EU: Policing immigration: Britain and Europe (feature)
01 March 1995
There is an irony in the recent seizure by British politicians of the right of the proposed abolition of internal border controls as a pretext for raising the racist spectre of hordes of illegals and scroungers swarming in to Britain. For the priorities of the French presidency of the EU for the first six months of 1995, and its proposals for joint actions, reveal the continuing obsession of the EU states with defining, identifying and excluding more and more people as "illegal". In the process, the lineaments of a Euro-police state have become more clearly drawn.
The French presidency proposals describe as their main priority combating unauthorised immigration and illegal employment of foreign nationals not authorised to work in the EU. They aim at approximating national policies on controlling and combating clandestine immigration. To that end, a proposal for a joint action by the EU member states has been circulated among ministers for their agreement. This would commit member states to imposing requirements on foreign nationals to carry and produce on demand residence and identity documents.
Under the joint action proposal, systematic checks would be carried out:
* when an offence was investigated or prosecuted (whether or not suspects only, or only victims and witnesses as well, the document does not say);
* to "ward off threats to public order on specific occasions (demonstrations, sporting events, open air concerts) or in specific places (sensitive neighbourhoods, the Underground)".
* in frontier zones, ports, airports and railway stations handling international traffic;
* when the competent authorities "have questioned a foreign national for any reason whatsoever".
Foreign nationals must carry ID and residence documents with them at all times.
Benefits in the area of health, retirement, family benefit, work-related or housing benefit are all to be contingent on verification of legal residence. Employers must verify the immigration status of workers before employing them, and will be punished for employing undocumented workers.
Each member State is to set up a central file with details of the immigration status of all foreign nationals in the country. They are to take measures to guard against forgery of residence documents and documents providing proof of nationality, and "shall take every measure to reinforce means of identifying foreign nationals not in a lawful position" and with no travel or ID documents.
Detention for expulsion is to be mandatory for irregular workers, in "non-prison" accommodation, to enable them to be identified and returned. Those who refuse to supply travel documents or otherwise "bring about their illegal position" may be sent to prison. The requirement to carry identity and residence documents would make it necessary in practice for anyone likely to be stopped to carry proof of their right be in the territory. In practice, it is black people who are most likely to be stopped. The draft says that immigration status checks must be carried out in a "non-discriminatory manner", and assessment of who constitutes a foreign national "shall be based solely on objective criteria which comply with non-racist and non-xenophobic principles". This means, presumably, that the police can stop a black man on any ground other than his colour. It is meaningless.
The Pasqua-isation of Europe
Similar provisions were introduced in France two years ago, when the right won power, by the hard-line, strongly anti-Islam interior minster Charles Pasqua (see Statewatch vol 3 no 3). There have been constant and widespread allegations of police racism and brutality in carrying out the ID checks on the metro and elsewhere, and several immigrant youth have been killed by police since the increased powers were introduced. They also appear to be used as a means of punishment or revenge on whole communities; for example, 10,000 north Africans were subjected to ID checks by p