British double-speak on refugees

British double-speak on refugees

Sunanda K Datta-RayUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 02:39 PM IST
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Few countries can match Britain for accepting such a high proportion of homeless foreigners. Yet, few countries are so universally castigated for being prejudiced against foreigners. One of the main reasons for this is that even while the British take in refugees from all over the world, they don’t stop grumbling about having to do so.

That contradiction was exposed again last week when Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party chief and leader of the Opposition, admitted in answer to a question that it would not be feasible to set an upper limit to immigrants from the 27 countries that are members of the European Union. This came hard on the heels of repeated assurances by the prime minister, David Cameron, that he would control the number of EU settlers. As an experienced politician charged with running the country, Mr Cameron knows exactly what his constituents want to hear. Mr Corbyn is relatively inexperienced and, perhaps, more straightforward in his answers. He can certainly afford to be, since the effects of what the leader of the Opposition says are likely to be far less serious than the prime minister’s pronouncements.

Mr Corbyn’s admission played into the hands of Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, which represents the far right and warns against what The Times newspaper of London called Britain’s coffee-coloured future during the controversy over taking in Asians thrown out by Idi Amin of Uganda. The alternative to EU immigration — Commonwealth immigration from India, Pakistan, Africa and the West Indies — could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire for those who hold that EU citizens being Europeans will become indistinguishable from native-born Brits within a generation or two.

Even Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London who aspires to Mr Cameron’s job, is of Turkish origin, although one wouldn’t suspect it from his blonde mop. The distinction of being history’s most famous “foreigner-Brit” goes to Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister. Or, perhaps, to Queen Elizabeth herself. Her father’s elder brother, the former King Edward VIII, famously boasted that not a drop of English blood flowed in his veins.

Not that anyone would dream of exhibiting the royal family in London’s Museum of Immigration and Diversity which has just launched a ₤4 million appeal to save the historic 18th century building off Brick Lane, a road where the signboards are in Bengali and which Monica Ali, the Bangladeshi writer, made famous as the title of her best-selling novel. Built in 1729 by French Huguenots – Protestant refugees from Catholic France – the building has housed waves of newcomers from European Jews to Irish Catholics to Jamaicans and Bangladeshis. It became a museum in 1983 and is staffed by unpaid volunteers.

Most people who find refuge in Britain are victims of wars at home: the last major wave fled Pakistani repression in Bangladesh in 1971. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number worldwide has risen to a record 65.3 million. The previous year had already seen the highest number of refugees globally – with 60 million displaced people — since World War Two. Last year, however, wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia pushed the number up by another 10 per cent.

Mr Cameron hasn’t responded to the present crisis with the same generosity shown by Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. But Britain probably already tops the global list for taking in refugees without a special quota from Syria. The crisis there is steadily worsening. According to the UNHCR, on average 24 persons were displaced every minute of every day last year, up from six a minute in 2005. That meant that 34,000 people had to flee every day in 2015. More than 50 per cent of them were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.

Willy-nilly, Turkey is accommodating the maximum number of people (some 2.5 million) for the second year running. They are mainly from adjoining Syria. Pakistan hosts about 1.6 million Afghans, while Lebanon, which also shares a border with Syria like Turkey, has taken in 1.1 million people.

Sooner or later, many of these refugees will find their way into Britain whether or not Mr Cameron invites them like Ms Merkel. The Bangladeshis working as restaurant waiters and in menial capacities all over Portugal had only one reason for being there. Some had worked in Spain, some in Belgium and some in Italy. They all said Portugal is the easiest country in Europe in which to acquire what they called “document” — residency papers that would allow them then to move to Britain where wages are higher, the language easier, and despite adverse publicity, conditions are more congenial for Asians and Africans. Three centuries of imperial experience have left an imprint on the British.

There are exceptions of course. Thomas Mair, the 52-year-old man who is accused of killing Jo Cox, a popular, energetic and idealistic 41-year-old Labour MP, was obviously a racist xenophobe. The alleged murderer had links at one time with American white supremacist groups. He found Ms Cox’s fervent support for Mr Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU so deeply offensive that he shot and stabbed her last week, shouting during his hideous handiwork “Death to traitors” and “Victory to Britain”. This was the extreme and violent explosion of emotions that may simmer dangerously in many other minds but not to the extent of active opposition to immigration.

An aspect of the immigration debate is that those who preach free movement of goods and services cannot in all honesty put up barriers to manpower movement. If the Chinese appliance retailer Suning is welcome to pay ₤213 million for a 70 per cent stake in the Italian football giant Inter Milan, there is absolutely no reason why Chinese migrant workers should not have access to jobs in Europe. That also applies to Indian investment in the United Kingdom.

Of course it’s a sign of economic failure in China or India for the nationals of either country to seek a living in the West: self-respect should militate against migration. But the West cannot logically refuse them entry.

These are academic arguments. Men, women and children will trust their lives to leaky boats in turbulent seas, and unscrupulous traffickers will prey on the aspirations of the deprived, as long as the push and pull factors apply. That means as long as sharp inequalities persist, and as long as large areas of the world are engulfed in chaos. As the UNHCR says, global leaders must do more to end the wars that drive the exodus of people from their homelands.

“I hope that the message carried by those forcibly displaced reaches the leaderships” says Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees. “We need action, political action, to stop conflicts.” True enough. But alas, at least two of the three main causative conflicts – in Afghanistan and West Asia – are the result of political action by the leader of the Western world. Logically, the United States should be obliged to accept most of the displaced victims of war.

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