European onslaught on refugees (1)
01 January 1991
European onslaught on refugees
artdoc December=1991
Following widespread protests against the proposals to withdraw
legal advice and assistance (`Green Form' legal aid) from all
immigrants, as part of the package announced in July (see
Statewatch no 4), the Home Secretary appeared to be backing down
by the end of September. Kenneth Baker told the Bar Conference
in London that green form eligibility would not be withdrawn
until other arrangements were made - a reference to the fact that
both the Home Office sponsored UKIAS and the National Association
of Citizens' Advice Bureaux (NACAB) had refused to take on the
role of monopoly advisor. Early in October, the Lord Chancellor
agreed to meet immigration lawyers to discuss the proposals.
But the government is still determined to crack down on
refugees. A memo leaked in late September revealed proposals from
ministers Michael Heseltine and David Mellor to a secret
ministerial meeting on asylum that Britain withdraw altogether
from the 1951 Geneva Convention, from which international
obligations towards refugees are derived, and which 103 countries
have signed. Heseltine's justification for this dramatic
suggestion was the `pressure on housing' created by refugees. The
Foreign Office proposal, as an alternative `solution', was to
send all asylum-seekers back to `international camps' or `safe
havens' in their countries of origin, in which claims could be
assessed. And at the Tory Party conference in October, Baker,
Douglas Hurd and John Major all spoke of refugees in the language
of `tidal waves' and `immigration catastrophes' last heard from
Enoch Powell in the late 60s. They were ably assisted by
scaremongering stories in the Tory press, notably the Daily Mail
and the Sun.
Another aspect of the anti-refugee campaign by Ministers has
been the withdrawal from the Code of Guidance on Homelessness of
any mention of refugees. In the draft version, local authorities
were told to `consider the psychological and physical effects of
trauma suffered by refugees'. The Association of London
Authorities condemned Housing Minister George Young for deleting
this reference at the last moment for political motives. In some
London boroughs such as Westminster, refugees make up 30% of
homeless people.
In Germany, the response of the main parties to the neo-nazi
pogroms on asylum-seekers was to call for a crackdown, not on
racist violence, but on refugees. Following an election in Bremen
in which immigration and asylum dominated, which resulted in the
Right taking control of the federal state previously noted for
its liberal asylum policies, the mainstream parties are playing
the race card at national level. Although there is still
disagreement about diluting or abolishing the constitutional
right to asylum, the main parties agreed on a number of immediate
measures. These include sending back all asylum-seekers who could
have claimed asylum in a neighbouring country; giving police
greater powers to check the identity of asylum-seekers; and
moving asylum-seekers from hotels and flats to `collection camps'
or `concentrated accommodation', where judges would be sent to
decide applications on the spot, allowing those refused asylum
to be deported within six weeks of entry. Leaving the camp would
be grounds for deportation. A number of ex-Army barracks are to
be pressed into service for this purpose. The parties also want
a list of `non-persecuting' countries agreed from which no one
will be able to claim asylum, and the government will negotiate
reciprocal expulsion arrangements with Poland and Czechoslovakia
which, it is said, could cut the number of asylum-seekers by 40%.
Germany's asylum claimants run at around 200,000 a year, of whom
about half come from Eastern Europe.
In October the French government announced harsher penalties
for employers of unauthorised workers, and the withdrawal of
family allowances from those withou