As the Labour government steps up its racist attacks against migrants, the BBC is waging a propaganda war in tandem. On 15 April, the BBC broadcast an investigation titled ‘Scams and Scandals: The Immigration Fraudsters’, a racist hit-piece against asylum seekers. Posing as prospective applicants, BBC journalists were given a ‘crash course’ on how to make a successful asylum claim. They were recommended by a Bangladeshi lawyer to pretend to have faced persecution in their home country for being either gay, an atheist, or a political activist. ‘Fake news sites’, ‘staged political protests’, ‘bogus medical conditions’, ‘fabricated evidence’ – the investigation is rife with the language of criminality and deception, intending to spur outrage and whip up chauvinistic sentiment. While the BBC calls the people who take these measures to come to or stay in Britain ‘fake claimants’, what they really are is desperate: desperate to escape the conditions of underdevelopment and backwardness imposed on them by the imperialist system.
Of course, the BBC is careful to differentiate between the ‘fake claimants’ and the ‘real asylum seekers’ whose lives are made harder by all these fake claims. This obscures the reality of the situation: it is precisely the existence of immigration controls and the racist reporting of the BBC which makes the lives of all migrants more dangerous and more precarious. The line between real and fake asylum seekers is dictated by the labour needs of British capitalism and the political necessity to break any solidarity between migrants through divide and rule, forcing some to take on desperate measures, to lie, to do whatever is necessary to stay in Britain and survive.
Applying for asylum is a difficult and lengthy process. According to the government’s own data, the rejection rate at the initial decision stage for all asylum claims is nearly 60%. This does not include cases where status is revoked after having been initially granted. Many asylum seekers wait upwards of a year for their claim to be processed. During this time, it is illegal for them to work or claim benefits. The extent of government support for asylum seekers is a mere £7 per day. For the many asylum seekers placed in migrant detention centres, there are no maximum time limits on their detention, meaning people can be held indefinitely without charge. While private contractors make a fortune from migrant hotels and detention centres, asylum seekers struggle to survive, forced into illegal work to make ends meet. Now, the BBC has made it its mission to rat them out: at least two people have been arrested in targeted raids as a result of the investigation.
Just weeks prior to the investigation being released, the Labour government announced a series of measures to tighten immigration controls, attacking specifically the poorest sections of migrants. These include banning the issuing of student visas for applicants from Cameroon, Sudan, Afghanistan and Myanmar and the review of refugee status every 30 months, with the possibility of having their status revoked; other measures being pushed forward include the doubling of the period of time required for migrants to get settled status, and a ban on settled status applications from those earning less than £12,000 a year (see FRFI 311). The crackdown on immigration has also involved attacking immigration lawyers, who provide an essential service, helping migrants navigate a deliberately complex system. Far from only targeting the ‘crooked lawyers’ who exploit asylum seekers and the immigration system, the state’s attack has made it more difficult for all migrants to access legal advice.
Labour MPs, in reaction to the BBC investigation, are calling for even more controls. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has promised that ‘sham lawyers… will face the full force of the law’. Labour MP and Labour Friends of Israel vice-chair Jo White said the government must ‘crack down’ on law firms and advisers exposed by the BBC and called for the Home Office to stop issuing student visas to people from Pakistan. Tory and Reform spokespeople immediately jumped on the bandwagon, declaring the asylum system ‘broken’.
The BBC is a mouthpiece of the British ruling class, manufacturing consent for attacks on working class people at home and abroad. A publicly-owned corporation funded by its own consumers, since its founding in 1922 the BBC has always supported the policies of the British government and lambasted any movement which challenged the imperialist British state. Since 7 October 2023, the BBC has provided cover for British involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and has systematically underreported Palestinian casualties while overreporting Israeli ones. But the BBC is not alone in acting as the media arm of British imperialism and British state racism: from the overtly racist and reactionary Daily Mail and Telegraph, to the liberal Guardian, the mainstream press’s job is to pump out endless propaganda for the British state.
The ruling class understands that to better control the working class, it must also control the media the working class consumes. This is why we publish Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, a truly independent, working-class newspaper. On migration, our position is clear: all immigration controls in imperialist Britain are racist by nature, and must be abolished; and the source of racist oppression, British imperialism, must be destroyed.
All migrants have the right! Here to stay, here to fight!
