Amidst a climate of increasing state and media racism typified by government-sponsored vans featuring anti-immigrant ‘Go home!’ adverts and a Daily Express campaign against Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants which would not have been out of place in Nazi Germany, on 10 October Home Secretary Theresa May introduced the Immigration Bill 2013, which it is anticipated will become law in spring 2014. Nicki Jameson reports.
The Bill’s introduction was accompanied by a flurry of publicity, most of which centred on May trumpeting how living in Britain would become ‘tougher for illegal immigrants’. Most of the Bill does not relate directly to illegal immigration but this did not prevent May, when interviewed by the BBC on the morning of 10 October, using the word ‘illegal’ every time she said ‘immigrant’ and ‘hardworking’ every time she said ‘tax-payer’.
Like her cabinet colleagues Chris Grayling and Michael Gove, to name just two, May never likes the truth to get in the way of a good rant, especially one that deflects the unpopular actions of her government onto some popular bogeymen. How neat then that lack of funding and resources in the NHS is suddenly nothing to do with government policy or privatisation, but almost entirely the fault of ‘health tourists’. Mention these so-called free-loaders in the same sentence as ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘foreign criminals’ and you have a neat spectre of Britain’s health service under attack, not by profiteering private companies cutting corners to win contracts, but by illegal immigrants, who are probably criminals as well, coming to Britain especially to get free health care.
Of course the truth is a far cry from this and, as deputy chairman of the British Medical Association Dr Richard Vautrey told BBC Radio 5live: ‘The reality is that people don’t come to the UK to use the NHS; they’re more likely to come to work in the NHS.’
The main focus of the Immigration Bill is indeed to make life more difficult for migrants. Procedures already in place for checking the residence status of people applying for driving licences or opening bank accounts and for scrutinising marriage applications to see if they are ‘sham’ are being put on a statutory footing. Alongside this, new measures are being introduced to require private landlords and doctors’ surgeries to check the immigration status of prospective tenants/patients.
In theory landlords will be required to check the status of everyone and then only rent to those who can provide confirmation of their right to reside in Britain. In practice, this is a backdoor return to the infamous days of ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’.
Even before this latest Bill comes in, a Runnymede Trust survey found that 29% of black Caribbean, 28% of black African and 27% of Pakistani respondents had been discriminated against when trying to rent private housing, as opposed to 1% of white British people surveyed. An undercover investigation by the BBC’s Inside Out London programme found ten estate agents in northwest London who were prepared to go along with requests from undercover journalists posing as racist landlords and assure them that their properties would not be let to black people.
As Maurice Mcleod wrote in The Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’: ‘In her drive to make Britain “a hostile environment for illegal immigrants”, the home secretary is likely to hand bigoted private landlords, and the compliant agents they employ, another valuable tool. Agents will be able to point to the new law and say they are forced to require immigration documents, or at least proof of Britishness, from anyone whose face doesn’t fit.’
Other measures include the speeding-up of administrative removal of overstayers and others with no legal status by ceasing to require notice to be given of intention to remove, and increased powers for immigration officers to use force.
The response of the Labour Party to the introduction of this racist Bill was to complain – not about any of the repressive measures contained in it but that it contained nothing which would tackle Britain’s ‘increasingly shambolic’ border controls or deal with the ‘bureaucratic failings that have prevented foreign criminals being deported’.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 236 December 2013/January 2014
