The new common sense: immigration controls are unsustainable. let's junk them - Refugees / Open Borders

New Internationalist, Oct, 2002 by Teresa Hayter

IMMIGRATION controls are a cruel 20th-century aberration. Although they may seem like common sense, an unavoidable reality, in fact, in most countries they are less than a 100 years old.

International migration, on the other hand, has always existed. Twice as many people migrated from Europe to the rest of the world as have come in the opposite direction. And since the current theory is that human beings originated in East Africa, every other part of the world is the product of immigration. All of us, the racists and the rest of us, are either immigrants or descended from immigrants.

Freedom of movement should be the new common sense. It is hard to see why people should not be allowed to move around the world in search of work or safety or both.

Within the European Union there are growing attempts to secure the principle of freedom for its citizens to live and work in any member country. Between the states of the US federation there are no restrictions on the movement of people. It would be considered an outrage if the inhabitants of a country were not free to travel to another part of that country to get a job there, or if they were not allowed to leave it. Indeed, it was considered an outrage when this happened in the former USSR.

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts these rights. Yet the Universal Declaration is strangely silent on the question of the right to enter another country. Governments cling to what seems to be one of their last remaining prerogatives: their right to keep people out of their territories. Few people question the morality, legality or practicality of this right.

Nation-states in decline

Nation-states are the agents and enforcers of immigration controls and country boundaries. Most were themselves not fully established until the 19th century.

Now nation-states are supposed to be on the decline. International institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization attempt to control the actions of national governments. Economic power is concentrated in fewer and bigger corporations. These put pressure on governments to allow goods and capital to move freely around the world, unaffected by considerations of national sovereignty. Sometimes they also press governments to allow the free movement of people, in order to secure the labour they need for expansion. Yet by the 1970s many countries, especially in Europe but not in North America, had more or less ended the right of people to enter and work.

In theory, the right to gain asylum under the United Nations 1951 Geneva convention, within certain restrictive conditions, remains. But during the past 15 years or so, governments have increasingly failed to observe the spirit of this undertaking.

Governments claim -- unjustly -- that most asylum seekers are in fact 'economic migrants', migrating to better their economic situation. Incorrectly labelling them as 'illegal immigrants', they build a vast edifice of repression.

Immigration boosts wealth

Even if it were morally acceptable for the rich nations of the world to use immigration controls to preserve their disproportionate wealth, as the South African whites tried to use apartheid to preserve theirs, it is doubtful whether they achieve this purpose.

There is a mass of evidence to show that immigrants actually make a big contribution to the wealth and prosperity of the countries they go to. When asked after the IMF/ World Bank meetings in Washington why he had raised upwards the estimates of his country's economic growth, British minister Gordon Brown said this was because net immigration was higher than expected. Economists have also suggested that the abolition of immigration controls would cause a doubling of world incomes. (1)

Immigration is not just good for the capitalists. It also improves both the job prospects and the wages and conditions of workers. Without immigration, sectors of industry would collapse or move abroad, with knock-on effects on other jobs. The US economy, especially its agriculture, building trades and services, is heavily dependent on immigrants, including those who have no legal permission to work.

Many industrialized countries -- especially in Europe -- have declining and ageing populations. Unless immigration is increased, there will not be enough young workers to pay taxes, keep the public sector and industry functioning and look after the old people.

On average immigrants contribute more in taxes than they receive in public services, studies in the US have shown. In Britain too the Home Office estimates that immigrants make a net contribution of $3.75. billion a year to public finances. The cost of immigration controls, on the other hand, is at least $1.5 billion a year, and rising.

'National identity'

Immigration controls are explicable only by racism. Those who defend them often refer to the need to 'preserve national identity'. National identity is hard to define. More or less every country in the world is the product of successive waves of immigration. Each new group of arrivals has tended to he vilified as unable to assimilate, prone to disease, crime and so on.