud of our nationality?
what about our human rights that we must allow everyone elses freedom of speech yet remain silent ourselves?
what about the human rights to display our religeon proudly yet be told we can't?
what about our future when there are not enough schools, hospitals, housing and prison places when were stretched to the limit already?
what about our budget deficit yet we pay for all these people who have no right to be here?
Britain has failed the British people."
&
"The hidden agenda is more scary than we think. They appear to be following the 1928 manifesto of The Frankfurt School. [Note: A sort of modern version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except for communists rather than Jews]
1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
4. The undermining of schools' and teachers' authority
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
6. The promotion of excessive drinking
7. Emptying of churches
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits
10. Control and dumbing down of media
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family
The outrageous truth slips out: Labour cynically plotted to transform the entire make-up of Britain without telling us"
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