Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 129, February/March 1996
The government’s Asylum and Immigration Bill will remove the few remaining rights of asylum seekers in Britain. It, and the associated removal of social security benefits from most asylum seekers, will ensure that not only are even more asylum seekers deported but that those who remain whilst their cases are heard have no means of support. With this law, Fortress Britain will have finally slammed the door on those fleeing persecution in other countries. MAXINE WILLIAMS reports.
Tightening the screw
Tory social security minister, Peter Lilley, received delighted applause from the Tory Party conference last year when he announced a campaign to cut payments to ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. Home Secretary, Michael Howard, also argues that his new Asylum Bill is designed to deter ‘bogus’ asylum claims. Both back up their argument by referring to the fact that three quarters of asylum claims are now refused. In fact, three quarters are refused because in 1993 the government introduced new rules making it almost impossible for those claiming asylum to prove their cases.
Thus, for example, of 12,455 asylum seekers from the vicious conflict in former Yugoslavia, only 50 have been granted refugee status. Since 1993 over 9,000 Nigerians have claimed asylum in Britain but of these only four have been granted refugee status and a further 15 given leave to remain. More than 99% of asylum claims from Nigerians are now refused despite the overwhelming evidence — remember the fate of Ken Saro-Wiwa — of a brutal and repressive regime in Nigeria which tortures, imprisons and kills its opponents.
Last year the Home Office deported Abdul Onibiyo, a Nigerian who had lived here since 1964 with a break of six years spent in Nigeria. Since his deportation nothing has been heard of him and his family fears for his safety. Despite this, on 19 January, his son Ade had his appeal against refusal of political asylum rejected by the High Court. In refusing his claim, the Home Secretary had argued that his father’s disappearance and the worsening situation for opponents of the Nigerian regime did not constitute new grounds for asylum. The High Court agreed. Other members of Ade’s family are also under threat and Ade has been imprisoned, along with hundreds of others, in Campsfield Detention Centre. Campsfield has been the scene of hundreds of detained asylum seekers going on hunger strike to protest at their prolonged detention and the appalling conditions which they face.
This is the situation under existing immigration laws. The new laws will tighten the screw still further.
‘No serious risk of persecution’
The new Asylum Bill introduces the concept of ‘safe countries’, known as the White List. Rather than considering asylum cases on their individual, merits, the Home Secretary will simply draw up a list of countries where he considers there is ‘no serious risk of persecution.’ People who come from these countries will automatically go through the so-called fast-tracking procedure. They will be given little time to prepare their case and will find themselves speedily deported.
This list includes Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Poland, India and Romania. Countries may be added to this at the Home Secretary’s discretion and he needs to give no justification for his decisions. As the recent case of Mohammed al-Mas’ari makes clear, political and economic motives will govern the choice of safe countries. Mohammed al-Mas’ari, a Saudi dissident, was ordered to be deported from Britain simply because the Saudis — lavish arms buyers — put pressure on the British government.
Alongside the ‘White List’, a separate list of countries is to be kept by the Home Secretary. Special short procedures will apply to asylum seekers from these countries. Algeria and Nigeria are on this list. Once again, asylum seekers will have only a few days to produce evidence that their fear of persecution is genuine. If their application is unsuccessful, as it is likely to be, they will be deported having a right of appeal only from outside Britain. If they are deported back to the country in which they faced persecution, they are unlikely to have the opportunity to make such an appeal. They may be imprisoned or dead.
A further provision of the Bill is the limitation of grounds for seeking asylum to fear of persecution by the government. Many of those seeking asylum are indeed fleeing repressive governments. But many others, such as Algerians, are forced into exile by the activities of opposition groups. In Algeria, hundreds of women, journalists, socialists have been murdered by fundamentalists and near civil war rages. Algerian asylum-seekers might now find that their very realistic fear of being murdered is not enough to gain asylum.
Forced into destitution
Alongside this new law are new rules designed to deny social security and other benefits to immigrants and asylum seekers. The rules have been carefully framed to be as damaging as possible. Unless an asylum seeker applies for asylum at the port of entry they will get no benefits. At present the majority of asylum applications are made from within Britain, often within days of arrival. Some people are simply too disorientated to make an immediate application or do not understand how to do so. Others know that if they make such an application at an airport they will face harsh treatment at the hands of the immigration officials and a very real chance of being either locked up or deported.
Initially these new rules were to be made retrospective from October 1995 and it was thought that 13,000 people including children would be immediately left without income. Lilley was forced to back down on this as, for example, the Churches and various charities publicised their plans to set up emergency shelters for the thousands affected. However, it remains the case that from 5 February the rule change will hit new asylum seekers’ — the majority of them will have no rights to benefits. Up to 40,000 people per year will be rendered destitute, many of them people who have already been subjected to great trauma in their country of origin. In addition those existing asylum seekers with a right to benefit will be unable to claim new benefits, such as Disabled Living Allowance, if their circumstances change after 5 February.
Asylum seekers currently receive a lower rate of benefit than others but are entitled to claim housing benefit and council tax benefit. All entitlement to benefit will simply disappear for the majority of new asylum seekers no matter if they are elderly, young, ill or disabled. They will be on the streets with no means of support.
This loss of benefit will also apply to those appealing after 5 February against having their claim for asylum rejected. This can take more than a year. Clearly the aim of this is to starve people into dropping their appeals and leaving the country. For, at the same time, the government is imposing a duty on employers to check the immigration status of its workers. Fines of up to £5,000 can be imposed if an employer takes on a worker whose status does not entitle them to work. Some employers will thus become unofficial immigration officials. Many employers will simply not bother to make checks, they will just not employ anyone with any kind of immigration status.
Further cuts in benefit rights affect both asylum seekers and wider groups of immigrants. The new Bill will create a large category of people — ‘immigrants’ — who will lose their right to public housing and Child Benefit. This threatens many groups of people who are legally settled in Britain and who have paid taxes and National Insurance contributions. It will also involve civil servants and local authority employees directly in checking the immigration status of applicants for housing and benefits. A large group of second-class citizens is being created who do not have the rights normally associated with residence and tax payment in this country.
The government has pressed ahead with its benefit cuts to asylum seekers in the face of condemnation from its own Social Security Advisory Committee which has called them ‘potentially racially divisive’ and ‘putting at risk of destitution many people who are genuinely seeking refuge in this country.’ The United Nations has warned the government that it is violating its international treaty obligations and exposing large numbers of individuals, including particularly vulnerable groups, to the worst effects of impoverishment.’ Clearly in targeting welfare cuts on asylum seekers and immigrants the government agenda is crudely political. With so few electoral aces, it is hoping to successfully play the race card.
New Labour is, predictably, keeping the lowest of profiles on these measures. Labour wishes to maintain a racist consensus on immigration with the Tories, In answer to letters specifically asking him if Labour would oppose the cuts in benefits to asylum seekers, Tony Blair replied: ‘Labour opposes bogus applications and fraud and recognises the need for fair asylum controls’.
Thus Labour, although voting against the cuts, will make no pledge to restore these benefits should they be elected to government. Moreover on the new asylum measures, Labour merely quibbled about Parliamentary controls as to which countries should be on the White List. Thus they have entirely conceded the principle that asylum cases need not be judged on their individual merits.
Those Labourites, such as Dianne Abbot, who are taking a prominent role in the campaign against the new Asylum Bill, talk a lot but do nothing. Abbott, for example, opposes the call for local authority and civil service trade unionists to refuse to implement the new race checks.
Local Labour councils, with a few exceptions, have failed to make a commitment to provide free school meals for the children of asylum seekers denied income support. In fact both practical and political opposition has come most strongly from asylum seekers and their communities and the church/charity bodies working in this field. It is they, not the Labour movement/left that are organising the practical support that will be of vital importance in the future.
Racist rich world
The poor and oppressed nations of the world have seen their conditions worsen drastically over the past decade. Fragile political systems have collapsed, civil wars have broken out. As the poverty of tens of millions has increased so has the rich West increased its backing for the dictatorial regimes which keep the people down and the multinationals’ profits up. These are the causes of the increased numbers of people wandering the world in search of sanctuary. There are currently more than 25 million such refugees.
The word which has gone out from Europe to these millions is Keep Out. In France, Chirac announced immediately after his election that planeloads of illegal immigrants would be deported each week with a target of 24,000 such deportations annually. The French police routinely harass black people under laws allowing them to demand papers proving right of residence. Germany has tightened its asylum laws and in January the wave of attacks on immigrant hostels continued with an arson attack killing 10 Africans. In Italy, asylum seekers are denied benefits and forced to live on the streets.
The British government’s new Asylum laws are part of this European-wide policy of keeping out immigrants from the poor nations and subjecting those already resident to greater control and attack. There are those today who ask how in the 1920s fascism could have been allowed to triumph in European countries. They need only study current developments. A similar political atmosphere, a poisonous victimisation of minorities, is now on the march. The defence of asylum seekers, the rejection of racist immigration laws and the fight against the creation of second-class citizenship for black people are urgent tasks for all democrats and socialists.
