Olly Zanetti: Borders
Should lines drawn on a map be used to stratify global society?
More like this...
“Although there has been a decrease in the level of violence throughout Iraq the situation remains highly dangerous … You should only consider visiting areas of Iraq, outside of those to which we advise against all travel, if you have essential commercial or professional reasons to do so.”
Iraq, as the above extract from the UK's Foreign Office website attests, is not a safe place. And yet, on Thursday October 15, 39 Iraqis who had, for whatever reason, failed the tests of the UK's supposedly 'soft touch' asylum regime, were forcibly deported back there. Though they numbered less than 40, it was not an empty flight. According to the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, 130 security guards occupied the remaining seats.
On touching down in Baghdad, the UK's border authorities received a shock. An Iraqi army officer boarded the plane, and instructed only people who genuinely wanted to return to disembark. Ten chose to do so, and the rest, following the officer's orders, stayed on the plane which then returned to London. Looking on the bright side, Lin Homer, the UK Border Agency's Chief Executive, said on the matter: “We are establishing a new route to southern Iraq and have successfully returned 10 Iraqis to the Baghdad area. This is an important first step for us.”
So the forcible return of people to a country they fled, a country deemed so dangerous that – even with personal security guards – British visitors are advised in no uncertain terms to avoid, is an “important first step”? I'm not sure I follow that line of thinking.
Neither did the UN who were incredulous, stating that it believed Britain had failed in its humanitarian responsibilities toward these people. And yet for decades, such actions have gone broadly accepted – legitimised by a mixture of apathy and vaguely formed arguments fed by frenzied tabloid reports of asylum seekers in gilded palaces paid for by the state. (To put the record straight on that front, by the way, new UK rules see single asylum seekers over 25 living on £35.13 a week, while lone parents with one child receive £42.16. Further, strictly enforced regulation refuses the opportunity to top up this pittance with any work whatsoever.)
And why does this happen? Because we've allowed an artefact with no grounding in reality to dominate our culture. Political borders, lines drawn on maps around 200 years ago, have become so entangled into our ways of thinking that we unwittingly accept them as normal. Over time, these lines have come to be seen as representations of fundamental cultural differences between 'us' and 'them'. Now, they're used as a way to stratify global society – those who, by chance of birth, were born inside the boundaries have the right to certain privileges, those born outside don't.
The cost of immigration to host countries is at worst negligible (unsurprising given the figures above), and most studies from sources across the political spectrum tend to show that immigrants, whether skilled or unskilled, add value to the economy. After all, strawberries, asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, don't climb from the soil to their glitzy supermarket packaging on their own, and services from nursing to cleaning would collapse without the migrant labour which provide their backbone.
But when there's political upheaval, playing to base emotional constructions of territory provides a useful distraction. It seems perfectly obvious that in a time when money is short, any additional strain on resources is a step too far, right? Well maybe, but surely there's a case for some rational mathematics here too?
To give just one example, tax avoidance by the world's richest people and corporations costs the global tax base dear. In early 2009, the UK's revenue agencies estimated that it was losing up to £13 billion annually due to tax avoidance. And, incidentally, the UK has some of Europe's lowest tax rates anyway. Yet, oddly, these facts don't seem to incite quite the same levels of tabloid rage. Rather than vilifying the desperate, and sending them to places our own authorities deem unsafe, we should be looking closer to home for those to accuse of playing the system.
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £20 (UK) / £43 (EU) / £58 (Rest of the World).
Borders (text) by Olly Zanetti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (5)
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.
This seems a little patronising Olly. So immigrants are great because we can get them to do loads of crap menial jobs and pay them fuck all?
Mass immigration of unskilled labour actually worsens inequality by lowering pay levels for the poorest.
It's not as simple as just abandoning borders. In order to provide welfare and services, you do need states and borders.
He's obviously a very concerned humanitarian who spends sleepless nights worrying about deepening inequality, what with all his fretting over the horrendous "mass immigration" we're suffering.
Oh, yeah that's right - I forgot. If these "immigrants" aren't on our shores, we need not factor them into our income inequality metrics, thereby making our nation a much more stomachable blend of middle-class and upper middle-class indigenous types.
Immigration doesn't deepen inequality, Rob. But if you want to back-up your point, perhaps Nick Griffin could lend you a statistic or two...
It is a complicated issue. I wouldn't want to abandon borders per se – there has to be some way of delineating administrative areas – but the fact is that these borders are so permeable as to be virtually useless. The rich can move around pretty much as they wish and, whether under trains or in the back of lorries, the poor are moving around too. So, the border itself serves little physical function. Instead, it serves as a distraction. 'Cracking down' on immigration is an easy tabloid headline, and it provides a handy cover to the real things that are preventing good public services, such as the criminal theft from the state of massive tax avoidance.
And, as @Ed Andrews notes, perhaps if we weren't so busy exporting our top-notch models of 'democracy' around the world, people wouldn't be so keen on fleeing elsewhere.