There is another way of dealing with immigration

It shouldn't be surprising if New Labour should also try to beat the
fascists by copying them

By Mark Steel
27 June 2002


Tabloid types love the row about the refugee centre at Sangatte, because it
gives them the opportunity to be racist about two groups in one sentence:
"Bloody frogs keep sending us all their bleedin' Bosnians." Now the French
have told David Blunkett they will shut the centre down, but only if he
passes harsher laws against immigration. So it's similar to when England
loses at football or cricket, a sort of "how embarrassing; we invented
racism and now the French are better at it than we are!"

The "problem", the British and French governments have agreed, is that
asylum-seekers are treated marginally better in Britain than France. So ID
cards and other measures must be introduced to create a fairer parity of
misery. What a wonderful human way of looking at the world. Maybe next they
should look at the number of asylum-seekers attacked in each country. Then
they could announce that "the trouble is there are only three or four
asylum-seekers a year murdered in the UK, which is fewer than in most other
European nations, and needs to be redressed to stop illegal immigrants
coming here to exploit our generous homicide rates".

Jack Straw declared part of the justification for New Labour's stance when
he said the far right could only be beaten if we recognise they are
addressing a real problem. I suppose that as New Labour's first electoral
strategy was to beat the Tories by copying them, it shouldn't be surprising
if they try the same method to beat the fascists. But it seems unlikely to
work as it allows them to set the agenda. I suppose if New Labour had been
in government in Germany in 1930, they'd have said: "In order to address a
real problem, we are willing to invade just a bit of Poland." And to deal
with complaints from the left they'd have said "of course we will treat
genuine Poland in the humane manner this country is known for, but the
growing amount of bogus Poland will have to be firmly and efficiently
blitzkrieged within international law."

There is another way of dealing with racist arguments about immigration.
It's unlikely even the most forward-thinking New Labour think-tank has
considered it, but – and call me a utopian fool if you like – they could
disagree with the arguments. Sounds crazy, doesn't it, but they could, for
example, counter the claims that we're being "flooded" by pointing out that
there are currently an estimated 50,000 asylum-seekers in London, which is
exactly the same as the number of Americans living in London. So why isn't
there a constant barrage of stories about Americans swamping our towns,
waddling down our streets, fiddling our company accounts, mis-pronouncing
our tourist attractions and ignoring our World Cup?

The Government could point out that the population of this country has
hardly changed for 30 years. Or it could suggest that if someone has
hitch-hiked across Europe in a lorry under a box of tomatoes before scaling
a fence and clinging to the side of a train as it hurtles under the Channel,
this possibly isn't the sort of person whose main aim in life is to lie
around all day being a drain on public resources.

It could be pointed out that no society can progress without immigration. In
yesterday's Daily Mail, on the next page from its daily anti-immigrant rant,
was a story about a 30,000-year-old Neanderthal site that's been discovered
in Norfolk. "No one knows why the Neanderthals died out," said the story.
Maybe it's because they all read the Mail, and spent all their resources
preventing "so-called Homo Sapien refugees from the Ice Age queueing up to
come over here and exploit our generous swamp".

I saw an illustration recently of how little logic there is in the arguments
against immigration, on a ferry crossing from Calais. A group of eight
blokes from Kent had travelled to France for the day to get paralytic, and
were burping their way through the departure lounge. One of them grabbed the
French woman taking boarding cards and said: "Oy darling, whenzzz a bloody
here what time's the (barup) oo blimey Ingerlaaand WHERE'S THIS are you a
boat when's the boat?" Then they yelled and puked their way across the
Channel, before making the predictable joke in Dover, "here, if we get
stopped just say we're asylum-seekers and they'll let us straight through
yawaaaay haaa", which they repeated several thousand times. And I thought:
"These blokes must agree the country is full up. So why don't we suggest
they sod off back to France to be banged up in Sangatte, and in their place
we take eight asylum-seekers, who will be more pleasant all round and sure
to ease the overcrowding as they'll be a lot skinnier than these fat twats?"

So now I just have to hope Jack Straw suggests a moderate version of this to
the Cabinet, perhaps allowing three of them to stay, as the only way of
addressing the very real problem I've raised.




There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve.    -Mike- Levitt-


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