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Immigration and asylum seeking and the black economy of illegal
migrant labor have been turned into a single concept in the mind
of the British public by the country's notorious tabloid newspapers.
No nation's tabloids are better at whipping up hysteria than
Britain's, and they have turned the conflated asylum/trafficking
issue into the hottest of hot button issues. We're being inundated
by cheats and scroungers, the tabloids scream. They come to Britain,
claim asylum and then disappear and live off the generosity of
the British taxpayer, the papers huff and puff. During the recent
election campaign British Prime Minister Tony Blair was made to
squirm over the situation during an interview with the BBC's Jeremy
Paxman.
Paxman asked Blair how many failed asylum seekers there were
roaming around Britain, working in the underground economy. Blair
said it was pointless to put a number on them. Paxman asked the
question again and again, 20 times in all and never received an
answer. Blair wasn't necessarily being politically evasive. Roger
Plant of the ILO notes that it is "difficult to gather numbers
when everything is illegal."
Bridget Anderson, a sociologist at Oxford University thinks there
are around half a million migrant workers in Britain, but won't
risk a guess on how many are legal. She does know why there are
more of them in Britain than France or Germany: Britain's deregulated
labor markets.
While the British government tries to avoid discussion of the
topic, British business leaders have begun to acknowledge the
plain fact: migrant labor, legal or illegal, is absolutely necessary
to keep the British economy going.
So the conditions for trafficking and modern day slavery are
rife in Britain. Businesses desperately need workers, particularly
in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. There are tens of thousands
of people wanting to come and do those jobs. The government is
afraid to acknowledge the need for more migrants to be allowed
into the country legally, but doesn't want to disrupt the economy
and so turns a blind eye when they enter illegally --until the
tabloids scream. And inevitably, foreign workers find themselves
working in and dangerous circumstances. And, the only time the
issue gets a thorough airing in public is in the wake of tragedy
as happened in February 2004, when a group of Chinese
cockle pickers working in the middle of the night in Morecombe
bay were trapped by the incoming tide and drowned.
The investigation into the tragedy focused on the gangmasters,
the men who organized the workers and sent them out in dangerous
conditions. The Morecombe Bay tragedy led Labor MP Jim Sheridan
to create legislation to regulate gangmasters dealing with all
migrant labor groups in Britain.
Sheridan describes the conditions of most migrant laborers as
"modern-day slavery." But his bill is just a small step
to deal with the problem. There is no political will to do more.
For ordinary citizens, whether in the UK or the US, xenophobia
seems to trump reason on this issue. And clearly politicians don't
see an upside in convincing their electorates to let more migrant
workers in.
That's short sighted according to Roger Plant, because illegal
migration, asylum seeking, trafficking -- call the problem what
you will, is going to continue to grow. The declining birth rate
in Europe means there will be ever greater reliance on foreign
workers.
While officials engage in their meager debates on this, the streets
of London continue to fill with illegal migrants on their way
into or out of forced labor. They're living rough, trying to catch
a break.
A small Salvation Army hall near Victoria Station is a drop-in
center for homeless foreign workers. Most of the fellows in the
center one particular Thursday night are Polish, although here
and there are a couple of Ukrainians and one bloke from Azerbaijan.
Sitting on the other side of the Salvation Army hall is a man
every one calls the professor. Whether this is because of his
fluent English or his ability to put his plight and the plight
of his fellows in an historical context isn't clear. What is clear
is why the professor, whose real name is Andrzej, came to London:
The radical liberalization of the Polish economy after the fall
of communism. "In Poland during the transformation,"
Andrzej explains, "Many millions of people were left without
jobs; the transformation was a little too quick."
Andrzej, in his 50s, was one of those laid off when his state-owned
factory was privatized. The new owners wanted only young workers
and he was unemployed for three years. Then he decided to come
to Britain and get legitimate work. Now this grandfather stifles
loneliness by spending time at the Salvation Army hall. Why does
he stay?
"I've thought about going to Poland," he says. "But
what can I do there?"
"But what can you do here?" a reporter asks.
"Here, at least, there is hope."
Hope, not naiveté is what keeps people heading to Britain
and to the rest of the industrial world, and it is a bitter irony
that hope might be one of the strongest reasons people find themselves
in debt to snakeheads or working as modern day slaves.
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