A new vision of migration

Sukhvinder Kaur Stubbs | Wednesday, 30 January 2008 Source: The Guardian – comment

The government needs to see past the rightwing's propaganda on migration and encourage those organisations working towards cohesion

Earlier this month, Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, announced that new fingerprint checks have started for anyone applying for a UK visa. The initiative is designed to weed out people attempting to enter Britain illegally. The government is due to implement similar security measures over the next few months. These measures include forcing migrants to adopt biometric ID cards, issuing on-the-spot fines to business owners employing "illegal" workers and creating a new UK border force. The government hopes these initiatives will reassure the public that it is doing everything it can to stop foreign cheats, criminals and terrorists from entering the country.

Earlier this month, Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, announced that new fingerprint checks have started for anyone applying for a UK visa. The initiative is designed to weed out people attempting to enter Britain illegally. The government is due to implement similar security measures over the next few months. These measures include forcing migrants to adopt biometric ID cards, issuing on-the-spot fines to business owners employing "illegal" workers and creating a new UK border force. The government hopes these initiatives will reassure the public that it is doing everything it can to stop foreign cheats, criminals and terrorists from entering the country.

Proponents of the new measures argue that the first duty of any government is to protect the people it serves. They point out that it would be political suicide for any government to fail to take every reasonable measure to prevent foreign criminals from entering Britain. Certainly this position carries some merit. However, the government's failure to provide the context within which these measures are implemented is having a detrimental impact on community cohesion, threatening the social fabric of the nation.

The vast majority of migrants hold jobs, pay taxes and uphold the law. Without migrants, Britain would have too few people to clean its offices, nurse its sick, or work on the trading floors of its investment banks. Yet how often do we see government ministers painting a balanced, nuanced picture of migration? The government rarely caveats announcements, such as fingerprinting, with the fact that such initiatives are designed to catch a tiny few who try to flout system.

Successive Conservative and Labour governments have strived to appear "tough" on migration. However, this "tough-but-fair" rhetoric, rather than allay public concerns, has merely served to fuel them. Polling by Mori shows that public concern over migration has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, despite the huge amount of political energy expended on passing draconian laws.

The government's failure to narrate a balanced migration story means it has effectively ceded the issue to the right. The government is dancing toMigration Watch's tune: migration can only be good when the numbers are down. Constant announcements about "tougher security for migrants", without any contextual qualification, send the public a subliminal message that foreigners are inherently criminal. Recent spikes in support for the British National Party in local elections should sound Whitehall's alarm bells.

The real menace of the government's migration rhetoric is the damage it does to community cohesion. Research on attitudes towards asylum in five areas of the UK recently concluded that the public widely misunderstands the differences between different categories of migrants and their rights and entitlements. The man in the street won't recognise the difference between irregular migrants, recognised refugees or third-generation black or minority ethnic Britons. When the media whips up a frenzy over migration, anyone perceived as "other" suffers as a consequence.

The public's confusion over migration isn't surprising, given many on the right seem happy to conflate and confuse issues of security, migration and integration. Last September the government was reeling after the admission that more eastern European migrants had entered the country thanpreviously estimated. The vast majority of migrants from the A8 central and eastern European countries are white and Christian. However, one tabloid newspaper covering the story paired it with a picture of a Muslim woman wearing the full-face veil. The caption beneath the photo read: "migration - out of control".

Unfortunately, this type of inflammatory rhetoric is not limited to tabloids. In order to have a productive public debate, citizens must have access to contextual information and a full set of facts. The government's migration impact forum goes some way in filling this information void. However, ministers must accompany the raw statistics with a balanced migration narrative, rather than continually raising an alarmist cry.

Fortunately the British public is not inherently anti-immigrant. In 2005, Michael Howard's Conservatives gleaned only marginal political gain from an ugly election campaign primarily based on xenophobic hostility to foreigners. A more important indicator, perhaps, are the excellent examples of voluntary and community projects building bonds of commonality among our diverse populace.

A sterling model of such a group is the East London Citizens, a group in which community volunteers work together. The organisation brings together members of trade unions, different religious denominations and local schools as well as refugees, all of whom work together to campaign for a London-weighted "living" minimum wage. Rather than exploring their differences or creating an artificial environment in which to "celebrate diversity," citizens engage in pragmatic activism that actually draws them together in a genuinely common endeavour. Having people of different communities work with one another breaks down barriers between people from different backgrounds. At the same time, citizens see the benefits of addressing pressing mutual concerns - such as low wages.

These projects demonstrate that living, working and playing together is possible, regardless of skin colour, religion or cultural difference. However, for every community project seeking to foster habits of solidarity, there are rightwing pundits and shock jocks trying to drive us further apart.

We need visionary politicians to draw the venom from the current migration debate and present a balanced picture. In refusing to offer a counterpoint to the right's foreigner-bashing, perhaps the government vainly hopes to minimise criticism of its migration policies. Yet by allowing the right to set the terms of the debate, ministers are sacrificing the lamb of cohesion upon an altar of political vacillation.