Public meeting against immigration controls, and for a new politics based on equality, solidarity and freedom of movement for all, organised by No One Is Illegal (UK). Speakers: Victoria Brittain, Rahila Gupta and Tracy Walsh.
For nearly 20 years, politicians have been locked into a crazy competition: who can hit immigrants the hardest. In 1993, Britain had just one immigrant prison, Campsfield. Now we have 12 - and Europe has become a fortress against foreigners. By early 2011, its borders had claimed 15,725 recorded deaths and (in the UK alone) reduced perhaps a million people to destitution, despair, slavery, and even suicide.
Some newspapers say this is what British people want. But do they? If they did, would that make it right to harm people who have done no harm, because they were born elsewhere?
More and more people realise these laws are intrinsically wrong. They cannot be made fair or humane. Politicians state openly that their aim is to allay racist "anxieties" by being "tough" on immigrants. They are meant to hurt: to deter “the wrong kinds of foreigner” from coming here, by being "tough as old boots" on those who do.
These laws warp society. Huge and malign business enterprises have grown up around them, to build and run the new prisons, to monitor, incarcerate and deport. Often, these are the same companies involved in privatising public services, and they form a global lobby for out-sourcing, "flexiblisation" and de-unionisation. Vast, global criminal industries flourish on the super-vulnerable labour of "illegals".
Trade unions increasingly accept that the way to protect their members’ interests is not to try to stop immigration, but to organise and recruit immigrants, and to struggle for equal rights for all. Cameron’s “solution”, on the contrary, is to cut benefits so as to force native British workers into the jobs currently done by immigrants: as he stated in his speech in Munich in April, “immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin”.
Join us on June 16th, and help build the arguments, and a movement, to end the madness of anti-immigrant laws - and the inequality and insecurity they promote.
Some newspapers say this is what British people want. But do they? If they did, would that make it right to harm people who have done no harm, because they were born elsewhere?
More and more people realise these laws are intrinsically wrong. They cannot be made fair or humane. Politicians state openly that their aim is to allay racist "anxieties" by being "tough" on immigrants. They are meant to hurt: to deter “the wrong kinds of foreigner” from coming here, by being "tough as old boots" on those who do.
These laws warp society. Huge and malign business enterprises have grown up around them, to build and run the new prisons, to monitor, incarcerate and deport. Often, these are the same companies involved in privatising public services, and they form a global lobby for out-sourcing, "flexiblisation" and de-unionisation. Vast, global criminal industries flourish on the super-vulnerable labour of "illegals".
Trade unions increasingly accept that the way to protect their members’ interests is not to try to stop immigration, but to organise and recruit immigrants, and to struggle for equal rights for all. Cameron’s “solution”, on the contrary, is to cut benefits so as to force native British workers into the jobs currently done by immigrants: as he stated in his speech in Munich in April, “immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin”.
Join us on June 16th, and help build the arguments, and a movement, to end the madness of anti-immigrant laws - and the inequality and insecurity they promote.
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