Around the world we are seeing a rise in Right Wing politicians with a specific focus on the issue of immigration. Country after country is either reinforcing its borders, or planning to do so. The criteria for authorised immigration are getting tighter and more expensive and the rhetoric against those escaping war, torture, poverty or hunger is becoming more severe. Underpinning all this is a negative stance towards “foreigners” who are blamed for housing shortages, low wages, difficult access to health care, pressures on schools and crime. The answers to these supposed effects include closing borders to new migrants, rounding up unauthorised migrants and deporting them, and even “re-migration” (expelling those with a legitimate right to remain in the country).
We could look at the facts and try to discover if any or all of these negative effects can indeed be laid at the doors of immigrants, but, frankly, many have already done so, and none of these claims stand up to scrutiny.
But, let’s take another approach. Let’s think about where we place borders and how we control them.
In the Middle Ages many cities in Europe built fortified walls around themselves. The gates into the cities were guarded by armed men and nobody could move freely into and out of the city.
Then as nation states arose those walls came down, either literally, or functionally. The borders were re-drawn around the new nations.
If you are at all interested in old maps, it’s easy to see that the current “national” borders, have, in many cases, been in existence for only a few decades, and that many have been drawn and re-drawn repeatedly.
But let’s do a thought exercise. What if we were to recreate, if not the actual walls, the borders around cities? What if, for example, we stopped people moving from one part of a country to another part? After all, the arguments against migration from one country to another are mainly down to strains placed on existing services, such as housing, health care and education, on the places to which the migrants move. So, if the problem is people moving into a particular city, or, even area of a city, and the answer is to stop them, why prevent only those coming from other countries? Why not stop those people coming from other cities in the same country?
China does this. There was a recent report about taxi drivers in Shanghai, many of whom are “migrant workers” whose homes and families are hundreds of miles away (but still in China). These workers have a right to work in Shanghai, live in dormitories together, but have no right to bring their families with them, and no right to health care within Shanghai.
How does that sound?
Would you like your country to function like that, controlling the movement of people within the country to stop “locals” in one city from being “invaded” by “hordes” from other cities, or from the countryside?
The rising tide of anti-foreigner speech, and actions, in populations and amongst politicians, is a return to the Middle Ages. Haven’t we developed since then? Haven’t we learned, since then, to identify with other humans who happen to live further away from us?
Xenophobia is a political weapon. Migration is not a “legitimate concern”. The issue is how a country uses and directs its resources. If there is a deficit somewhere, then the answer is to address that deficit, not take away freedoms, or stoke fear and hatred of “the other”.
It makes no more sense to try to control movement over national borders than it does to control movement within them. Setting one part of the population against another is a device to keep the privileged, privileged, to keep the elite, elite, to keep the wealthy, wealthy.
We have greater wealth in our countries now than we ever have, but we’ve developed an economic/political system which funnels most of it into the hands of a tiny minority. It’s only the richest who are substantially increasing their wealth over the last fifty years. That’s untenable. But it’s not an issue caused by migration, or insufficient control of borders.
And, for those who say that free movement over borders would be a nightmare, why isn’t it a nightmare to allow free movement within them?
Heroes Not Zombies 