Call for paradigm shift in immigration debate
-28/04/05
In a robust challenge to the terms of the current election debate about Immigration policy, an associate of the thinktank Ekklesia has called for a radical rethink of the underlying values and assumptions of the immigration policies of the three main parties.
In a paper delivered last night in Westminster alongside another from Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch UK, Ekklesia associate Vaughan Jones questioned underlying assumptions that immigration controls are in the long-term realistic, expedient, practical, necessary, or victimless.
He proposed instead a new paradigm for approaching immigration policy.
Addressing concerns often expressed in immigration debates about ‘subversion’ and ‘pollution’ of the indigenous culture by migrating populations, Jones pointed out that shifts of British culture are rarely a product of migration.
“The shift from fireside, family entertainment to American TV sitcoms, from fish and chips to McDonalds, from dowdy sensible footwear to high street fashion shops, from well behaved classrooms of disciplined children to sniffer dogs at the school gate, from large families to 2.4 childrenÖhas nothing to do with migration whatsoever. The UK culture is in a state of fluidity regardless of migration”, Jones said.
Addressing other arguments that Britain is, or may be “overrun” by migrants, Jones pointed out that most people do not have the means to travel and migrate from the global south to the north.
“The problem of mass migration following conflict or disaster is felt far more at a regional level in the South. It is the more enterprising or better resourced who can move greater distances” he said.
Addressing arguments about the expediency of immigration control, Jones suggested that organisations such as Migration Watch UK build their statistics on flawed and inadequate data and “within a highly questionable paradigm” of a static population base wherever more people occupy an ever reducing space. He suggested that deficiencies in data collection “open the doors, if not the floodgates, for wild and irresponsible speculation.”
He argued that immigration itself should be seen in terms of expediency and should be viewed in the context of declining and changing populations in the northern hemisphere where people are needed.
The European Union estimates that it needs 16 million migrants a year to keep its working age population stable until 2050.
Jones questioned the practicality of immigration controls.
“The idea that the labour market can be managed from week to week as if it were a supermarket chain is absurd” he suggested.
He called instead for long-term moves toward “a free market in migration” – the free movement of labour to correspond with the free movement of capital, to meet both the skills gap and population deficit.
He also pointed out how immigration controls contribute to increased immigration, as well as illegal trafficking.
“All the evidence is that the harder it is to come in and out of a country, the longer people stay, the harder it is to track newcomers and the more likely it is that criminal elements will take advantage of that situation” he said.
In the area of national security, Jones pointed out that attempts to control immigration can replace international cooperation in policing with dreadful consequences.
“Using immigration law as a method of policing is neither logical nor effective. It is tempting because it takes away the burden of proof. The immigrant or asylum claimant has to prove they are not a criminal, as opposed to a proper prosecution and a represented defence. International cooperation in policing is surprisingly undeveloped. But that is not the fault of an asylum claimant.”
“Immigration controls are not a substitute for international cooperation in policing.” he said.
Jones also pointed out that immigration debates often fail to take account of innocent victims of immigration controls.
“We have to be concerned about the imprisonment of children, the forced removal of children at birth, the trafficked women, the exploited farm workers, the suicides, the lives lived in fear and uncertainty, the deportations from a liberal democracy to the prisons of dictatorships. All this is happening.” he said.
“Our immigration bureaucracies enforce destitution, separate families and waste talent. No policy which hurts people as immigration controls hurt and kill human beings can possibly be described as moral.”
Vaughan Jones proposed instead a new working paradigm for current immigration policy based on actions taken following World War 2.
“In 1945, Europe had experienced genocide and tribal killings on a grand scale. Millions were homeless and displaced, millions were traumatised and bereaved. In 1992, Western Europe opened its borders between the nation states for the free movement of labour. How did such transformations take place in less than fifty years? It happened through the creation of supra-national institutions and treaties, through inward investment, through the levelling off of inequalities within and between economies. And only this year we have seen the next stage of the experiment as the ending of conflict between East and Western Europe leads to further opening up of borders. And that trend will continue” he said.
Jones suggested that issues of both immigration and asylum are also best tackled within the broader context of conflict resolution and development.
“Arresting the causes of migration at source and creating positive economic and cultural opportunities for exchange is the only realistic mechanism to ‘control’ migration.” he said.
Vaughan Jones is an associate of Ekklesia and the director of Praxis, which has worked with displaced people since 1983.
He is also a minister in the United Reformed Church.