The manifesto of the No One Is Illegal Group (UK)
Saturday 6th September 2003
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!
For a world without borders! No
immigration controls!
DEFEND THE OUTLAW!
Immigration controls should be abolished. People should not be deemed
'illegal' because they have fallen foul of an increasingly brutal and
repressive system of controls. Why is immigration law different from
all other law? Under all other laws it is the act that is illegal,
but under immigration law it is the person who is illegal. Those
subject to immigration control are dehumanized, are reduced to
non-persons, are nobodies. They are the modern outlaw.
Like their
medieval counterpart they exist outside of the law and outside of the
law's protection. Opposition to immigration controls requires
defending all immigration outlaws.
BEWARE THE FASCIST! UNDERSTAND THE
ENEMY!
Immigration controls are not fascism. Detention centres are not
extermination camps. However immigration laws are different from
other laws in one other significant way. They are the result, at
least in part, of organised fascist activity. This country's first
controls were contained in the 1905 Aliens Act and were directed at
Jewish refugees fleeing anti-semitism in
major, perhaps the major, reason for the implementation of this
legislation was the agitation of the British Brothers League. This
was a proto fascistic organization which was formed in 1901
specifically around the demand for controls, which organized major
demonstrations in
viewed as the main force behind the legislation. The first controls
directed against black people - the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act
- quickly followed events in Notting Hill and
These were the so-called "race riots" - so-called to give a spurious
impression of both spontaneity and non-political street fighting. The
reality was that these physical and political attacks on black people
were engineered by explicitly fascist organizations such as Oswald
Moseley's Union Movement and Colin
these organizations had a specific demand - immigration controls.
Fascist front organizations such as the British Immigration Control
Association subsequently continued the agitation until legislation
was enacted. Oswald Mosley himself was quoted in the left-wing
Reynolds News (
was the "first success" for fascist activity in this country.
Immigration laws are inherently racist, since their purpose is to
exclude outsiders. And they feed and legitimise racism. Far from
being a natural feature of the political landscape, they are a
relatively recent and disastrous distortion of it, explicable only by
racism. This, together with the fascist origins of such laws, renders
problematic the notion of "reform", as opposed to abolition, of
immigration controls.
IMMIGRATION CONTROLS ARE MORE THAN THEY
SEEM
Immigration controls deny people's right to freedom of movement and
the right to decide for themselves where they wish to
live and to
work. They also deny people access to rights such as the right to
work and the right to social and legal protections enjoyed by some of
the current inhabitants of the place to which they migrate. In the
process they cause intolerable suffering to many people. The sole
purpose of this suffering is to deter others who might come to this
country to claim asylum, to work or to join family here. People are
thus punished not for anything they have themselves done, but for
what others might do in the future.
Controls are not simply about exclusion and deportation. They are a
total system. A system of extremes of pain and misery.
They are
international in the sense that virtually all countries, particularly
all industrial countries, use controls. They are also international
in the way the old
Embassies, British High Commissions, British Consulates encircle the
globe denying visas or entry clearance to the unchosen.
A vast
edifice of repression is built to prevent the movement of people.
Those who attempt to flee wars and repression, or to improve their
situation through migration, are forced to resort to buying false
papers from agents or, worse, to travel clandestinely, again usually
with the help of often unscrupulous agents. In the process many of
them suffer great hardship, and thousands die. The answer is not to
abolish agents, unscrupulous or otherwise. It is to abolish the
controls on which the agents, the pain and the misery breed.
Controls are also internal to the modern state and in particular to
the modern British state. They require the expansion of repressive
and violent activities such as surveillance, security, prisons and
policing, changes which threaten to permeate society as a whole. The
deaths of
are a portent for the future.
Immigration officers have become part of what Karl Marx's colleague
Frederick Engels described as 'the armed bodies of
men' who
constitute the state. Under immigration laws around 2,000 immigrants
and asylum seekers who have not been charged with any crime,
including children, babies and pregnant women, are locked up without
trial, without time limit, and with minimal access to bail. Asylum
seekers who are not detained are no longer allowed to work. Since
1996 employers have become an extension of the immigration service,
responsible for the immigration status of their workers and liable to
criminal sanction for employing undocumented workers. Over the last
two decades entitlement to most welfare state benefits and provision
has to some extent or another become
linked to immigration status. Those without the required status go
without. They are excluded from virtually all non-contributory
benefits, child benefit, social housing and homelessness
accommodation, in-patient hospital treatment, significant areas of
community care legislation relating to the destitute, the sick, the
elderly and the otherwise vulnerable, protection under child care
legislation, state education provision in prisons and detention
centres and in the proposed new accommodation centres. So much for
the idea that those coming from overseas obtain priority treatment!
Instead since 1999 asylum seekers from overseas have been
deliberately transformed into an under-class subject to a regime that
is the direct copy of the nineteenth century poor law. Like the poor
law there is maintenance below subsistence level (seventy per cent of
income support). Like the poor law there is forced dispersal into
accommodation over which those dispersed have no choice. Under
legislation introduced in 2002 many asylum seekers are no longer to
have even this miserable entitlement, neither supported by the state
nor allowed to work.
Immigration controls are not only about refugees. This is just the
latest government myth. Migrants and immigrants - those coming to
work and those wanting to join family here - along with visitors and
students are all equally subject to controls along with refugees.
Except unlike refugees they are not even entitled to the fake safety
net of the poor law. History is important. It is the immigrant
communities, especially of the Indian sub-continent and the
control by organizing around campaigns againstdeportations
and for
family reunion. It is these campaigns which laid the foundations for
the present movement in defence of refugees.
CAN THERE BE NON-RACIST OR FAIR CONTROLS?
Immigration controls are racist. The first post-war controls,
contained in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, were directed at
black people. However all those subject to immigration control are
not black. Within the last decade there has emerged or re-emerged a
racism against those from
anti-Islamic racism which ensures controls are directed against all
those from Bosnians to Serbs to the Roma to the nationalities of the
new Russian empire. There is nothing new about this. The first
immigration controls, contained in the 1905 Aliens Act, were imposed
against refugees - Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in
Europe
attempting to escape Nazism. In short the first half of the twentieth
century was about controls against Jews, the second half about
controls against black people and the last decade has been about
controls against anyone fleeing war, poverty or mayhem or anyone
wanting to join family here.
Today there exists, however fragmented, a movement against
immigration control - a movement which challenges deportations, which
opposes detention centres, which offers solidarity to refugees. The
great strength of this movement is that it has united and formed a
coalition between liberals and socialists, between reformists who
don't challenge controls on principle and socialists who are opposed
to all controls - and who argue no-one is illegal.
The
greatest weakness of this movement is that on the level of ideas
liberalism dominates. Many of
those critical of controls
believe that such controls can somehow be sanitized, be rendered
fair, be made non-racist. Even socialists are
sometimes reluctant to
raise the demand for the abolition of all immigration controls or to
take this demand to its logical conclusions, in case this alienates
potential allies against the abuses that follow from them. The result
is that the argument against controls is simply not presented. Many
people, perhaps most fair-minded people, if they are presented with
the case, do agree that in principle immigration controls are wrong,
but may also believe that to argue for their abolition is unrealistic.
But ideas matter and so too does the struggle for ideas. Wrong ideas
can at best lead to confusion and dead-ends and at worst collusion
with the present system. It is our position - a position which denies
anyone is illegal, a position that is for a world without borders -
that immigration restrictions can never be rendered fair or
non-racist. This is for the following reasons. First controls are
inherently racist in that they are based on the crudest of all
nationalisms - namely the assertion that the British have a franchise
on
imposition is a result of and is a victory for racist, proto-fascist
and actual fascist organizations. It is impossible to see how
legislation brought into being by such means, legislation accompanied
by the most vile racist imagery and assumptions, can
ever be
reconfigured and rendered "fair". Third the demand for
"fair"
controls simply ignores the link between immigration controls and
welfare entitlements. This link is itself intrinsically unfair - and
racist. Finally controls can never be "fair" to those who remain
subject to them.
The demand for no controls - based on the assertion that no one is
illegal - is frequently derided as utopian and is compared adversely
to the "realism" of arguing for fair controls. However this stands
political reality on its head. The struggle against the totality of
controls is certainly uphill - it may well require a revolution.
However the achievement of fair immigration restrictions - that is
the transformation of immigration controls into their opposite -
would require a miracle.
MORE PROBLEMS WITH
ARGUMENTS FOR REFORMS.
The proclamation, our proclamation, that No One Is Illegal means what
it says - it does not mean some people are not illegal or only some
people are legal. The demand for no controls means no collusion with
either the arguments for controls or with controls themselves.
However controls have become so politically legitimised over the
relatively short period of their existence that it has become all too
easy to accept their existence whilst simultaneously opposing them.
Here are some examples of what we are arguing against - deliberately
difficult and we hope provocative examples:
First we are absolutely and unconditionally in favour of campaigns
against deportation. However we are critical of the emphasis given to
so-called "compassionate" grounds - in particular the re-occurring
themes of sickness, age, vulnerability of children, violence towards
women and destruction of family relationships. Of course we accept that these
issues have to be presented, and presented forcibly, to the Home
Office in private as part of any legal argument. The present balance
of power - with the Home Office having most of the power - requires
this presentation. However this does not require campaigns against
deportation to construct themselves politically and
publicly around
such compassionate grounds. What this does is make a distinction
between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" - between those
with
compassionate grounds and those without. It legitimizes the
racist-inspired obligation that people feel to justify their presence
here. In doing this it transforms what is normally undesirable - for
instance ill health - into something highly desirable in order to try
to remain here. Under the guise of gaining support on humanitarian
grounds it actually dehumanizes individuals, and denies them their
dignity, by reducing them to the sum total of their disabilities and
vulnerabilities. It creates a competition between those subject to
immigration controls as to who has the more "compassionate" grounds.
Ultimately it makes it virtually impossible for young, fit,
childless, single people without an asylum claim to fight to stay.
This is why we support the slogan 'Solidarity not Pity'. We support
unconditionally the right of all people to stay here if they wish to,
and irrespective of their personal circumstances.
Second we are absolutely in favour of exposing the lies and
hypocrisies of those advocating immigration controls - such as the
lie that people coming here are a "burden" on welfare or are
"flooding" the country. It is important to reject the notion that if
immigration controls were abolished this country would be invaded by
the populations of entire continents; the reality is that the vast
majority of people prefer to stay where they are if this is at all
possible. However we are opposed to building a case against
immigration controls on the grounds that immigration is in the
economic self-interest of the current inhabitants of this country,
both because such an argument is wrong in principle and because the
situation can change. For example although it was true until recently
that more people left this country than came here, this is no longer
the case. And while migrants, immigrants and refugees are currently
net contributors to the welfare system, supposing it could be shown
that new arrivals are somehow accessing a "disproportionate"
percentage of welfare, would that mean we now have to support
controls? Statistics are useful to refute distortions and lies, but
cannot be the bedrock of our opposition to controls. Statistics can
be a hostage to political fortune. Principles cannot. This is why we
support the principle of No One Is Illegal.
Third we recognize the many contributions made to British society by
migrants, immigrants and refugees stretching back centuries.
has been constructed out of waves of migration - the very idea of
there being an "indigenous" population is both politically racist and
historically nonsensical. However we are opposed to all arguments
that seek to justify the presence of anyone on the grounds of the
economic or cultural or any other contributions they may make. It is
not up to the British state to decide where people should or should
not live, or anyone else but migrants and refugees themselves.
We
support the unfettered right of entry of the feckless, the unemployable
and the uncultured. We assert No One Is
Illegal.
GAINS FOR SOME MEAN
EXCLUSION OF OTHERS.
NO 'EQUAL-OPPORTUNITIES' IMMIGRATION CONTROLS!
An obvious, if often overlooked feature of
immigration control and
the struggle against it, is that defining who may be excluded from it
by necessity entails defining who is included in it. No One Is
Illegal means that reform of immigration control, in whatever way
such reform is presented, is at best problematic, at worst
unacceptable because it would leave some people subject to control.
It would still leave immigration outlaws. The degree to which any
demand falling short of total abolition of controls is acceptable can
only be measured by the degree in which it takes up the fight for all
outlaws. All specific demands gainst controls need to
be put in the
context of and worked out through a position of opposition to all
controls. Again we present some deliberately controversial examples:
First we are critical of the demand for a government "amnesty"
against immigration outlaws. The level of our criticism will depend
on the level at which the amnesty is pitched. Who is to be included
in this demand? More importantly who is to be excluded? What gives
anyone opposed to controls the right to define who is to be excluded?
No One Is Illegal means what it says - anyone in the entire world who
wishes to come or remain should have the right to do so. On a
pragmatic basis amnesties have to be criticised as they will be used
by the Home Office to entrap those not included in the amnesty.. This
is precisely what happened when in 1974 a Labour government declared
a tightly defined amnesty - deporting many of those who applied under
the mistaken belief they fell within the definition.
Second we are critical of demands which, however well meant, leave
even more vulnerable and exposed to immigration controls those not
contained within the demand. An example is the demand that women
coming here for marriage who are subsequently subject to domestic
violence should not be subject to the requirement that they remain
living with their partner for twelve months in order to acquire full
immigration status. After years of campaigning this demand has now
been met in part. As such it is clearly a tremendous gain for those
women who otherwise would have the impossible choice of remaining in
a violent relationship or being deported. However where does this
leave all those women not subject to violence who wish for whatever
reason to leave the relationship? For them not being battered by
their partner has now become a positive disadvantage for immigration
purposes. This is yet another example of how something morally
outrageous - abuse of women - has become something highly desirable
in immigration law. It is simply not a tenable position to argue. The
only tenable position is to fight for the right of all, men or women,
to remain irrespective of their personal situation.
Third immigration controls are not just racist. In their nationalism
they encompass virtually all reactionary ideology. So unsurprisingly
they are homophobic. Until recently there has been no provision for a
gay partner to come or remain. However we are critical of the
campaign for 'equality' with heterosexual relationships for gay
relationships within immigration control. There cannot be equal
opportunities immigration controls - unless one is in favour of the
equality of the damned. For the last forty years immigration control
has systematically attacked, undermined and wrecked tens of thousands
of mainly black extended families from the Indian sub-continent, the
simply ignores the inherent racism of controls and therefore the relationship
between racism, sexism and homophobia. An additional problem is that
the demand for the rights of gay couples elevates romance into a
political goal - what about the single gay person, the celibate, the
lonely, those of no sexual orientation or the promiscuous of any
sexual orientation? Including gay couples within immigration law and
its spurious "rights" means that all these other people are by
definition excluded. Their status as outlaws is intensified. The way
forward is to fight for the rights of all gay women and men along
with everyone else to be able to come and remain irrespective of
personal circumstances or relationships. The only equal opportunities
immigration controls are no immigration controls.
Fourth, demanding to be "included" within controls - in the sense of
demanding specific provision for gay couples - seems itself quite
strange in that everyone else is fighting to be excluded from the
tentacles of controls. However this contradiction only exists
because, given the existence of controls, then absolutely everyone is
already "included" in them to a greater or a lesser extent - in that
everyone remains liable to investigation as to whether or not they
are subject to them. In this sense women experiencing domestic
violence still very much remain subject to controls - as they are
obliged to undergo the humiliation of reliving the violence by having
to prove its existence. The only political answer to these issues is
to fight for no controls.
Fifth, each piece of immigration legislation going back to 1905 (and
dramatically intensified in the last decade) can be seen as another
brick in the wall - the wall preventing entry of the undesirable, the
unchosen. It is therefore not sufficient to demand
the repeal of the
latest piece of legislation, to remove the latest brick - the whole
wall has to go. Otherwise all those excluded by previous legislation
remain outlaws and, what is worse, forgotten outlaws.
Simply
demanding the repeal of the most recent, and only the most recent,
laws only serves to legitimize those preceding them. An example is
the agitation against that part of the Nationality, Immigration and
Asylum Act 2002 (the latest legislation) which denies support to
asylum seekers who make "late" asylum applications - thus rendering
these refugees destitute. However in 1999 there was a campaign
against the then latest legislation - the Immigration and Asylum Act.
This was the legislation which created the poor law of forced
dispersal and below-subsistence support. But now the agitation is to
include late asylum applicants within the poor law! Again this is not
a tenable political position.
At the same time there is being forgotten all those undocumented
non-asylum seekers, migrants and immigrants, who have effectively
been without any support due to provisions in various pieces of
legislation prior to 1999. These statutes were themselves once new,
were once campaigned against and are now forgotten - along with those
subject to them.
No One Is Illegal means fighting to destroy immigration controls in
their entirety and at the same time fighting to break the link
between welfare entitlement and immigration status.
SOCIALISM
Many if not all of the arguments used to justify immigration controls
are simply ludicrous and are more the result of racist-inspired moral
panic than of any connection with reality. Such is the notion that
the entire world population would come to this country if there were
no controls: even if such an absurd notion were true, it should
prompt concern for their reasons for coming rather than fear.
Nonetheless these objections to open borders need to be answered and
they require a socialist and anti-imperialist analysis. The
objections about "overcrowding" can only be answered by discussing
socialist use of resources - use based on needs not profits. The
objection, the surreal objection, that migrants, immigrants and
refugees obtain luxury housing and endless welfare compared to
British workers needs to be answered both by pointing out the truth
(namely that just the opposite is the case) but also by a recognition
that benefits and welfare are woefully inadequate for everyone - both
for the documented and the undocumented and that both have a shared
interest in fighting for better welfare. The objection that those
fleeing the devastation of the
can be met by pointing out the imperial responsibility for this
devastation, both in the past and currently. As the Asian Youth
Movement used to say "We are here because you were there". The
objection that a state has the right to control its own borders can
only ultimately be answered by questioning the nature of the nation
state and borders. We agree and sing along with
There's No Countries".
THE WAY FORWARD - BREAK
THE LINKS, PULL THE PLUG!
* TO BUILD THE WIDEST POSSIBLE
against immigration controls amongst those of differing political
views. But to do this without collusion with controls and
without
compromising with the principle of no controls. To do this on the
basis of challenging and winning over those involved to a position of
opposition to all controls. No One Is Illegal - No Exceptions, No
Concessions, No Conciliation.
* TO RAISE THE DEMAND FOR NO IMMIGRATION CONTROLS within all
actions and campaigns in support of migrants and refugees. A
no-controls position should not be a necessary precondition of
support for any particular campaign, but we should argue constantly
within all campaigns for such a position. We should argue for
campaign slogans to reflect a position of opposition to controls, not refugees
are our friends or refugees are welcome
here but slogans which recognise
that we are in favour of freedom for
all as a right, not a charity:
No
One Is Illegal - Free movement ý No immigration controls.
* TO SUPPORT AND BUILD EVERY SINGLE CAMPAIGN AGAINST
DEPORTATION. To do this on the basis of solidarity not
compassion. No
One Is Illegal - No Need For Justification of
Presence!
* TO SUPPORT AND BUILD EVERY CAMPAIGN AGAINST DETENTION/REMOVAL
CENTRES, since these are one of the clearest and most outrageously
brutal and unjust consequences of immigration controls.
No refugees
or migrants should be detained simply because they want to be in this
country. All detention/removal centres, and also all accommodation,
induction and any other repressive 'centres' designed to enforce the
unenforceable, should be closed. No One Is Illegal - No detentions!
* TO FIGHT AGAINST ALL FORMS OF COLLUSION with immigration
control and with the Home Office. In particular this means local
authorities and voluntary sector organizations refusing to implement
the new poor law. Local authorities should refuse to act as
sub-contracted agents providing accommodation (often otherwise
unlettible) for the forced dispersal scheme.
Voluntary sector
agencies should likewise refuse Home Office monies to enforce the
poor law either through the provision of accommodation or advice. No
One Is Illegal - Break The Links Between Welfare
Entitlement And
Immigration Status!
* FOR WORKERS WITHIN THE WELFARE SYSTEM TO REFUSE TO COMPLY
with the denial of benefits or provisions based on immigration
status. Most workers within the welfare state, at either local or
national level, entered their jobs in the belief they would be
providing some form of socially useful service. Instead they now find
they are denying services and have become part of the apparatus of
immigration control. No One Is Illegal - No Compliance, Be In And
Against The State!
* Of course non-compliance by individual workers would leave
them absolutely vulnerable to victimization and dismissal.
Non-compliance requires major trade union support. It is manifestly
important to try and win trade unions to a position of no immigration
controls. To do this it is equally important to form rank and file
groupings within unions of welfare workers who are being obliged to
enforce internal immigration controls. No One Is Illegal - Workers'
Control Not Immigration Controls!
* FOR A MASSIVE TRADE UNION CAMPAIGN OF RECRUITMENT OF UNDOCUMENTED
WORKERS - of immigration outlaws. Such a recruitment campaign would
help break the division between the documented and the undocumented.
It would enable a campaign to develop against sweated labour and for
the protection of migrant rights - rights to a fair wage, right to
proper work conditions and, most of all, the right to work itself
-
as now it is unlawful to work without the correct immigration
documentation. It would also provide another base for the
undocumented to resist deportation and to fight for the regularization of their
status.
No
One Is Illegal - Everyone has the right to work, the right to be in a union,
and the right to have proper working
conditions!
WE ARE NOT ALONE!
No One Is Illegal is a phrase first used by Elie Weisel, a Jewish
survivor from Nazi Germany, a refugee and a Nobel prize
winner. He
was speaking in 1985 in
conference in the
the
in the
threatened by immigration controls is one of many pieces of
resistance to controls. Over the last few years No One Is Illegal
groups have been formed throughout
instance in
Es Ilegal),
Czlowiek Nie Jest Nielegalny) and
August 1999 anarchists organised a demonstration in
against the deportation of Ukranian workers under the
banner of No
One Is Illegal. In
personne n'est illegal/e. There have been No One Is Illegal/No Border
camps at the joint borders of
No Border camps at
2002 there was a demonstration against war, globalisation and in
defence of refugees under the same slogan in
for no controls, rather than being seen as extreme,operates as a
rallying call to the undocumented and their supporters. Our aim in
producing this, our initial manifesto, is to encourage the formation
of No One Is Illegal/No Border groups throughout this country -
groups specifically and unreservedly committed to the destruction of
all immigration controls.
Steve Cohen (
Harriet Grimsditch (
Teresa Hayter (
Dave Landau (
!===End of Page 10===!
CONTACTING US:
Please contact us if you wish to add your or your organisation's name
as a supporter of this manifesto -- or if you would like a speaker at
one of your meetings. If you would like to help us financially in the
production of campaign material please make cheques
out, in sterling,
to "The No One Is Illegal Group".
Postal address:
No One Is Illegal,
Bolton Socialist Club,
Phone: 01865 726804
Web site: http://www.noii.org.uk