BY ALISON DELLIT
"In all that we do, we will honour our obligation to provide protection for those fleeing persecution. We must not allow such tragic loss of life to continue." With this blatant lie British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Guiliano Amato joined their voices to the crusade to make it almost impossible for refugees to get asylum in Western Europe.
European Union (EU) governments are under increased public pressure to deal with the horrific death toll of refugees desperate to enter "fortress Europe". Over the last 10 years, war in the Balkans and the economic devastation of Eastern Europe flowing from the restoration of capitalism have contributed to a significant increase in refugees arriving in the EU. At the same time, EU member states have cut unskilled and humanitarian migration in favour of skilled migrants.
In one of the most notorious changes Britain, France and Italy have began imposing visa requirements on citizens from countries with high number of asylum applications. Visitors who request a visa in order to apply for asylum are routinely rejected. This has forced thousands of refugees to attempt to sneak into the EU, where, under the 1951 United Nations' convention on refugees, their applications must be considered.
The consequence of these policies is fatal. In the last 12 months alone:
* Fifty eight Chinese refugees suffocated in the back of trucks attempting to sneak into Britain at Dover.
* One hundred and seventy three refugees drowned trying to cross from Albania to Italy.
* Several hundred refugees drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea to reach Spain and Greece.
* A boat carrying more than 900 Kurdish refugees was deliberately run aground off the Riveria.
However, EU governments have no intention of easing border restrictions and making the EU a sanctuary for political and economic refugees. Instead, they are using humanitarian rhetoric to disguise ever more draconian restrictions on refugees.
In the article published in the February 4 London Observer, Blair and Amato announced increased co-operation between Italian and British immigration officials in order to prevent more refugees from the Balkans travelling through the EU to the United Kingdom in order to claim asylum.
The two prime ministers also advocated "further discussion" between EU member states on the future of "migration management".
Straw's 'solution'
Within days of the Observer article, British home secretary Jack Straw used a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research to begin this "discussion". He told his elite audience of government bureaucrats and MPs that the "solution" to Britain's refugee "problem" was to lay in redefining them into oblivion.
At the heart of Straw's scheme is the proposal to deny refugee status to asylum seekers on the basis of where they come from. He proposed that the EU divide all the countries in the world into three lists. Refugees from countries on the first list, the "safe" list, would never be considered for asylum. All EU countries would be on this list. This has serious implications for Basques suffering under Spanish rule, for gypsies and Romany people throughout Europe and also for the Kurdish people should Turkey gain admission to the EU.
Refugees from countries on the second list would only have their applications considered if they applied from outside the EU. Applications would be presumed false unless proved otherwise. Straw was vague on the composition of this list, specifying only that it would include China. Straw argued the Australian government's experience with refugee assessment could be drawn upon in composing this list. Two years ago, having been deported from Australia, a Chinese woman in her eighth month of pregnancy was deported to China where she was forced to have an abortion.
Only refugees from countries on the third list, made up of "internationally recognised oppressive regimes" would escape immediate deportation upon arrival in the EU.
This scheme would almost certainly result in the denial of refugee status to the majority of refugees arriving in any EU country. The British Refugee Council has pointed out that it would be in direct contravention of the 1951 convention. Straw, however, claims that it only contravenes the "letter" of the convention, and not the "spirit". He argues that the convention needs to be "modernised".
Straw's proposals have been greeted enthusiastically by EU governments. Germany, Italy and France immediately endorsed the scheme. A meeting of EU interior ministers on February 9 broadly backed it, and within a week the European Commission began a feasibility study over the proposals.
The Belgian government has indicated that it will make discussion over "radical immigration and asylum policy" a priority when it takes over the EU presidency in July.
The implication of Straw's proposals is not limited to Europe. The proposal has been warmly greeted by Philip Ruddock, Australia's minister for racism (aka the minister for immigration). Ruddock is no doubt salivating at the prospect of a weakening of the UN convention, which would enable him have the Australian navy turn boats of refugees around and simply send them back to where they came from.
The keen desire of EU governments to support Straw's scheme has nothing to do with human rights, nor, despite the rhetoric, with the desire to protect wages and jobs in EU countries.
Cheap labour
Europe's corporate rulers still want cheap, unskilled migrant workers. But the tightening of immigration restrictions has provided an even cheaper work force than a flow of legal migration could. The EU estimates that 500,000 illegal immigrants begin work in Western Europe every year, a figure Amnesty International believes is conservative.
These workers are often held as debt slaves until they pay off the cost of their transportation to Western Europe. In a sweatshop raided by Italian police last year, workers were paid 50 cents for sewing a pair of jeans. They were locked up in the factory for 14 hours a day with one meal break. The investigation that followed implicated several international brand-names. In the textile town of Prato, the local chamber of commerce estimated that 40% of production was carried out by illegal workers. These problems are not limited to Italy. Europol argues that illegal labour is a significant part of the economy in Austria, Belgium, Britain and France.
No EU country has devoted the same resources to eliminating sweatshops as they have to punishing refugees. Nor is the punishment meted out to refugees intended to stem the flow of illegal arrivals.
Attacks on "illegal immigration" serve to discourage immigrant workers from taking protest action against the low wages and long hours that employers are able to force on them. Racism and xenophobia, which have been whipped to frenzy levels in many EU countries over the last 10 years, serve to make "illegal" workers pariahs, thus discouraging any expressions of organised solidarity with them from the rest of the work force. At the same time, the bosses and their governments are interested in preventing these immigrants from claiming asylum status and thus being eligible for the same rights as other workers.
This is what is behind the recent round of attacks on asylum seekers in Europe. EU politicians are desperately pretending that there are actually few "genuine" refugees arriving, and most arrivals are just "illegal" immigrants. The reality is actually the opposite — war, economic dislocation and environmental devastation have narrowed the gap between "economic" and "political" refugees. Many of those living in the EU "illegally" fit the UN definition of a refugee.
Of particular concern to EU ministers is the increasing tendency of illegal arrivals to attempt to move around the EU in order to maximise their chances of gaining legality. This is why these ministers are currently considering a plan which would centralise allocation of approved refugees amongst EU member states. This is specifically designed to stop refugees from attempting to reach countries where they will have local community support in lodging applications to stay.
Every year, for example, thousands of Kurdish refugees travel through Europe attempting to reach Germany where a strong Kurdish community offers them some protection. Under the proposal being considered, Kurdish refugees could be allocated by the EU to member states where there is only a very small and political uninfluential local Kurdish immigrant population.
Britain now has the highest number of asylum applications each year in the EU. Most of these applications come from workers who have travelled to Britain from another EU country. While Britain has attempted to make conditions much harder for asylum seekers, it is politically difficult for it to deport large numbers of refugees.
Deals such as that launched by Blair and Amato, and the February 14 Franco-British agreement to police the Paris to London Eurostar train service, are designed to prevent refugees from even reaching Britain. This will save the British government the embarrassment of mass deportations, and will also help to prevent Britain from becoming an attraction point for potential asylum seekers.
The latest round of proposals will make the situation for refugees in the EU much worse. They are designed to force more and more potential asylum seekers into a low paid, super-exploited layer with no political rights — an underground work force. Far from lowering the "tragic loss of life", they are likely to increase it.
And far from stamping out "people smuggling", these changes will increase the business of the real "people smugglers" — those companies which profit from the illegal status of their foreign-born workers.