Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS: Political Storm Rises Around Immigrants

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 14 2005 (IPS) - The poster put up by the Conservative Party, like the new immigration debate in Britain, stands in black and white.

"I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" say the words in black on one side of the poster. On the other side, it says: "It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration". At the bottom of the poster sits the question: "Are you thinking what we’re thinking?"

The poster has been set up at hundreds of locations, and several local accounts suggest that a very large number have been put up in areas with a mixed population where tension over immigrants could be relatively high.

With election expected May 5, the opposition Conservatives are tapping on anti-immigration sentiments as their best bet. But the ruling Labour led by Prime Minister Tony Blair is not far behind in this new war. Labour earlier put up a poster showing Conservative leader Michael Howard as a pig with wings, and another as Fagin, the character who trained pickpockets in Charles Dickens’ novel ‘Oliver Twist’.

Both posters were withdrawn after strong objection from Jewish groups. Jewish people shun pork, and Fagin was a Jewish character.

The poster war tells the mood – and the level – of the debate as the two main parties seek to outdo one another in convincing voters that each is prepared to do more to keep immigrants out.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has already announced a new tightening of immigration laws. New measures include introduction of a system that lets in only immigrants with high points for skill and wealth. Clarke has also promised tougher measures to evict failed asylum-seekers. The Conservatives say these moves are not strong enough.

The Conservative opposition struggling to return to power after two terms out of power could well become victim of its trump card. Howard was embarrassed seriously by a newspaper revelation last week that his grandfather came into Britain as an illegal immigrant, after presenting falsified papers.

Howard has now outdone about every other leader in an anti-immigration stand. He has declared he will pull Britain out of its commitment to the Geneva Refugee Convention of 1951.

"That will not be easy, it will take an authoritarian regime to do something like that," Habib Rahman, chief executive of the independent Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) told IPS. "It will mean that the government will have to derogate from its own Human Rights Act which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights."

Political leaders are making "irresponsible political statements which inflame the race debate," he said. "The Tories say it is not a race issue but it is; the people affected will be those from developing countries or countries of strife; we are not talking about Australians and Canadians here."

The Tories have proposed a system where they can work with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to process applications from asylum seekers in another country. They then want to impose quotas on the number of asylum-seekers they will accept. But they have not defined the method this could take.

That position would lay Britain open to the charge that people genuinely fleeing tyranny could be denied refugee status because of an arbitrary quota system that would run foul of the Geneva conventions.

Pollsters have advised all parties that there is growing public concern over immigration, and that this concern can influence the vote. Immigration came up briefly as an issue at the last election in 2001 but it died out after leaders from both parties spoke out against xenophobic trends. This time the issue looks set to stay, and to get uglier closer to election time.

Former union leader Sir Bill Morris says both parties are engaging in a "bidding war about who can be nastiest to asylum seekers." He has warned that "right-wing political parties, picking up on statements like ‘burden to Britain’ will exploit this and create a lot of fear and uncertainty."

The illegal entry of Howard’s family into Britain is certain to creep into the campaigning. The poster war has already marked him as a leader of Jewish origin, opening a doorway to a hate campaign by anti-Semitic groups.

The third and upcoming party, the Liberal Democrats, have taken the stand that levels of immigration should be set according to the needs of industry. The party warns that setting arbitrary quotas on refugee numbers would jeopardise Britain’s international obligations. It has asked for a system that sorts genuine refugees from economic migrants.