In a new report, the think-tank Demos has backed the UK government's proposals for stationing asylum processing centres outside European Union (EU) borders - and proposes a comprehensive Europe-wide system for managing the flow of immigrants through the continent (1).
|
This is just the latest proposal for taking the heat out of the asylum issue. If asylum seekers are dealt with according to established international procedure in centres outside Europe, goes the thinking, then the asylum system will become merely a bureaucratic procedure that occurs at arm's length.
|
The arrival of up to 100,000 asylum seekers on British shores every year has become the source of much political rancour. The Daily Mail brigade voices fears about shadowy figures sneaking through the Channel tunnel, stealing benefits and bringing terrorism. The liberal-left press wrings its hands about Afghan families being separated from each other, about the terrible conditions in detention centres, or the views of BNP voters.
|
The government is torn between these two poles: on the one hand, fearing asylum seekers as a source of social instability and fearing what it imagines to be the white working-class response; on the other, being made to feel uncomfortable about cracking down. These contradictory impulses have made for legislative vacillation: since New Labour came into power, there have numerous asylum initiatives and several major pieces of asylum legislation, much of which has been unsuccessful or simply abandoned.
|
The policy of giving vouchers to asylum seekers rather than money was criticised as humiliating and divisive, and was eventually reversed. Plans to house asylum seekers in accommodation centres in rural areas have faltered after being attacked from village NIMBYs from one side and human rights activists from the other. The government's policy of denying benefits to people who had not claimed refugee status immediately on their arrival in Britain has been challenged in the courts.
|
The problem for the government is, as the briefing for the Demos report put it, 'control of migration flow seems simultaneously to be more necessary and less feasible than ever before' (2). More than ever before, the government wants to create a fortress Britain - but it feel less able than ever to do it. EU asylum processing centres are attractive for the government because they seem to offer a way out of this political rancour and legislative failure.
|
Back in February 2001, then home secretary Jack Straw proposed an EU-wide resettlement system, based on refugee camps set up in countries near trouble spots. Those who succeeded in their application would be allocated a European country according to pre-established quotas (3).
|
At the end of March 2003, current home secretary David Blunkett presented a variation on this plan to other European ministers. Blunkett suggested establishing 'transit processing centres' on the routes taken by asylum seekers to Europe - these would provide stop-offs for migrant traffic, and return-points for asylum seekers who turned up inside European countries. Asylum seekers who turned up at Dover could be sent to a centre in somewhere like Russia to have their application considered. The hope is that once this system becomes established, asylum seekers would head straight to the processing centre.
|
Blunkett argued that asylum seekers would benefit from this proposal, as they would not have to go through all the effort and danger of travelling illegally through Europe: '[The centres] would process claims without people travelling to the countries in which they want to seek asylum. They would be safe and decently treated while their claims were being looked at.' (4) No longer would asylum seekers be at the mercy of 'people smugglers', Blunkett argues; they would be protected and dealt with by a 'firm and fair' procedure.
|
 | | Asylum seekers won't want to languish in a UN 'safe haven' |
|
A leaked UK government document suggested that the transit centres could gradually replace, and so take the pressure off, the domestic asylum system: '[they] should gradually reduce spontaneous arrivals of asylum seekers leaving the domestic system with residual cases only.' (5) Asylum seekers would be shared among countries on the basis of quotas, determined by factors such as countries' population or their GDP. No longer would we have endless national debates about whether the government was being too hard or too soft on asylum seekers; nor would the system have to deal with people's varying 'spontaneous' choices about when and where to claim asylum. The aim is that Britain gets an agreed number, year on year, according to an agreed and objective procedure.
|
Blunkett also suggested establishing 'regional protection zones' near trouble spots to absorb people fleeing conflict. They would remain in the zone until it was again safe for them to return home - rather than struggling on to seek asylum in Europe.
|
This attempt to neutralise the asylum issue, to reduce it to a bureaucratic procedure, represents a severe attack on freedom and democracy - both for asylum seekers, and for UK citizens.
|
The 1951 Geneva Convention gave individuals the choice to claim asylum in the country they decided upon. If you turn up in Britain, Britain is obliged to consider your claim - and in the meantime you are entitled to legal and social protection. What Blunkett's document describes as spontaneity is actually choice - choice on the part of the asylum seeker about where they want to travel and where they want to live. This choice has already been undermined by the 1997 Dublin convention on asylum, which allowed asylum seekers to be returned to the first country that cleared them in the EU. Taking the whole system outside Europe would mean that you wouldn't even be able to decide which European country you wanted to first be cleared in.
|
The proposals are also an attack on our democratic rights - our rights to interrogate and assess the policy of our government. The way in which the government polices Britain's borders, and decides who should and who should not be allowed to remain, should be a political question that is open for debate. Such an important issue should be subjected to scrutiny in the House of Commons and the press. By taking his plans to European officials for discussion, and seeking to agree a Europe-wide procedure, Blunkett is trying to remove the issue from national debate.
|
But even in their own terms, these policies are unlikely to work. The asylum seekers that we see risking their lives night after night to cross to Dover are struggling and aspirational figures. They want a better life, and they're prepared to face adversity to get it. These are not people who will be satisfied with submitting themselves into the deciding arms of European bureaucrats in some Russian transit camp. Nor will they want to languish in a UN 'safe haven' - there are enough of these refugee no-man's lands already in the world.
|
And controversy has already dogged Blunkett's proposals, forcing him to backtrack. Originally, Blunkett suggested that all asylum seekers apart from children and those with special needs should be included. But Whitehall sources are now suggesting that only 70 percent of asylum seekers would be processed in transit camps.
|
The difficulties show that it will take more than rules to stop people trying to determine their lives.
|
Read on:
spiked-issue: Race
(1) Blunkett backed on asylum centres , Guardian, 22 April 2003
(2) See the briefing paper for People Flow
(3) Long arm of the Straw, by Josie Appleton
(4) Asylum requests may be handled in Russia, Guardian, 27 March 2003
(5) Shifting a problem back to its source, Guardian, 5 February 2003
|
