THE MANIFESTO OF THE NO ONE IS ILLEGAL GROUP (UK)
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
Eastern Europe and Russia. A 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 London’s East End and which can
legitimately be 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 Nottingham
in 1958. 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 Jordan’s White Defence League.
And 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
(5/11/61) as claiming the Bill leading to the 1962 Act 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 British Empire was
international. British 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 Joy Gardner and others at the
hands of immigration officers 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 Caribbean, who from the 1970s launched a direct attack on
immigration control by organizing around campaigns against deportations
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 Eastern Europe often
combined with an 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
Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia. Controls were again imposed on Jews
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 Britain. Second they are only explicable by racism. Their
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. Britain 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 against 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 Caribbean and Africa. Demanding equality with
heterosexual couples 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 Third World have no right to come here 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 John Lennon
–“Imagine There’s No Countries”.
The way forward – break the links, pull the plug!
· To build the widest possible
alliance in all struggles 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 … 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
Tuscon, Arizona at a national sanctuary conference in the USA in defence
of the rights of refugees to live in the USA . The sanctuary movement
undertaken by religious communities in the USA (and to a far lesser
extent in the UK) in support of those 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 Europe and
North America - for instance in Germany (Kein Mensch Ist Illegal),
Spain (Ninguna Persona Es Ilegal), Sweden (Ingen Manniska Ar
Illegal), Poland (Zaden Czlowiek Nie Jest Nielegalny) and
Holland (Geen Mens Is Illegaal). In August 1999 anarchists
organised a demonstration in Lvov Poland against the deportation of
Ukranian workers under the banner of No One Is Illegal. In France
the sans papiers campaign under the slogan personne n’est
illegal/e. There have been No One Is Illegal/No Border camps
at the joint borders of Germany, Czech Republic and Poland, and No
Border camps at Frankfurt, southern Spain and Salzburg. In June 2002
there was a demonstration against war, globalisation and in defence of
refugees under the same slogan in Ottawa, Canada.
In England groups are emerging calling themselves No Borders. The
demand 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 (Manchester)
Harriet Grimsditch (Bolton)
Teresa Hayter (Oxford)
Bob Hughes (Bristol)
Dave Landau (London)
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, 16 Wood Street, Bolton, BL1 1DY.
Phone: 01865 726804
Web site:
https://www.noii.org.uk
September 6th 2003
September 2004