This is a guest post by CSC Research intern, Richard Billinge.
At daybreak yesterday French police moved
to dismantle a shanty town of tents in Calais. Until recently it had been home
to some 800-1500 would-be immigrants to Britain (depending on the newspaper you
read), a great number of them Afghans.
The police claimed 278 people were arrested during the
operation. Criticism of the French government's actions as inhumane and
heavy-handed has not been in short supply, coming from refugee agencies and the
left-wing protest group No Border, which turned out in support of the
immigrants on Tuesday. The French Immigration Minister spoke of the need to
stifle the activities of the people smugglers, who, he said, traded on the
misery of international migrants. Few at the camp would have agreed that those
who facilitated their transport to Calais were the ones doing the most to
promote their misery on that day.
However, despite the vehemence and passion the incident
has aroused, matters are not as clear cut as they might seem. The main aim of
the French government appears to have been to remove the particular camp in
question and in no way to resolve the status of the immigrants. It is being
confidently predicted both that the majority of the arrested Afghans will be
released in one or two days and that a new camp will spring up to replace the
old. Indeed most of the camp's long time inhabitants, having been forewarned of
the intended police action by the Immigration minister himself, had already
left their makeshift abodes before the incident and so avoided the police.
Moreover, little has been done about the rest of the Calais's hopeful immigrant
population. Eritrean refugees continue to squat in derelict houses near the
Calais docks and the French have not moved on other camps hosting Iraqis and
Iranians elsewhere in the city.
In other words Alan Johnson has very little reason to be
delighted yet. Many, if not most of these men, will have tried many times to
pass over into Britain and will hardly be deterred by this incident, when it is
only one of a long series of frequent obstructions. Britain is certainly not
impossible to get to from Calais, although it is said to be difficult:
according to Adam Sage in the Daily
Telegraph, 100 migrants successfully made the journey from the shores of
France last month. The government is currently resisting pressure from both the
European Commission and the UN to bring over some of the Calais migrants to
Britain for consideration of their asylum claims in this country. The Home
Office is standing on the EU's Dublin Convention which mandates a potential
asylum seeker must seek refuge in the first member country he comes too. The
French, who in 2008 received more appeals for asylum than Britain, 42,000
against 30,000, are said to be interested in a new system for apportioning
asylum seekers to EU members states through a system not based on a country's
geographical position on immigration routes.
British policy has to preserve the correct balance of high minded charity towards asylum seekers and level headed regard respecting the effects of negligently controlled immigration. We should never aspire to possess detention centres resembling concentration camps as Berlusconi claims Italy does but we should also welcome the actions of the French in aiding us shore up British border control, even if for the moment those measures will have only a small effect.
The British government is not in control of immigration into Britain.
The rapid increase in mass immigration from Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Somalia (and from other Asian and African countries) is resulting in the increasing cultural,social,ethnic, political and economic conflicts now present in many British towns and cities.
The consequences of such demographic trends are obvious, but rarely discussed: the Islamisation of Britain. The penny might drop when it is too late: when 75 million Turkish Muslims join the EU soon, and as many of them who want to, become residents of Britain. And why are so many British indigenous people leaving Britain? The reasons are not only economic and climatic.
Not until a British government changes the legal confines it is in can there be the necessary national control of immigration. So a British government has to do the following, as Henry Fowler argues in Phillip Johnston's 'Telegraph' article comments:
"Control of immigration can only be achieved by adopting the following measures:-
1. Leave the EU
2. Withdraw from the International Convention on Refugees
3. Withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act
4. Repeal the 1948 British Nationality Act
5. Deport illegal immigrants.
"These measures would, variously, prevent the continuing mass migration from poorer parts of the EU and that from beyond which comes via EU countries; prevent the current mass abuse of the asylum system without preventing Britain from offering sanctuary to bona fide refugees, particularly political dissidents; allow Britain to deport foreign criminals; withdraw the right of hundreds of millions of Commonwealth citizens to reside in Britain (without affecting the rights of those legally settled here). Repeal of EU Acts of Parliament would effectively render all EU citizens in Britain illegal immigrants, except for those who have proper contracts of employment, which should be honoured."