Western immigration policy is a theatre of cruelty
JVL Introduction
In a blistering attack on immigration policy that has left at least 25,000 drowned off the coasts of Europe in the last decade, Kenan Malik demolishes the apologetic justifications for it.
Immigration policies in the west are based on making it as difficult as possible for irregular migrants in order to deter them. That’s what the “hostile environment” and “offshoring” are about.
But deterrence doesn’t deter. It makes people take ever greater risks instead. “People smugglers” may be odious, but they are the result of vindictive immigration polices, not the cause of people seeking refuge.
“Rather than taking a stand to win support for moral and workable policies,” says Malik, “politicians and commentators prefer to exploit public anxieties that they themselves have nurtured as an alibi for the pursuit of even more brutal policies.”
This article was originally published by the Observer on Sun 18 Dec 2022. Read the original here.
Workable proposals? No, western immigration policy is a theatre of cruelty
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A blistering piece -how many more times does this need to be said and how many more people will die until politicians remember that all the people taking these terrible risks are, first and foremost people. As Warsan Shire wrote: “you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land”.
It needs to be said and loudly – that you don’t have to risk your life if you are a citizen critic of an ‘enemy’ of the UK. Hong Kong Chinese have ready access to this country. Ukrainians are given priority treatment. But if you are ‘of colour’ and from one of the countries NATO or the US/UK axis of evil has pulverised and smashed (Libya/Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria) you can go to hell.
The only way to prevent these tragedies is the establishment of ‘open borders’.