looks at the striking similarities between the major parties views on asylum and immigration. Why do they all sound the same? The debate on asylum and moved immigration has entirely onto the terrain of the right and far right. Labour wants a points system which will favour well educated, English speaking workers.
Only skilled workers will be allowed to apply to settle permanently and then only after a five-year wait. The Tories will set a annual quota, the size of which will be determined by how much of a furore the right-wing press can generate.
As for the rest of the two parties' policies the differences are only of nuances and administanve detail. So while Labour will fingerprint people to identify them in case they burn their documents the Tories will stop people changing from a student or holiday visa to a workwhich precipitated the flight of Amina, Eva and Lorin to the UK. support her. For further information see www.ncadc.org.uk vergence happening now?"
Since Labour's 1997 election victory every reactionary newspaper and journalist in the country has been banging on about two themes. The first is how the European Union is becoming important than the Westminster parliament. The second is that Britain is sinking under the weight of immigrants and asylum seekers i Lorin Sulainan Lorin Sulaiman, 14, her 16-year-old sister Eva and their Mum Amina, from Portsmouth have been detained since early October 2004 at Tynsley House Removal Centre. have 2 family members in prison in Syria. Mohammed the father, whom they have not seen for 12 years, has been in prison since 1993 and his son Mosoud was imprisoned in September 2002, On their journey to the UK they got separated from their brother Diara, whom they have not seen or heard of since. At this demonstration around 100 of Lorin's school friends turned out to
Britain's history of empire. Given that Blair's electoral strategy has been to chase the readerships and proprietors of the most right-wing papers in the country it is not surprising that the Labour Party is accepting as true much of the racist discourse on the subject of asylum and immigration. As a consequence refugees will only be given temporary leave to remain in the country
They are Syrian Kurds who and restaurants. The fear of discovery will be hanging over them and they will be hyper-exploited by employers, gang masters and landlords.
The legal framework for this sort of discrimination is already in place. Workers from the new member states of the European Union such as Czech Republic, Estonia, and Hungary are not entitled Molly website remarks "On average, the EU's 75 million new citizens earn only 40% of the income enjoyed by people in the rest of the Union". When Turkey, Croatia and Romania join that figure will be lower still.
The consensus now among all the parties of the ruling class, and that includes Labour, is simple. They want to put a very tight squeeze on non-white, non-European immigration. If that means that refugees and seekers suffer and die that is not a problem.
British capital has an alternative source of cheap labour to do the dirty jobs and it has imposed the regulatory framework to ensure that they are exploited to the maximum.
This poses two immediate challenges for socialists. While individual family deportations are important they are only a tiny fraction of the misery that immigrants and refugees face. The struggle has to be taken up around employment rights and unionisation. The builders, cleaners, meat-processing workers living in squalid, overcrowded flats have to be