Exploiting immigration
Sylvia Rowley explores Tory proposals for a quota system on immigrant numbers
Michael Howard has released proposals to place quotas on the number of immigrants allowed into Britain. Should the Conservatives come to power the annual quota for refugees would be around 20,000, while work permits would be issued to economic migrants according to Britain’s needs.
These proposals form part of the Conservative Party’s campaign in the run up to the next general election, widely tipped to be held in May or June of this year. Recent opinion polls have shown the Tories to be lagging 9% behind Labour. But Michael Howard’s strict stance on immigration seems to be working; it is the one issue on which the Conservatives are in the lead.
The main changes to immigration policy would be that refugees must claim asylum from their country of origin rather than at UK borders. The Conservatives believe this would prevent asylum seekers from being exploited by people-smugglers. However, this proposal has received widespread criticism. Not only would it involve Britain’s withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees and sections of the European Convention on Human Rights, but under Conservative proposals the UN (which has roundly condemned the policy) would be expected to run these in situ centres processing asylum requests. While economic migrants would be taken according to our needs, the number of asylum seekers would be subject to a set upper limit after which no more would be accepted, whatever their needs.
Immigration is being presented as a central problem in British society. While one Tory strategy is to present immigration as a problem of numbers, citing “literally millions” of people who want to come to Britain, there seems to be another, darker, side to the campaign. The type, not just number, of immigrants was addressed by Mr. Howard when he talked about people from “poorer countries” who would come to the UK if they could. Trevor Philips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has stressed that the country’s largest groups of migrants are Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders and Americans, and that they must be central to these policies in order to prevent people “who want to turn this in to a race issue” from doing so. The Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has said that uncontrolled immigration “endangers the values that we in Britain rightly treasure” and threatens the British “way of life”. Playing up to the tabloid-fuelled view of immigrants as poor ethnic minorities who are different to ‘us’, the British, is a dangerous path to tread.
The Conservatives claim that immigration has been pushed to the forefront of their campaign due to public concern about the issue. However, public concern is not necessarily symptomatic of a concrete problem. Even the Conservatives are forced to admit that immigration has a net positive economic effect. Although public concern needs to be recognised, there is a danger that in a bid to win votes this fear will be exploited rather than addressed. Propelling the ‘problem’ of immigration to the centre of a respectable party’s election campaign, especially in an irresponsible manner, has the potential to do much damage to the status of ethnic minorities in this country.
