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Fighting the Nazi Threat TodayFORTRESS EUROPENever Again!
Immigrants in modern Europe MODERN Europe has been created by immigrants. In every city you can find evidence of people arriving from elsewhere and building new lives. Jews fled from the violence of Eastern Europe to Germany and elsewhere at the end of the 19th century; later some escaped the Holocaust by fleeing again to Britain and elsewhere in Europe. The Irish emigrated to Britain and America in large numbers in the 19th century. Since the 1950s Turkish guest workers have lived and worked in Germany, and many people from the ex-French colonies of Algeria and Morocco have settled in France. Communities of Italians, mainly from the poor south of the country, live all over Europe. In Britain the arrival of the boat carrying immigrants from the Caribbean, the Windrush, in 1948 began the era of mass emigration to Britain from the Caribbean; later people arrived from the Indian subcontinent. All these people have contributed both to the economies of the countries they have settled in and to building varied and rich multicultural societies. Often poor and seeking work, many of these immigrants were invited by richer countries to fill essential and often menial jobs and have helped the economy in these countries grow. Later immigrants and refugees have arrived fleeing war and persecution. The break up of former Yugoslavia forced many Bosnians abroad, and more recently Kosovans have entered many countries in Europe, including Italy and Britain, because of the war in Kosovo between the Serbian state and the ethnic Albanians who are the majority population there. At the same time immigrants and subsequently their children and grandchildren have often suffered from racism and discrimination of all kinds. Immigrants tend to have the worst housing and jobs, for example, and it is often made clear to them that they do not belong. Reports from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) on a country by country basis consistently show higher unemployment levels, for example, among immigrant populations, and among longer established minorities such as the Roma (Gypsies) in Slovakia. Many Turkish guest workers in Germany have lived there for 20 years or longer, yet they cannot apply for German citizenship, and their children attend separate schools. Scapegoating immigrants and minorities Over the last few years economic conditions have got worse in Europe and beyond, and poverty and unemployment have risen. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) calculated that, on a conservative basis, the number of refugees worldwide rose by 70 percent to 17 million between 1985 and 1991. Only a fraction of these reached Europe, and in Western Europe the increase in asylum applications represented under 5 percent of the total rise in refugees (quoted in Collinson, 1994, Europe and International Migration). This has not stopped a wave of panic and pan-European legislation to keep people out. At the same time the political situation has become very uncertain: the reunification of East and West Germany, for example, led to mass unemployment in the East with the closure of many factories, and a massive rise in crime and corruption. At the same time war in places like Bosnia and Somalia has left many refugees seeking asylum. Europe’s Nazis have used this situation to whip up hatred both against new immigrants and asylum seekers, and against resident ethnic and other minorities as well. The result has been an increase in racism and scapegoating, both official and unofficial. Across Europe the level of racist attacks has risen remorselessly. Refugees--not welcome in Europe Unfortunately, politicians have played a major part in making it respectable to blame immigrants and ethnic minorities for problems such as unemployment, poor housing and crime. For example, the Roma in Slovakia have been subject to vicious racism, including assaults. The response of some politicians has been to suggest that they should be forced to live in closed off ghettos. Across Europe immigrants and refugees have been targeted, and European Community rules as formulated in the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention make entry into European Community countries difficult. The Tory government in Britain, for example, despite a very low level of immigration, introduced a new Asylum Act which makes it very difficult to seek asylum in this country. Rather than repealing it, the Labour government is now tightening up on rules for seeking asylum, and restricting further the help refugees and asylum seekers can receive. The attitude of mainstream politicians has given encouragement to neo-Nazis by casting their victims as the cause of the problem. Following the burning down of a refugee hostel in Rostock in East Germany by neo-Nazis and similar events, the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl indicated that the solution was to limit ‘false’ asylum seekers. Recently a boy of 14 who had been in Germany since he was two months old was expelled from Germany, and returned to Turkey. In France the then Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua swamped immigrant areas with police, blaming youth there for crime, and stated that ‘France no longer welcomes immigrants and intends to pursue a policy of zero immigration’. Many, including those fleeing the violence in Algeria, have been deported. Inevitably such attitudes towards immigrants have been extended to people who already live, and were in many cases born in Europe, and the result has been a general rise in racism.
Death by policy People do not leave behind their homes, their families and their jobs without strong reasons, whether these be persecution by government, civil war and terror or extreme poverty. Yet increasingly refugees and asylum seekers are assumed to be criminals and scroungers. These policies have led to what United for Intercultural Action has described as death by policy. It has published a list of over 1,000 deaths between 1993 and 1998 which it believes are directly attributable to the building of ‘Fortress Europe’. As it points out, ‘These deaths are not singular incidents, they are the symptoms of policies that no longer see the humanity of those fleeing their homeland, but prefer to see them as numbers, or worse, as a natural disaster, a ‘flood’.’ Deaths are listed if they can be put down to Fortress Europe (border militarisation, asylum laws, accommodation, detention policy, deportations, carrier sanctions). Some of the many examples it gives are:
(source: Information leaflet No 14, United for Intercultural Action (the European Network Against Nationalism, Racism, Fascism and in support of Migrants and Refugees), Postbus 413, NL-1000 AK Amsterdam. Or at http://www.united.non-profit.nl/ ). |
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Poster
produced by French anti-Nazis comparing Le Pen and the French National Front with Hitler
and the Nazis. The Nazis blamed Jews for taking jobs, and, in the same way, the French
National Front blames ‘immigrants’ for unemployment. British Nazis say black and
Asian people take jobs away from white people. Unemployment is too high for everyone in
Britain, but it is worse for people from ethnic minorities. According to the latest
figures from the Commission for Racial Equality (1998), the unemployment rate for people
from ethnic minorities is 19 percent--for white people it is 8 percent. 39 percent of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi men are unemployed, according to a study by the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation published in 1998. The CRE also points out that the proportion of ethnic
minority families who are homeless is three times as high as the proportion of white
families; and pupils from ethnic minorities are five times more likely to face permanent
exclusion from school.
One of the many detention centres for
holding asylum seekers