[nasional_list] [ppiindia] And those who flee theirs
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- Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 03:45:15 +0100
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And those who flee theirs
Caroline Moorehead International Herald Tribune
Friday, February 18, 2005
The uprooted II
LONDON In his recent assault on asylum seekers and immigrants, Michael Howard,
the leader of the British Conservative Party, adopted the line taken by the
head of the Swiss police, in 1942, when faced with the growing number of Jews
fleeing Nazi persecution: "The boat is full."
.
Not to be outflanked by Howard, Prime Minister Tony Blair last week announced
his own plans to stem the invading hordes. Refugees in Britain will no longer
be given permanent protection but only temporary leave to stay, and there will
be more tagging and detention of failed asylum seekers, stronger border
controls and the fingerprinting of asylum applicants.
.
It is not only absurd but inhumane to talk of regulating the flows of people
fleeing persecution. Howard's figures are unreliable: Migration flows are
unpredictable and the numbers of asylum seekers have been falling sharply
across Europe. In Britain they dropped from 90,000 in 2002 to 45,000 last year.
(Howard and Blair both also appear to forget that the rich West in fact takes
barely 15 percent of the world's refugees.)
.
To its credit, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees immediately
announced that it would not go along with Howard's invitation that it select
the lucky 15,000 refugees permitted entry to Britain. But the agency is not in
a strong position. Founded to ensure that refugees were not sent home to
countries where they would be persecuted, the organization was steered during
the 1980s and 1990s away from protection and toward the delivery of aid. It has
never quite been pulled back, despite the declared intentions of Ruud Lubbers,
the current high commissioner, whose tenure has been tainted by scandals.
.
A significant number of people do find protection in the West, but elsewhere in
the world many people with a genuine claim to protection are routinely
arrested, rejected, imprisoned and deported to countries where they may again
be tortured. This happens because the UN refugee agency is weak, because states
refuse to give it proper support, and because of global obsessions with
security. At the European Union's summit meeting at Tampere, Finland, in 1999,
governments promised to provide better protection for refugees, but most of
these promises have since been broken.
.
Part of the problem is the confusion that persists over the definition of a
refugee. A refugee is someone with a well-founded fear of persecution, while a
migrant is someone in search of a job. The term "illegal asylum seeker" is a
contradiction in terms: To travel without a visa in search of safety is not an
illegal act.
.
The debate is not helped by the xenophobia of parts of the media - particularly
in Britain - nor by the failure of politicians to make the distinctions clear,
nor by the difficulties in defining the nature of modern persecution, a fact
recognized under the more generous refugee definition drawn up by the African
Union and the South American countries, where refugees are recognized as people
fleeing not just individual persecution but conflict as well.
.
No political leader anywhere has given a clear lead in this field. At a time of
high employment and prosperity in Britain, the Labour Party could have taken a
strong position by improving initial interviews and decision-making, pioneering
a humane but efficient way of sending home failed cases, ending the ridiculous
rule that prevents asylum seekers working, facing up to the cultural challenges
of integration and tackling the lucrative networks of people-smugglers. But the
policy proposal announced last week makes it clear that Blair's government,
having failed to do any of these things, does not plan to start now.
.
What no one seems prepared to acknowledge is the simple point that there is no
need to panic. The boat is not full. On the contrary, there is much evidence -
including a recent U.S. National Intelligence Council document - that if Europe
is to grow and maintain its social welfare state systems, it must take measures
to maintain a large enough work force, which means encouraging legal
immigration. The population of Europe's 15 pre-enlargement members is expected
to drop by 88 million people by the end of the 21st century. Immigration was
and should be part of the economic landscape of European history.
.
Immigration is also part of Europe's moral landscape. The great public
generosity after the Asian tsunami is proof that the humanitarian impulse to
help those in trouble is alive. What is so strange - and so sad - is the
collapse of moral imagination among people who seem to have forgotten so
quickly what it means to be persecuted.
.
(Caroline Moorehead is the author of ''Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees,''
published this month by Chatto & Windus.)
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