Jeremy Corbyn
Migration and Detention (The Morning Star)
Just outside Bedford there is an industrial estate based on a WWII airfield, with bleak open spaces and gaunt buildings. The security at the entrance directs you to a series of diverse companies including Red Bull Racing, and a Home Office facility.
Yarlswood Detention Centre is a new, state of the art, built alongside the site of the one that was burnt down in the notorious fire when the detainees objected to their incarceration.
The site of the old centre is surrounded by walls topped with razor wire – a fence guarding an empty space.
I visited Yarlswood with my colleague Diane Abbott on Monday. We were shown around the centre, the facilities, the medical unit, the rooms and the education and library facilities. I have visited some of the more modern prison facilities. As doors were opened, and closed, behind us with the prison key and interlocking doors programmed to remain locked until its neighbour was locked it felt like a prison. The rooms overlook a security perimeter area with a high wall, topped with barbed wire, and the sun peeps over the clouds that scud across the sky. The detainees are well aware that they are being detained.
As we asked questions about conditions and policies we had to remind ourselves that the detainees have committed no crime, the children watching videos and using computers are guilty of nothing, and that this is detention, British style.
I have met many asylum seekers or over-stayers who have been detained and whatever the conditions, they never forget the experience. The stories are sad and harrowing. Young women orphaned by aids who fled from the misery of lonely poverty in Africa; others victims of social isolation through their sexuality; and others who were fearful of being dragged into military conflict.
Anyone dispassionately listening would be moved by the human plight, yet these are the voices that do not get heard, the stories the popular media simply do not want to print. Much easier to appease the mob and scream for vengeance.
Three weeks ago it emerged that the Home Office had not deported released prisoners. In the cases where a Judge in Court, had ruled that deportation should follow completion of sentence, clearly there had been an error. In other cases the released prisoner was no different to any other ex convict. They had been released. The scream for vengeance has led to people who migrated to the UK many years ago such as Ernesto Leal from Chile. He served a sentence, following which he has lived an exemplary life and worked in the community. The hue and cry created by the popular press led by the Sun has resulted in his detention pending removal. We do not live in rational or normal times.
Our economy, particularly in London is heavily reliant on armies of people who are prepared to get up at 3am to clean offices and work in cafes. Many of those are badly exploited and lead precarious lives.
Not only do they have to work very hard, they cannot protest at their conditions as the employer could simply inform the Home Office and they could be deported. They have no access to health care or justice as their whole survival depends on anonymity. Their children attend school but fear being hunted due to their parent’s lack of the prized immigration status.
Jack Dromey of the T&GWU was forthright and clear when he pointed out over the weekend that these workers are doing no more than we expect of everyone else: working to support their families and achieve a reasonable standard of living. The Union, and other Unions, are well aware that if we have two grades of worker in Britain those without status can be used to undermine the conditions of others.
Strangely across the Atlantic in the USA there is huge popular protest in support of migrant workers. The racist and xenophobic utterances in the USA of the Republican Right about migrants from Mexico and Central America have provoked a massive response. Migrant workers pick fruit, wash cars, serve in check outs, and build houses and sweat to achieve their dreams. Fed up with being denigrated, the revolt and marches have shown that they are united and care, and that they have economic power. The Bush administration, wary of the growing voting power of the legal migrants and their sympathies are talking openly about an “amnesty”. However, at the same time 6,000 national guardsmen have been ordered to the Rio Grande to protect the border from the south.
It is surely a statement of our times that the US should deploy troops along a border where there is no threat of invasion, only of people desperate to work. Will it be shooting next?
The popular papers could hardly contain their glee when six cleaners were found in the Immigration Offices who apparently did not have papers. In the resulting scrum and feeding frenzy nobody asked how much they were paid, by whom, or that they had actually done their jobs efficiently. Surely it is time for some humanity in the system. What is the point in armies of officials chasing those who work and provide and who due to their lack of status become prey to vicious exploitation?
In the wider world context, the disparities of wealth and power make victims of millions. Forced off land by globalisation, food dumping or drought the desperate seek a life somewhere. In exactly the same way the poor of central Europe and Ireland made the dangerous passage to the USA or Australia in the 19th century millions seek work and safety.
I saw a sad clip on the news two weeks ago. Apparently some people had their holidays “ruined” on the Canary Islands as the sight of hundreds of poor and emaciated people staggered on to the beaches having made the treacherous and dangerous crossing in open boats from Africa. Hundreds more did not, and their bodies were left at sea.
We need humanity and principle. Humanity to recognise the needs of people within our society, and principle to develop economic, social and environmental justice across the globe.
