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Roger Warren Evans
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item0026D 566,567 566 16 December 2002 Democratic Failures: Immigration Two subjects overshadow current politics, namely immigration and drugs. Yet our elected politicians, for sheer fear of the electorate, shy away from the reform process. Rational, open debate is impossible on either subject, seemingly because none of our leaders – of any Party – is prepared to take the lead. This represents a serious failing of the democratic process. On immigration, political rhetoric is becoming more strident, less liberal, throughout Europe. The EU countries, under the guise of policy integration, are tightening-up border controls, reducing benefits, and otherwise intimidating would-be migrants. The classification of migration as “illegal, except where permitted” still stands, and is indeed being reinforced throughout Europe. Our politicians are keen to chant with the crowds that immigration is a bad thing, and foreigners should be “kept out” – or even “sent back”. Xenophobia is rising, and our politicians consider it expedient to ride that tide. Yet it must be clear that the Drawbridge Europe strategy is bound to fail. Our treatment of newcomers is inhumane, always verging on the illegal, in terms of human rights. Continuing migration, at levels which are socially acceptable, clearly constitutes an economic and political advantage to the host society. And the wealthy societies of this world should, as a matter of principle, be offering the prospects of participation to newcomers: no society is the absolute proprietor of the territory which its members currently occupy. International migration remains one of the great drivers of world social and economic development. Attempts to maintain every nation-state as a separate and distinct “fortress” territory are bound to fail, not least because of the centrality of global tourism and the whole family-visiting process. And that failure can wreak appalling human suffering. By our misconceived regulatory laws, we encourage the operation of major criminal networks, and cruel human trafficking, which disfigures our civilisation. The need is for a new legal order which declares all initial migration to be lawful, permitting newcomers to enter lawfully in all cases and to register as of right and to work under permit, while re-designing the benefit entitlement systems as a means of managing rates of migration. This system would operate alongside the visa-systems for education and training which are already in operation, and be supplementary to them. And the effect would be to cripple the international criminal gangs who thrive upon breaching our unjust and misconceived regulations. A society’s “workforce”, it is argued, should be allowed to expand and contract lawfully, in line with market requirements, locally and regionally. The Government’s recent extension of the work-permit system is a move in the right direction, and the current expansion of the EU will, as from 2004, provide a much-improved legal framework for migrants currently treated as illegal. Workers would of course differ in their entitlement to benefit, and this would become the key differentiating factor in the regulation of status, thus –
All non-EU migrants would fall into Category 3, whether they were claiming asylum on political grounds or not. The presumption against “economic migrants” would be removed, by this new system of categorisation. Category 3 workers would be entitled to basic services (e.g. A&E hospital services) and their children would be entitled to state schooling while they were here, but they would not be entitled to unemployment or other welfare benefits unless either (a) they had completed a qualifying period of actual tax-paying employment in the UK (say, 12 or 18 months), or (b) they had paid special premiums for additional cover, under a new NI charging-system. These are new ideas, and should be considered in the process of open public debate. Category 3 migrants who were not seeking asylum might well receive assistance from churches, charities, or other sponsors, but would have no automatic entitlement to financial support of any kind, following a short initial period after first registration. Those specifically seeking political asylum would progress their claims, under all relevant international conventions, with specific benefit consequences if successful. Category 3 workers would at all times remain subject to deportation, unless possessing asylum rights. Those who did not register at all would be liable to immediate deportation, if not then accepting registration. Failure to maintain registration would also entail deportation, perhaps also the withdrawal of all state services. If migrant households became dependent upon state benefit payments, they would also be liable to deportation, unless a credible sponsor would undertake to meet all their subsistence costs, and NI charges: such sponsorship arrangements are already a feature of Canadian migration law, and seem to operate satisfactorily. Effectively, a new statutory line would be drawn - not at the geographical frontier of the country (as at present) but at the “benefit boundary”. Apart from the most basic services, no migrants would be entitled to remain in the country if they became dependent upon state benefits. Such a system would, it is argued, be more likely to gain acceptance as fair and humane, both by members of the host community and the migrants themselves. Migrants who maintained a valid official registration and who supported themselves would be allowed to remain, and to apply for naturalisation in due course in the ordinary way. This would require a sea-change both of law and public attitudes. But if European legal systems are to be equipped to handle the greater mobility which is bound to characterise the coming century, radical new thinking is needed. Within the EU, such changes would have to be negotiated between all the parties, and that process might take several years.
What do you think? Drop me a line
567 16 December 2002 Democratic Failures: Psychoactive Drugs Two subjects overshadow current politics, namely immigration and drugs. Yet our elected politicians, for sheer fear of the electorate, shy away from the reform process. Rational, open debate is impossible on either subject, seemingly because none of our leaders – of any Party – is prepared to take the lead. This represents a serious failing of the democratic process. It must be clear that “drugs prohibition” cannot survive much longer, nationally or globally. Driven originally by the US religious right of the 1920s, it has proved the most destructive political misjudgment of the 20th century, spawning global criminal communities, huge corrosive networks of criminality undermining civic order and wrecking millions of lives. Most democratic politicians will, in private, acknowledge this to be true – yet nobody will take a lead in public. The need is to place all psychoactive substances, both “soft” and “hard” drugs on the same legal footing as alcohol and tobacco, which are confronted as legal if harmful substances. For all such substances, medical and other assistance should be offered to consumers whise use is problematic, including those addicted. The entire production and supply chain should be actively regulated and licensed, for the achievement of quality control and other public service objectives. Local sales outlets should be licensed by local authorities, working with the support of a new, dedicated National Drugs Agency. Active educational programmes should keep users and potential users fully-informed of the implications of consumption. That is the only acceptable way, in a tolerant and liberal society, of countering the potential harm of consumption. “Prohibition”, with all its destructive systemic side-effects (in particular, the cultivation of criminality throughout the supply chain), complicates every initiative, makes every problem far more difficult to solve. Yet the democratic political process is demonstrating its ineffectiveness, in confronting the case for reform. In the UK, there are just ten leading politicians who have committed themselves publicly to drugs legalisation, namely –
They have done so, by way of their public signature of The Angel Declaration, and you can do the same, by signing, right here on-line Angel Declaration. It is a matter of pride to me, as a Signatory myself, and Secretary to the Angel Declaration, that these ten have shown such outstanding leadership.
What do you think? Drop me a line Another failing of democracy: Immigration
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