By Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour member
The recent anti-migrant demonstration outside a hotel in Liverpool that houses asylum seekers is an example of the media-fuelled hostility towards immigrants. That demonstration, instigated by the far-right, turned violent and several people were injured. Not surprisingly, those housed in the hostel were terrified by threats of violence.
The latest in the ITV Tonight series is a programme, aired yesterday, and which explored attitudes towards immigration. The presenter, Adil Ray, looked at the UK’s asylum ‘crisis’ and asked, ‘What Britain’s problem with immigration?’ The programme reported that a majority in Britain believe that immigration has been a positive thing. However, many are opposed so-called ‘illegal’ migrants who travel on small boats across the Channel.
Ray interviewed Tim Loughton MP, a Tory member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, who accepted that using terms like ‘invasion’ and ‘swarms’ – as Tory ministers have done – is ‘unhelpful’. However, he thinks that there are those who ‘game’ the system and he complained that the Home Office takes too long to process asylum applications.
Backlog of 140,000 cases
On average, the programme revealed, it takes 460 days to process a claim and Home Office Immigration have a backlog of 140,000 cases. This Tory MP added that the government should employ more staff, because it was false economy to do otherwise, owing to the fact it costs £6mn a day to hold asylum seekers in hotels. What he failed to mention was that it was his government’s cuts in the numbers of civil servants that led to this backlog in the first place. Tory austerity is largely the cause of this crisis.
As one contributor to the programme said that there was close to a million immigrants last year, but in fact only 44,000 came via small boats. It is the hysteria and xenophobia whipped up in the right-wing press – to distract attention from the biggest cuts in living standards in living memory – that have contributed to a wave of misinformation and ignorance over migration.
The problem is that Ukrainians and Hong Kong residents were offered relatively secure routes to migrate – although even in these cases, Home Office Immigration was appallingly inefficient and chaotic, some would think deliberately so – but this is simply not the case for asylum seekers from other parts of the world. Many of these people are in real fear of their lives in their own countries and it is a measure of their sheer desperation that they resort to small, inflatable dinghies, often with children, in the first place.
It was pointed out in the programme that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 brings in a two-tier system for asylum seekers and includes the method of entry into the UK as a factor in judging the ‘merits’ of a case. The claim that asylum seekers can ‘game’ the system, therefore, are entirely false.
While they are waiting for their asylum claim to be processed, they are denied the right to work although most of them would, if given the opportunity. They are denied social housing and have to live on £45 a week in temporary accommodation. If they are sent to a hotel, they get less than £10.
The cause of the cost of living crisis – thirteen years of Tory rule
The subtext behind the right-wing press campaign on migration is that somehow migrants are responsible for the cost of living crisis, shortages of social housing or the problems within the NHS, which they clearly are not. All of these problems are down to thirteen years of Tory rule and the market economy which is permanently rigged against ordinary people.
Some, like UKIP during the Brexit referendum, argue that Britain is ‘full’ but I heard this argument when I was a young man in the 1970s. The population then was around 50 million and it’s over 65 million now. The problem we faced then, as now is huge inequality and in fact, inequality has grown.
The rich and well-to-do can live in homes with bedrooms numbered in double figures, but many others live in homes that are damp and overcrowded and yet still expensive. What we need to fight for is a programme of mass council housing building to solve this problem. It cannot be left to the housing ‘market’ which is permanently rigged to keep house prices and rents as high as possible. The idea of ‘affordable’ homes is like a vanishing mirage to young couples these days.
Labour should offer policies that cut across all these attempts by the Tories and far right groups to blame immigrants for all the ills of society. The labour movement must challenge the fascists who wish to perpetrate violence against asylum seekers. The Labour and trade union leadership should campaign in support of who that have suffered persecution in other countries and are forced to settle elsewhere, including in the UK.
The ITV programme can be found online here
