“The government is seeking to create a false moral panic about ‘illegality’ to scapegoat people fleeing for their lives.”
By The Joint Council For The Welfare Of Immigrants
We oppose the government’s earned settlement proposals and the accompanying consultation in its entirety.
The proposals and consultation are fundamentally racist and classist. They attack all our communities and, if implemented, would undermine everyone’s rights and conditions – whether you are born in the UK or not.
The aim is to create an even more racist and hostile environment in this country, with a hyper-exploited, hyper-insecure and hyper-precarious underclass of largely racialised workers. This is wrong and unjust. It will ultimately result in a lowering of standards and conditions for all workers to the benefit of exploitative bosses, regardless of where they are born. The wording and framing of the earned settlement consultation itself reflect these racist and classist aims.
The proposals also seek to further punish refugees and people seeking protection, people whose movements are often due to lasting harms caused by historic and ongoing colonisation.
Settlement is a right
Settlement is a right. Everyone should have the right to feel safe and stable wherever they live, in the knowledge that they can stay permanently and build their lives, relationships, families, and communities.
Our immigration system already undermines and damages our communities, keeping our friends, neighbours and colleagues in precarious living situations and conditions. People are already forced to wait to begin their lives, and made to jump through long, draining bureaucratic hoops to get settlement rights – often waiting decades to get permanent status.
Our position is clear: everyone, no matter where they were born or when they arrived here, should have the right to stay here permanently and build their lives, relationships and communities.
Government attacks on workers
The government’s attempts via the proposals and consultation to create a hierarchy of workers based on the type of job they do, specifically targeting and devaluing health and care work, is shameful. It is an attempt to divide and rule our communities by constructing categories of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant. There are no such categories, and there is no such hierarchy.
Many migrants from Britain’s former colonies were forced to fight for the empire on the frontlines in World War Two to win their countries’ independence. Meanwhile, their own countries’ economies were decimated and underdeveloped by British colonial governments. Their demands for reparation have been ignored and denied.
They were encouraged to migrate to Britain to rebuild the country after the war and they continue to form the backbone of the labour force that keeps the country running, whilst being highly exploited and precarious: as delivery and taxi drivers in the gig economy; as care workers in nursing homes; as nurses and doctors on the frontlines of the NHS; as cleaners and transport workers essential to keeping all workers safe, well and able to travel. Many of these people, along with others, were labelled ‘key workers’ during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, and yet have been disgracefully discarded by this government.
This labour exploitation and precarity are rooted in a colonial system that racialises and exploits the global majority and the entire multiracial working class. It seeks to divide and rule by creating classes of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant.
We reject all such categories and class divides. The colonial border regimes created by the British state are intended to keep the conditions of all workers down; to divide workers to prevent them from uniting and fighting back; and to enrich the corporations and the military industrial complex by paying them billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to enforce inhuman border regimes. We say: no more.
Recourse to public funds
Migrant workers built Britain. But in the end, no matter how much tax someone pays, what jobs they do, or how much money they earn, everyone should have the right to access basic services like public healthcare, housing and support. Anyone, no matter where they were born, might need access to this social support, and we as a society should provide it, ‘from the cradle to the grave’.
People seeking protection
The government’s proposals attempt to even further criminalise and illegalise the only routes available to refugees and people seeking protection. There are no safe routes for people to seek protection in this country, and the government refuses to create any.
The government is seeking to create a false moral panic about ‘illegality’ to scapegoat people fleeing for their lives, conditions which are usually directly or indirectly a result of centuries of colonial extractivism, violence and genocide.
It’s time to resist
We call on all social and labour movement forces to unite and reject these government proposals.
We support all efforts to protest, strike and resist this government and the Home Secretary’s cruel and draconian onslaught on the rights and freedoms of people who move. Whether it takes months, years, or decades, we will dismantle Britain’s colonial border regime.
Signatories:
- Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
- Abigail Housing
- Action Against Detention & Deportations
- Action for Refugees in Lewisham
- After Exploitation
- Alarm Phone London
- All African Women’s Group
- Angels of Freedom CIC
- Another Europe is Possible
- Aseekers
- Asylum Matters
- Asylum Welcome
- Bahay Kubo Housing Association
- Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union
- Baobab Women’s Project CIC
- BARAC UK
- BEACON Bradford
- Beyond Detention
- Birth Companions
- Books Against Borders
- Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign
- Bristol Law Centre
- Camden Anti-Raids
- Care4Calais
- Climate Justice Coalition
- Communist Party of Great Britain
- Cotton Tree Trust
- Diversity Matters North West Ltd
- Duhra Solicitors
- East and Southeast Asians North East
- End Deportations Belfast
- End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW)
- English Class Language School
- Evesham Vale Welcomes Refugees
- Existing Skilled Migrants Forum
- FODI (Friends Of the Drop In for asylum seekers and refugees, Sunderland)
- forRefugees
- Fresh Eyes
- Girlington Community Centre
- Global Justice Cambridge
- Global Women Against Deportations
- Govan Community Project
- Hackney Antiraids
- Hackney Independent Socialist Group
- Hackney Migrant Centre
- Haringey Migrant Support Centre (HMSC)
- Haringey Welcome
- Hastings Community of Sanctuary
- Hay Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees
- Herts for Refugees
- Iona Community
- Ice&Fire Theatre
- India Labour Solidarity
- Indian Workers’ Association GB
- Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation (IRMO)
- Insaafi CIC
- Iraqi Association
- Jewish Voice for Liberation
- Kanlungan Filipino Consortium
- Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS)
- Law Centre NI
- Left Book Club
- Legal Action for Women
- Lesbians And Gays Support the Migrants
- Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network (LRMN)
- Long Residence Advocacy Group
- Manchester Refugee Support Network
- Medact
- Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation-MEWSO
- Migrant Advocacy Service
- Migrant Justice Manchester
- Migrant Workers’ Union – NI
- Migrante UK
- Migrants’ Rights Network
- National Survivor User Network (NSUN)
- New Arrivals Support CIC
- No More Exclusions
- No To Hassockfield
- Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council
- Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum
- Oasis church
- One Roof Leicester
- Palestinian Youth Movement
- Patients Not Passports
- Patients not Passports Cambridge
- Peaceful Borders
- POMOC
- Positive Action in Housing
- Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network – QARN
- Radio Calais
- Rainbow Migration
- Rainbow Refugees NI
- RAMFEL (Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex and London)
- Refugee Action
- Regularise
- Reunite Families UK
- Revoke
- Rights of Women
- Room To Heal
- RootsMove
- Roma Support Group
- Routes
- Scaffold Advocacy
- School of Solidarity
- Skipton Refugee Support Group
- Solidarity Detainee Support
- South London Refugee Association
- South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG)
- Southampton Action
- Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group
- Southeast and East Asian Centre CIC (SEEAC)
- Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association
- Southwark & Lambeth Antiraids
- Southwark Law Centre
- Springboard Youth Academy
- Statewatch
- St Augustine’s Centre
- St Thomas Church Asylum Seeker and Refugee Support Network
- Tees Valley of Sanctuary
- The Hummingbird Project
- The Launchpad Collective
- The William Gomes Podcast
- the3million
- Thread Ahead
- Tulia Group CIC
- UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch
- University of Manchester UCU
- Waltham Forest Migrant Action
- Women Against Rape
- Women for Refugee Women
- Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike
- Women’s Health Matters
- You can follow the The Joint Council For The Welfare Of Immigrants (JCWI) on Twitter here.
- This statement was originally published by JCWI.
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