by Sohail Nazir – LFIT expert on immigration issues
He has always considered himself G.W. Bush’s junior sheriff, always willing to take care of nearby countries and conflicts of the wide southern Pacific Ocean. Well-behaved, married, conservative with Christian values. Who else could this be other than John Howard, the former Australian prime minister?
You might laugh on the sofa and wonder what the point is of remarking on a former head of government and even one who sided with Bush and his illegal war on Iraq? Well, I have nothing to offer against such a response. In fact, you are right.
Yet, when glancing over a pile of crumpled Australian morning papers dating some years back, I realised a spectre was haunting Europe: the spectre of John Howard. Howard’s policies on migration leant remarkably towards human rights violation. Unprecedented for a Rechtsstaat, in which the state ought to protect human dignity, he detained foreigners on far-off isolated Pacific Islands.
This spectre inexorably swept to Europe and detention camps subsequently became the buzzword. A debate ensued throughout this continent. Proud of the achievements of the Magna Charta and the Geneva Refugee Convention, Western Europe suddenly assembled a political will, namely, to quasi arrest refugees.
With about 40 million foreign refugees (Schmelz, A. 2006), roughly 8 million illegal immigrants in the domains of the European Union (Financial Times. 2008), public climate towards asylum seekers is one of growing hostility. This hostility is fuelled by right-wing populists. In the wake of Tunisians arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Italian Interior Minister, Maroni, hyperbolically spoke of a “biblical exodus” (Donadio, R. and Daley, S. 2011). He even seriously suggested sending troops to Tunisia to halt illegal immigration. It was a diplomatic faux-pas, deemed to fail from its very outset. After all, which sovereign nation-state voluntarily invites foreign troops onto their soil?
Learning lessons from Uncle Howard, Maroni’s hyperbolism is revealing, for his government co-operated with Tunisia’s ousted dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. An accord was signed. Accordingly, Ben Ali’s regime received financial incentives to step up obstacles to would-be illegal immigrants. Seemingly, that accord has become invalid since Ben Ali had to relinquish the reins of power as result of the recent revolution in Tunisia.
It is not bad news that such bilateral agreements have become null and void because some reports do suggest mistreatments done to would-be migrants. For example, a report concealed that “electric shock batons were used to force migrants off the boats in Libya” (Donadio, R. and Daley, S. 2011), another state with a poor record on human rights. Similar allegations have been leveled against other regimes, which co-operated with the EU before some of them, quite recently, started crumbling.
That human beings cannot be regarded as illegal is an understandable reminder often echoed from non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch. They call into question some EU national governments’ de facto treatment of refugees as criminals. Their treatment is not fair; it is based on prejudice and is stigmatized.
Ignoring criticism, European leaders (including some social democrats) unscrupulously started co-operating with dictatorial regimes, such as Morocco, Tunisia and also Ghaddafi’s Libya. For the latter, Berlusconi developed a bizarre fondness (before the landmark uprisings), culminating in kissing the Colonel’s hand. Indeed, one can easily see a double standard deployed by western states in dealing with human rights. The very recent political insurgency in Libya resulted in western-led airstrikes against the brutal dictatorship in the name of human rights, whereas, just a few months ago, human rights violation was not a supreme concern and consequently a rallying cause of action.
At that time, EU national leaders were learning lessons from Australian Howard. In a similar fashion to Australia, they have been interested in setting up de facto prisons for refugees, thus treating migrants as convicted criminals. This went hand in hand with active help from Colonel Gaddafi and other dictators on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. What is more, this disparaging treatment is confirmed by the fact that children were not spared.
Such off-shore camps were first discussed at an EU summit of interior ministers in Scheveningen in 2004. Based on this, three critical points have to be discussed: firstly, migrants who try to seek refuge from war or other disasters are cut off from the basic principle that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from prosecution” (Art. 14, UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Secondly, their destiny is often subject to randomness by third countries, which have poor records on human rights, for example, Morocco and Libya. Thirdly, most asylum cases would go unnoticed by the public as they are outside the EU borders. NGOs did also report about human rights violation in similar camps established by Australia.
Who is legal and who is illegal? The answer does not have any moral basis because there is a certain level of arbitrariness in this division between illegal and legal refugees. This peculiar arbitrariness, a politically motivated selection of migrants, is underscored by EU’s asylum and migration policies. And this is demonstrated by the European Union’s introduction of a so-called Blue card scheme. According to this, migrants rather ought to fit neatly into the economic frame, solely contributing to the well-being of the EU labour market. In order to remain competitive, it is necessary to resort to solutions tackling the mismatch of unqualified domestic workers to the demand of increasingly high skills in the booming service sector.
This selection leads us to the public sector economists as they have since portrayed migration in two faces. Researching on market failures and imperfect competition in communities, they illustrate the endless game of costs and benefits. Whether skilled laborers or not, new individuals in a new community may increase the tax base, making secretaries of the treasury deliriously happy. But to flip the coin the other way, they may also strain the increasing demand on public services, infrastructure and housing etc. (Stiglitz, J.E. 2000. p. 737).
This rather aloof factor calculation crunched by some economists, dividing migration into costs and benefits, does bear consequences: a European Fortress has been constructed. The island of the rich man is protected from the poor masses of the South. This costs and benefits calculation has since gained a new dynamic. Just as competition is the crucial component of microeconomics, so is selection for the EU migration and asylum policy.
Whilst the EU has gradually widened, edged and stepped up alertness around her Fortress keeping away uninvited migrants, it has left a protected doorway open for qualified migrants. They are welcome to enter the rich man’s gate. No doubt, we need them. After all, they correct the mismatch in the EU domestic market. Not only are we less willing to settle down and have children, we are also in the midst of an educational crisis. Our domestic labour force is not sufficiently trained to meet the increasing standards of job openings that require high-level qualifications in the growing service sector and, moreover, not prepared to take low-paid jobs e.g. in farming. This mismatch leads to high levels of unemployment in Western Europe. The jobs are there. The people qualified for them are not.
As a consequence, we easily indulge in a culture of brain gain and brain loss. With lucrative job offers we try to gain the brainiest people from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Qualified third country nationals are a treasure for their own country of origin. They could contribute enormously to their developing countries’ economies. But those people are invited over to Europe, lured by the European blue card.
A bizarre game is played which former EU Justice Commissioner Frattini sugarcoated as a brain circulation. To him the Blue card would also be beneficial to the country of origin. Life-long contacts would be made as well as foreign experience. True, but the fact remains, the EU is engaged in a brain gain-brain loss policy.
In conclusion, the recent EU’s asylum and migration policies are based on arbitrary selection criteria, co-operation with doubtful regimes and militarisation. We have witnessed that European countries have become states of selective immigration. Once more, growth-driven, neo-liberally framed, EU economic policies deride humanitarianism and human welfare. European states pursue competitive advantage. On the one hand they open their domestic economies to international migration, while on the other hand internal political forces drive them to seal off the borders. Leading to this antagonistic dynamic, EU national governments commence to manage migration. Such regulation solely follows their economic interests. They encourage certain streams, whilst stemming others. The EU migration policy clearly differentiates between highly educated professionals and low skilled migrants in order to compete with the US and the emerging economies. The low skilled migrants are perceived as a burden (Erel, U. 2009, p. 3). Stemming these is a doubtful practice. Detention camps outside the EU put these undesired migrants in de-facto confinements. Unprotected migrants are left at the mercy of dictators. John Howard’s migration policies are therefore wrong. They are against the fundamental values upon which the European Union is based. Being human cannot be illegal. Everyone seeking refuge has the right to make her or his case be heard. That is why treating a refugee or an asylum seeker as a criminal is unjust. This EU policy approach of selection criteria and Uncle Howard’s detention camps are cracked at several places; making a hard felt hat much too worse to wear.
Nota Bene
EU migration policy is that complex and complicated that short policy essays cannot encapsulate everything. The next policy essay on migration will again be a continuation. I will again critically look at the regulation of migration this time by analysing EU’s regional protection programmes. This will be accompanied by an interview I have conducted in Valencia of a migrant who travelled across Europe in search of a better future. It is designed to open our eyes by shedding light on the view migrants have on Europe. A brief article on David Cameron’s migration speech will offer the other side of the coin.
Bibliography
Associated Press. 9-10/04/2011. “Italy and France agree on handling Tunisian migrants”. In International Herald Tribune. Global Edition of New York Times, p. 3.
Donadio, R. and Daley, S. 9/3/2011. “Revolts Raise Fear of Migration in Europe”. In International Herald Tribune. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/europe/10europe.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=migration&st=cse accessed on 20/03/2011.)
Erel, U. 2009. “Qualifikation von Migrantinnen – eine Frage der Bürgerrechte?“ In Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. 26th Oktober. Vol. 44., p. 3-6
German Basic Law. 1999. http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm accessed on 15/02/2011.
Harding, J. 2000. The Uninvited. Refugees at the Rich Man’s Gate. London: Profile Books and the London Review Books.
Hayter, T. 2004. Open Borders. The case against immigration controls. London: Pluto Press.
Schmelz, A. 2006. Network Migration in Europe. http://www.migrationeducation.org/17.0.html accessed on 24/03/2011.
Stiglitz, J.E. 2000. Economics of the Public Sector. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
The United Nations. UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a14 accessed on 14/02/2011.
