ICAR Focus On April 2010: Asylum in the elections
29 April 2010
Jacob Lagnado takes a caustic look at where and why asylum has featured in the General Election – and where it hasn't, despite campaigners' efforts.
As we enter the final days of the election campaign it might be worth starting to gather up some of the shrapnel labelled asylum that is lying around the electoral battlefield and see what to make of it. While, as journalist Mehdi Hasan notes and Rochdale proves, immigration has had a constant presence during the campaign despite protestations to the contrary, asylum itself has only really hit the headlines courtesy of the born again Lib Dems’ amnesty proposals, with their backing for work-hungry (sic) asylum seekers suffering minor grazes in the same melee. So far, so shift-of-national-focus from asylum to immigration more generally.
This was not, perhaps, what refugee advocates working on the elections had in mind. And it wasn’t for want of trying. Their modus operandi was a series of pledges. We had the Sanctuary Pledge (“our tradition of providing sanctuary is part of what makes Britain great”); the Asylum Election Pledge (“I promise to remember the importance of refugee protection”); and the Right to a Voice campaign (“for ESOL to be re-instated for asylum seekers from day one”). The I Love Migrants campaign was launched too - a kindred spirit in the wider arena.
Some might say that by asking politicians to make a promise you’re on a hiding to nothing. And so it turns out: all three actually signed the asylum election pledge, content this would mean little in practice. Government and opposition united in their support for refugees – or as the current incumbents put it some years ago, they are for ‘secure borders, safe havens’.
The ESOL pledge seems to have made least waves nationally, not surprising given it involves a concrete commitment. Although at a local level at least one parliamentary candidate in London has made this issue central to her campaign, in the process garnering support from teaching and transport unions in the capital.
In recent times asylum NGOs have chosen to campaign above all on child detention and the right to work for asylum seekers. This was no doubt believed to be a highly pragmatic choice – they were thought to be ‘winnable’ issues. After all, if you can’t win on locking up innocent kids, then god help you. But how pragmatic was it? Even these demands have failed to slip into the manifestos. With the exception, that is, of the Lib Dems on the right to work issue. And even there, Home Secretary and ex union leader Alan Johnson wielded skewed statistics to attack the Lib Dems. Did his ex-colleagues at the TUC’s Let Them Work campaign feel the pain?
So was it right to be so unambitious? Is continuously watering down one’s demands in response to perceived public opinion really pragmatic? The way the amnesty issue has been framed seems to suggest not. As one refugee blogger points out , the Lib Dem proposal was already so strict as to be actually detrimental to migrant and refugee communities. And yet even that can be shown as going too far! No doubt some will say that is a necessary step towards getting the issue ‘out there’. Others might say it is a sign of how weak, vaguely emotive ideas will be shot down, its authors ‘found out’.
And what is worse, even if by some act of God (many of the pledges do seem to have a religious source) child detention was ended and the minority who have managed to stay undercover for ten years are legalised, it is entirely conceivable that these would be minor palliatives as even greater restrictions on migrant and refugee freedom of movement and right to remain are put in place, in a kind of Faustian pact which augurs poorly for the future.