By Robert Skelton, Socialist Equality Party candidate for Manchester Central
24 April 2010

SEP candidate Robert Skelton campaigns at North City Shopping Centre

The Socialist Equality Party, in its campaign in Manchester Central, has repeatedly encountered workers who are by no means racist, but who argue that with jobs and public services under attack, immigration is
too high and must be curbed.

I and my campaign team have insisted that the attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers by the media and the major parties are made in order to create divisions among
working people and divert attention from the real cause of the deepest
recession since the 1930s and the most draconian cuts in history.

The constant identification of immigrants and asylum seekers as a threat to jobs, or a competition for housing, health and education, is a policy
of divide-and-rule which the British ruling class has pursued for
decades at home and abroad. No ideological weapon has been more powerful
in the preservation of its rule than the division of workers on the
basis of colour, religion or ethnicity. This is a fundamental political
question which working people everywhere must understand and reject, if
they are to mount any effective response to the rapacious demands of
their bosses.

According to the media, Britain is being swamped with immigrants who are living in the lap of luxury on welfare benefits at taxpayers’ expense and queue-jumping the waiting lists for social
housing.

On the far right, the British National Party insists that “immigrants aren’t working” and are making “white Britons second class citizens”. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) claims
that “immigration into the UK is out of control” and “forces down wages
and hurts the traditional working class the most”.

This type of anti-immigrant prejudice only amplifies and feeds off the positions advanced by the three main parties, which vie over which is toughest on
immigration.

Labour boasts of its “tough but flexible” Australian-style points-based system and promises to curtail immigration further—with “irregular” migrants to be removed by force if necessary.

The Conservatives, supported by Migration Watch, have called for an annual cap of 50,000 immigrants a year. The Liberal Democrats say that “for too long, Britain’s borders have been a soft touch” and that they
will create a “firm but fair system” for asylum seekers.

The trade unions have done little or nothing to protect, integrate and organise migrant workers. Instead they have played a crucial role in
fomenting divisions between workers, with their campaigns stressing the
need for “local jobs” that chime in with the demand for “British jobs
for British workers”.

The truth is that net immigration reached a peak of 244,000 in 2004, after the accession of Eastern European countries to the European Union, but is now declining and may soon fall
to 100,000 a year. These are workers who pay taxes, many have vital
skills and they often take on the worst paid and hazardous jobs.

Asylum seekers, generally fleeing wars and economic and social catastrophes in which Britain played a major part such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Balkans, are also small in number and declining due to Labour’s punitive
restrictions. According to Home Office figures, there were just 23,430
asylum applications in 2007, mostly from war-torn regions, rising to
27,900 including dependents. Of these 73 percent were refused any form
of residency, even temporary leave to remain.

While the media claims that asylum seekers “jump the queue” for housing and social services, the truth is that Labour’s 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act
removed the right of asylum seekers to housing and all types of
benefits. It created a new housing and subsistence scheme under the UK
Border Agency to disperse asylum claimants across the country, typically
in the most deprived areas with few amenities.

As for “economic” migrants, they have limited entitlement to social welfare. Apart from those from Europe, immigrants who have been in Britain less than five
years are not entitled to social housing—which is actually in short
supply due to privatisation—or to housing benefits and tax credits.

While the politicians scream about the cost of such minimal provision, they think nothing about squandering £1 trillion to prop up Britain’s
criminal and reckle ss banking system.

The lives of millions of working people have been blighted by hardship and economic insecurity by capitalism and the pro-big business agenda followed by Labour and the
Tories before them. To conceal this basic fact, immigrants and asylum
seekers are blamed for every imaginable social problem. While all
parties routinely deny that measures to clampdown on immigrants and
asylum are racist, their actions serve to legitimise racism and social
divisions. They enable the openly xenophobic parties and sections of the
media to channel social tensions in a right wing direction.

All the problems that workers and their families confront stem from their exploitation by a parasitic elite, which legally appropriates the wealth
created by the working class by creaming off corporate and banking
profits while at the same time refusing to pay tax themselves. Now, not
content with that, the financial oligarchy has demanded, and got, the
keys to the Treasury.

The enemy of working people is not only the corporations in Britain, but a global network of corporations and banks. They operate on an international scale to extract the greatest
possible profit from the labour of the working class.

All the main political parties and trade unions act not on behalf of workers but corporate Britain, which seeks to regularise and discipline the influx
of cheap labour as part of its drive to force down wages and conditions
more generally and increase its own wealth at the expense of its
international competitors.

The real issue is that the world is divided not by identity—be it religion, ethnicity or colour—but by classes which have diametrically opposed interests. Working people must
reject all attempts to scapegoat immigrants and asylum seekers as a
means of diverting attention from the real sources of declining living
standards and attacks on basic rights. They must use the methods of
class struggle to oppose the ruling elite.

Above all what is required is unbreakable solidarity between workers in Britain and workers of all countries in united industrial and political action. The
struggles of workers around the world against common attacks, common
problems and a common enemy must be brought together on the basis of a
common program.

This is the precondition for any effective opposition to the job cuts and austerity measures that are being demanded by the globally mobile transnational companies and banks that
dominate the British and world economy. It means taking up an
independent political struggle based upon internationalism and socialism
against the government, the corporations and their lackeys in the trade
unions.

The Socialist Equality Party fights for such an internationalist and socialist programme as the basis for uniting all sections of the working class—white and black, native-born and
immigrant.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/immi-a24.shtml