NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5878

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Subject: AF/ATS: Open Borders For All!
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Date: 18 Aug 92 20:31:33 GMT
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subject: an essay on immigration politics, by Arm The Spirit
posted by: AF/ATS
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[The following article was the cover-article for "Arm The Spirit #11"]

Open Borders For All!

     As the East-West tensions of the "Cold War" era disappear
into the annals of history, Third World people are now coming
under the even more chilling grasp of the New World Order. After
the dissolution of the "Cold War", we are seeing a new war being
further developed - clearly it has been in existence for decades,
but it is now becoming more visible and defined - and that is the
current North-South struggle. One aspect of this struggle is the
current situation facing Third World refugees and immigrants in
the northern industrialized nations. With this issue of Arm The
Spirit, we are focusing much attention on the new asylum-policies
being implemented across Europe. We have reprinted documents and
communiques on the issue of refugees and migration politics, but
as these issues are also of relevance to the current situation in
North America, we would also like to offer an overview of the
ideological issues involved in the question of refugees and
asylum-politics. As well, we touch upon the organizing efforts of
refugees/immigrants and the autonomist-left to thwart both these
specific policies and the growing tide of right-wing extremism
across Europe in general.

Asylum Politics in the New Europe
     Just by looking at the statistics, it's clear that the
paranoid fear which is sweeping Europe with regard to the present
"flood" of immigrants has been carefully crafted by the ruling
powers to serve their ideological needs. Most migration takes
place within the nations of the Three Continents themselves; only
a very few people ever reach the wealthy northern metropoles.
     Although life in the northern metropoles provides refugees
with obvious material advantages over their life back in the
Three Continents, their situation is hardly enviable. They face
new (and sometimes not so new) forms of an oppression which
manifests itself within the entire social-political-economic
framework of society. Upon reaching Europe, many refugees and
immigrants run into immediate obstacles. For example, in many
European countries they are not allowed to have jobs for anywhere
up to 5 years. Denied any economic self-sufficiency, they are
forced to seek to State assistance. This economic assistance,
which is minimal at best, invariably forces them into camps run
by both the State and private agencies such as the Red Cross.
These camps cut off their freedom of movement and ability to
organzize, and in some cases allows for their use as cheap
labour. Outside the camps the situation is not much better.
Institutionalized racism forces refugees and immigrants to
assimilate into a European society that does not take into
account their different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This
makes getting jobs or job training, access to proper education,
seeking social assistance, etc., difficult or almost impossible
to obtain. Women, in particular, must cope with the double
oppression of being both refugees and women. Indeed, Europe's
asylum-policies, in addition to their obvious racist overtones,
are also inherently sexist. Women who seek divorce or separation
from their immigrant husbands, for example, cannot seek an
individual asylum request if their initial entrance into Europe
was granted as the spouse of an asylum-seeker.
     Inside the 12 European Community (EC) nations, there are
residing at present, out of a total of some 340 million persons,
only about 6.1 million foreigners - less than 2%. Nonetheless,
politicians in Europe are screaming about how "The Boat is Full!"
But it's not only Christian Democrats and the parties of the
right who are to blame for the rise in racism. Cries from
politicians, very often social democrats, for stricter
immigration controls have led to tactic support for right-wing
extremist violence. Far-right political parties such as the
National Front in France, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, and the
Lombard League in Italy have actively campaigned on anti-
immigrant political platforms. Both the National Front and Vlaams
Blok have openly called for the forced removal of refugees and
immigrants and further curtailemnt of their rights. Recent
electoral successes by these parties shows that their policies
are being met with growing acceptance. Indeed, the National
Front, under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, recently
captured an average of 15% of the vote nationwide in recent
municipal elections, in some areas capturing a higher percentage
than France's ruling Socialists. In this atmosphere, other
political parties are using anti-immigrant hysteria to bolster
their popularity. Rightist political candidtates such as Parisian
mayor Jacques Chirac have complained of the "noise and smell" of
immigrants and former president Valery Giscard D'Estaing has
likened immigration to an "invasion". These sentiments are not
exclusive to the right, however. The French Communist Party, for
example, supports tougher immigration laws in order to "protect
French jobs for French workers", and in many countries it is the
Social Democrats who have been sounding the cry for stricter
border controls and tougher asylum policies to crackdown on the
"parasitic illegals" who are milking Europe's welfare system.
Even the Greens have not taken a resolute stand on the issue.
Some Green parties feel that the boat truly is full, and that
Europe's already fragile ecosystem can't bear the burden of
thousands more immigrants. Despite their vague wishes for a
"multi-cultural society", Greens across Europe have taken part in
the parliamentary discussions on curbing immigration numbers, and
they have not taken up the slogan of the radical-left: "Asylum
Rights for All!".
     Europe, in fact, has been hit on all sides with the
complexities of the refugee situation, a situation which makes
clear the contradictions of capitalism. With the collapse of the
East Bloc, the fallen State-socialist economies have left in
their wake high unemployment and economic despair, and tens of
thousands of East Europeans have begun heading westward. But no
longer are these people welcomed as political refugees; now they,
like so many others from the Three Continents, are labelled as
"economic refugees" and told to leave.
     With European unity just around the corner, Europe's ruling
powers have gone into high gear in their attempts to successfully
prepare Europe for its role as a world economic super-power. But
their preparations for the harsh realities of unity were in fact
started years ago, behind closed doors. Their goal has always
been - as more and more people are now beginning to realize at
the last moment - to establish a system of regulation, selection,
and control to safe-guard the European fortress. Through various
treaties like the Schengen Agreement and the Dublin Accord,
Europe's member nations are preparing to take the final steps
towards harmonizing the asylum policies of the various individual
EC states and to thereby put an end to what they see as the most
pressing problem of the '90's: "uncontrolled" migration.
     Again, this line of policy is not exclusively right-wing. In
fact, what we are almost seeing is a crude re-definition of the
social democratic credo, an attempt to make the most of "the
potential of society" (as RARA note in their communique). Strict
asylum-policies, which are obviously racist, are not necessarily
exclusively so. Again, Europe's ruling powers do not want to
eliminate the migration of cheap labour to within their borders,
rather they want to control it better. Europe's welfare abundance
was built, to a large degree, thanks to the people of the Three
Continents. In addition to the obvious fact that the capitalist
imperialism of European multi-national corporations has, for
decades, been exploiting the nations of the Three Continents to
feed the European production sector's insatiable need for raw
materials, also within Europe as well, cheap and illegal migrant
labour has been a widely-utilized base in the labour market, even
if official statistics never record this fact.
     Europe needs this expendable labour base now more than ever,
especially as unification will bring increased demands for better
production in order to stay competitive in the global capital
market. For one thing, Europe is faced with a demographic time-
bomb, namely a declining birth-rate. Thus, the capitalist economy
in Europe in the '90s will require migration, so the goal of
Europe's ruling powers is to control and maximize the efficiency
of the influx of foreigners. No longer will skin-colour alone be
the deciding factor. What will be sought after, however, is
flexibility, adaptability, and political submissiveness.
     But what will the effects of this harmonized policy be? For
one thing, Europe will indeed begin to resemble a fortress, as
the EC's outer borders become more and more militarized, like the
Rio Grande in America's southwest. In fact, army units are
already being used to aid in border controls across southern
Europe, and the Austrians are leading the way out East by
increasing patrols to stop the flood of East European immigrants.
And in line with the TREVI Agreement, international cooperation
in data collection and policing efforts will be greatly
intensified. The goal of this is two-fold: firstly, to create
EUROPOL, a European-wide police network, united by a massive
computer system, the Schengen Information System (SIS); and
secondly, to also use this harmonized data collection to strictly
control immigration.
     Soon, Europe will have in place a "one-shot" policy with
regard to asylum applications. This means that a person seeking
asylum in the European Community must apply at the nation he/she
arrives at, and the decision handed down by this nation applies
for entrace into all other nations. In other words, refugees and
immigrants will only have one chance to enter Europe, and if they
fail at one port of entry, they won't be allowed in at any other
European port of entry. This is designed to clamp down on the
inter-European migration of "illegals". Currently, "illegal"
immigrants can move between various nations in Europe in the
hopes of finding one with a more lenient asylum policy. This is
soon to be halted, both with harmonized external regulations, and
also with the use of greater numbers of immigration police who
will search Europe's inner-cities in an effort to gather up
"illegals" for deportation. And in an effort to stop people from
trying to enter Europe in the first place, the Schengen and
Dublin Accords seek to cut down on flight from the nations of
origin themselves. Already, there are visa requirements for
entering Europe from about 60 nations. Also, Germany, for
example, dresses immigration police in Lufthansa [German airline
- ed.] uniforms so they can more easily check exit papers and
stop certain people from trying to enter Europe before they ever
leave their nation of origin.

Resistance to Europe's Asylum-Policies
     Again, the sudden prominence of the "refugee problem" in
Europe has unleashed a tide of xenophobia and racism which has
manifested itself in countless attacks by right-wing extremists
upon refugees and immigrants all across Europe. As a result,
resistance to these events has had to be two-fold: resisting the
EC's new asylum-policies in general and also actively confronting
active neo-Nazi groups.
     Across Europe, refugees and immigrants have been organizing
and taking action against immigration policies, as well as
actively defending themselves from fascist attacks. For example,
in France, there have been over 4000 self-help associations set
up by immigrants, many with the explicit aim of fighting racism.
Others have taken direct action to protest their treatment.
During the many attacks by fascists, police have refused to
intervene, so it is only when they actively defended themselves
that refugees have been able to repel the attackers. For example,
in Norderstedt, in northern Germany, a group of 70 refugees who
had occupied a church in Neumunster for 6 weeks in an attempt to
halt their forced transfer to a refugee shelter in the ex-GDR
were forced to accept the offer of an allegedly "safe" refugee
shelter in the ex-GDR. Within one week this shelter was attacked
by over 200 fascists with fire-bombs and knives. The 15 policemen
at the scence fled, leaving the refugees to stop the fascist
attack themselves. The refugees then reoccupied the church in
Norderstedt, were again forced to leave, and have now sought
refuge in Shalom Parish, also in Norderstedt. This Parish is also
demanding that the refugees leave immediately, and it will not
provide any food or medical supplies to them. On February 8, the
refugees began a hungerstrike. This is just of one of many
initiatives that is being organized and carried out by refugees
in their fight for the right to determine for themselves where
they shall live.
     Within the radical-left there have been many initiatives
undertaken in solidarity with refugees and immigrants, on many
different levels. The clandestine movement, most notably
Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action (RARA) in the Netherlands and
the Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionaire Zellen - RZ) in Germany,
have been attacking the State apparatus that dictates immigration
policy and its implementation. The most recent RZ action was
their attack on the Refugee Division of the provincial
administration building in the town of Boblingen on August 2,
1991. This attack caused over $375,000 damage and destroyed data
files on over 10,000 refugees -a concrete hindrance to the
State's deportation schemes. And there have been similar smaller
attacks throughout Germany by autonomous groups on administrative
targets designed to both protest Germany's asylum policies and to
express solidarity with all peoples of the Three Continents
seeking material aid in the wealthy northern metropoles. Indeed,
the RZ quote refugees who speak of a "migration war" being
declared on the imperialist northern powers by the refugees from
the Three Continents. After decades of exploitation, the people
of the Three Continents are now coming to claim what is theirs, a
justifiable claim made by many immigrants. And much of the
(white) left in Europe, while gladly expressing feel-good
solidarity, has had trouble coping with this explicitly anti-
imperialist outlook on migration.
     Ever since Germany's reunification on October 3, 1990, there
has been a dramatic rise in right-wing nationalist extremism. And
more recently, this has been spurred on by the paranoia
surrounding the refugee "problem" decried by the politicians.
Racist attacks by right-wing groups on foreigners - in the form
of gangs of youths with bats attacking foreigners, fire-bomb
attacks on foreigner's houses and asylum-centres, etc. - became
daily events by the end of August 1991. The politicians did
little but verbally denounce these pogroms - indeed the ruling
powers tolerate the existence of neo-Nazi groups for their
functional value, in this case, of adding to the media
hype/hysteria around the refugee issue - and all the left could
manage was whimpering cries for more police protection. So it was
really only the autonomist scene which actively sought to provide
real concrete solidarity and support.
     The name Hoyerswerda has become synonymous with asylum
politics in Germany. In early September 1991, Hoyerswerda, a
quiet East German city whose coal industry is about to go
completely bankrupt, was the site of nightly attacks by right
wing extremists on an apartment building housing primarily
Vietnamese immigrants. The attacks were so repeated and so
vicious that the immigrants had to be taken out of the city. But
what was most frightening about the ordeal was the fact that the
nightly attacks had the silent, and also the active support of
Hoyerswerda resident. This signifies deep-seated racism, but it
also points out something the ruling powers actively try to
exploit, namely the economic frustration felt by so many working-
class Germans, particulary in the now-defunct GDR. This is an
effective means of preventing mass protest from the German
proletariat against the State, namely turning the lower-classes
onto the only segment of society more vulnerable and exploited
than them: the refugee population. On September 29, a huge anti-
racist convoy headed out from Berlin and convened a huge demo in
Hoyerswerda. The march, which was plagued by internal problems
which resulted in confrontations with the police, was nonetheless
important because of the concrete cooperation which took place
between autonomists and refugees.
     The anti-fascist resistance (more commonly known as ANTIFA
- Anti-Fascist Action) in Germany has, in its internal
discussions, been trying to tackle two potential pit-falls in its
organizing; the first being that the ANTIFA movement must not
become merely an anti-Nazi movement, but should keep a broader,
anti-imperialist perspective. Obviously, street-level
confrontations with Nazis - "Attack The Nazis Wherever They
Appear!" is one popular slogan - must continue, but ANTIFA
organizing efforts have to keep a broader view as well, because
the State, again, merely utilizes the extreme right to push
through its own capitalist ideological agenda. As many ANTIFA
discussions make note of, the State itself is not fascist - it's
a big mistake to think this - but it does utilize fascist tactics
and groups. Bearing this in mind, autonomist groups have tried to
remain active on both of these fronts. For example, on October
18, 1991, 5 buses used to forcibly transport refugees out of
Berlin against their will - ostensibly "for their safety" -were
destroyed in a fire-bomb attack by an anti-racist group who were
expressing solidarity with the refugees' wishes to freely decide
where they want to live. Similar attacks on bus and travel
agencies responsible for forcibly relocating refugees have
occurred recently in Berlin. And as for the Nazis, one of the
best recent actions was the October 28, 1991 attack on Karl
Polacek's house. Polacek, the leader of the extreme-right Freedom
Workers Party (FAP) is one of the many neo-Nazi politicians whose
electoral support has been growing recently. In the attack,
approximately 40 masked autonomists drove up outside the house
and attacked with stones and molotovs as Polacek and 30 other
Nazis were having a meeting inside. 15 right-wing extremists were
injured in the attack and no autonomists were arrested. Other
effective efforts include the publishing of photos, names,
addresses, and car-descriptions of known neo-Nazis.
     The second thing to be avoided in an anti-racist/anti-
fascist organizing around the issue of asylum politics is the
tendency (particulary of the white left) to objectify refugees
and to down-play their own organizing efforts. What the
autonomist scene has tried to do is to carry out its actions not
"on behalf of" the refugees, but rather in support of the
refugees' own struggles. Such was the case for example, with the
attack on the buses in Berlin. Likewise attacks on neo-Nazi
groups are a concrete way the autonomists can provide solidarity
and support for the refugees, without using the refugees' cause
to further some other political agenda. Autonomists in Stuttgart,
and in other German cities as well, have also recently begun
actively supporting the immigrants' own organizational efforts by
working together with refugee organizations, immigrant-youth
street gangs, etc. On October 10, 1991, after a meeting between
some 30 autonomists and another 300 or so primarily Turkish
youths, the group split up and began patrolling the streets in
order to find and attack neo-Nazis. Such cooperation between
autonomists and street gang members causes the police great
concern, of course.
     The left has a gross tendency to be paternalistic and even
racist when it comes to comprehending the problems faced by
people of colour. The only way to both overcome this and to
provide concrete political support as well is to organize
alongside these groups, using means which fit the conditions
under which they live.

The Current Situation In North America
     While conditions are the same here in North America, they
have not yet reached the levels that we see in Europe. Recent
changes to Canadian immigration policy are designed to make it
more difficult for Third World people to seek refugee status in
Canada. For example, Canada maintained a list of countries which
they would not deport refugee claimants to. Called the B-1 list,
it included countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala. While
this list provided a certain measure of protection, the fact that
an entry visa was necessary made flight difficult, often with
tragic consequences. Upon reaching Canada, refugees have to meet
a narrow definition of what constitutes a refugee, one which
stresses individualized persecution, as evidenced by an
immigration lawyer who has stated "a villager who is shot at
because of his or her political opinion can be a refugee;
villagers who are bombed from the air because they live in
guerrilla-controlled territory are not thereby considered
refugees".
     Another deterrent in Canada's immigration system is one
which, although not yet implemented, could have severe
consequences for refugees coming to Canada. The Safe Third
Country concept declares as ineligible for refugee status all
claimants who, after having fled their country of origin, have
lived in a country which the Canadian government declares "safe"
(that is, a country which, in Canada's opinion, is not in the
habit of returning legitimate refugees to their homelands). This
list is as yet partly empty, due in great part to the fact that
while the US is a signatory to the UN convention and an ally, at
the same time it rejects over 96% of Salvadoran refugees and a
United States District Court decided in 1988 that the U.S. is
unsafe for Salvadoran refugees. Clearly, if implemented, refugees
coming to Canada through the U.S. could conceivably be prohibited
from living and working in Canada, due to their having resided in
the U.S.
     Further, under a new law, it is an offence to organize
refugees to come to Canada, to aid or abet a person without valid
travel documents, or to aid persons coming into Canada without
documents. This is an obvious hindrance to refugees in that many
refugees fleeing persecution and repression do not or cannot have
valid travel documents, or destroy them for their own protection.
     Clearly then, the Canadian immigration system is actively
promoting deterrents as a means of dealing with refugees. And in
a statement which seems to parallel those made in the Schengen
Agreement, the Immigration Commission told its employees just
before these new measures came in that "Prevention of arrival is
as important as removal in reducing demand upon the refugee
determination process."
     For those refugees already in Canada, and for those
attempting to enter the country, the rise to prominence of
political parties such as the Reform Party and of neo-Nazi
organizations such as the Heritage Front gives much cause for
concern. The Hertitage Front, based in Toronto, Ontario, an
explicitly racist organization with a strong anti-immigration
platform, is led by Wolfgang Droege, a former Ku Klux Klan
recruiter who was arrested a few years ago after an attempt by a
handful of Klan members to overthrow the government of Dominica.
The Heritage Front has strong ties with fascist skinhead groups,
and last year it tried to bring Holocaust revisionist David
Irving to Toronto to speak. The Front also runs a racist
"hateline" called the "Anti-Immigration Hotline", which has been
targetting Native peoples and refugees. The Reform Party,
Canada's fourth largest political party, is a right-wing party
which on the question of immigration argues that "immigrants
should possess the human capital necessary to adjust quickly and
independently to the needs of Canadian society and the job
market". Clearly, such a policy excludes most Third World people.
Further, the Reform Party supports an immigration policy that has
as its focus only Canada's economic needs. In a recent
development, several members of the Heritage Front who had joined
the Reform Party were expelled. This expulsion was no doubt based
on the desire of the Reform Party to present a clean image for
mainstream Canada, but, as Heritage Front Leader Droege stated,
"The Reform Party is perfect for us. We stand for the same
things."
     The situation facing refugees and immigrants is similarly
grim in the United States. On January 31, the Supreme Court voted
8-1 to allow the forced repatriation of Haitian refugees from the
US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba back to strife-torn
Haiti. Although US government officials claim there is no
evidence to support claims that forcibly returned refugees face
persecution, all returning refugees are photographed and
fingerprinted by Haitian officials and there are no US officials
in Haiti to follow up on brutality claims.
     In the US presidential primary elections, debate has
focussed around jobs and the 'middle class', with not a single
one of the Democratic Party contenders speaking out against
Bush's deportation policy. But conservative Republican challenger
Pat Buchanan has made his sentiments known: the US should
literally build a fence along its border with Mexico to stop the
flood of illegals from "stealing American jobs". Indeed,
Buchanan's ability to regularly garner at least 30% of the
Republican Party vote is in many ways more frightening than David
Duke's - the former Klan leader and founder of the National
Association for the Advancement of White People - ability to win
over 40% of the vote in Louisiana's gubernatorial election.
Buchanan's far-right stand on most issues, including his
blatantly racist anti-refugee stance, speaks to racist sectors of
white American society. What's more, with his "respectable"
history as a CNN talk-show host and newspaper columnist, as
opposed to Duke's past as a Nazi organizer, Buchanan has
succeeded in becoming a legitimate political contender who is
able to get plenty of TV interview time to spread his
conservative rhetoric. Buchanan feels so confident in his ability
to develop a following that he has stated that if the Republican
Party continues to "stray from its most basic values" and not
dump Bush and nominate him instead for this year's presidential
election, then he has vowed to form a new conservative party to
challenge the Republicans in the 1996 elections.
     The current refugee policy of the United States is already
forboding, with most impetus for "change" coming from forces like
Pat Buchanan on the right, while most of the liberal-left has
been wholly silent on the issue. President Buch continues to
justify forcibly deportating Haitians who have entered the US as
"economic" refugees. Bush has also come up with an interesting
new way to implement the "peace dividend": using Gulf War trucks
and jeeps to patrol the Rio Grande border. All of this, combined
with a new work-permit card which officials claim is forgery-
proof, should help the Bush administration achieve its predicted
goal of one million deportations in 1992.

Open Borders? No Borders!
     The visible trend in refugee policies when looking at both
Western Europe as well as North America is one of prevention,
detention, and selection. It's both a racist program designed to
protect white society and white jobs as well as a capitalist
manouevre to insure the continued economic domintation of the
North over the South, with those refugees which are allowed to
enter the "fortress" becoming optimally utilized to achieve total
economic efficiency so as to increase the living standards
already enjoyed by those in Northern metropolitan society.
Indeed, since the motives behind Northern refugee policies are
both racist and capitalist, and not soley one or the other, has
resulted in a viscious circle of hate and exploitation: the
plunder of the South sends a stream of refugees to the metropoles
of the North, where immigrants are confronted with racist hate
and fascist violence, which is tacitly supported by the State and
fed with government-generated paranoia in attempt to win public
support for increased controls over refugees, and this is to
further protect the North's economic superiority which is the
root of the problem to begin with.
     Our response to all of this has to go beyond calling for a
more "humane" refugee policy. We have to help bring an end to the
domination of the North over the South and part of this is
demanding that all borders be open to everyone!

     The following is a partial list of sources used for this
article: Radikal, Konfrontatie, NN, Interim, TATblatt, Toronto
Ecomedia, Community Charge, Nicaragua Solidarity Network...

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For a copy of "Arm The Spirit #11", write to:

    Autonome Forum
    PO Box 1242
    Burlington, Vermont
    05402-1242   USA



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