Framing Immigrants

FRAMING IMMIGRANTS

Bobbie Gilmore SSC (MRCI)

EVERY FOUR MINUTES A MIGRANT IS ARRESTED IN BRITAIN.

The front-page tabloid headline caught my attention. Of course that was its main purpose. The substance of the information below the headline was confusing. Was it’s framing of migrant crime a lobbying ploy for more funding and resource for the police or an attack on present British Government policy?

Below the headline it stated:
"Figures show that a foreigner is being arrested every four minutes in the streets of Britain."
Using out of date figures to bolster the headline it stated; 79,308 foreign nationals were arrested in Britain in 2006. It did not state the number convicted of crimes.

…we must try to deal with immigration by making it less necessary.

…one obvious starting point is allowing people to work and live decently and with dignity in their own countries is to resolve the debt crisis.
(Susan George. The DEBT BOOMERANG. 1992)

The article continued quoting a spokesperson from the Police Federation; “An intolerable strain on our country.”

In a related article a Chief Constable stated; “All we want is fair treatment and for our funding to match the job we are being asked to do.”

The tabloid editorial stated; “Britain pays the price as immigrant crime soars.” The editorial concludes; “When the history of this country’s decline is written, there will be many dark chapters devoted to Labour’s misrule.”

One would get the impression from such headlines that crime in Britain is an immigrant monopoly. As this tabloid is also sold in Ireland is it also to be assumed by readers that crime in Ireland is exclusive to immigrants? These headlines and the supporting script generally seem to use appealing persuasion based on the evidence of personal prejudice to take the place of the uncomfortable truth that the police need funding and Britain needs immigrants.

This article admits that there are 5.4 million immigrants in Britain at present. However, it fails to mention that a similar number of British immigrants, 5.5 million, live in other countries. Yet, the same article uses the phrase, “foreigner is being arrested.” It does not differentiate between foreigners who are immigrants and foreigners who are tourists. To have any degree of credibility and balance the tabloid should have also given the number of foreigners that come to Britain each year. Too much to expect!

Immigrants are fair game to be framed for the sake of audience competition in the pursuit of market share. Nevertheless, immigrants who break the law should be treated with the same access to justice as the indigenous population.

Are the 25 million foreign tourists that come to Britain (2003) and 9 million foreign tourists that come to Ireland included in the author’s one in four migrant arrests?

Also, from the article one would get the impression that immigration to Britain and Europe is a one-way street. However, the BBC News (11/12/06) stated;
“every three minutes a British national packs their bags and starts a new life abroad.”
Studies show that Britain (and Ireland) has more people living abroad that almost any other country. 80% say they leave for a better life, a better job, better climate or to join loved ones. Surprise, surprise, the British and Irish are just like the Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, French, Indians, Pakistanis and others.

Really, what this going and coming means is that the intake of immigrants to Britain and Ireland each year compares to the population of the city of Birmingham and the numbers that depart probably compares to the city of Northampton and its surrounds. So, not much loss or gain. But then, why the lurid frightened tabloid headlines? Are the places the British immigrants enter as fearful as Britain and Ireland seem to be of the immigrants arriving here?

Another tabloid headline states;

“They (immigrants) don’t Integrate, they don’t learn English.”

Does anyone ever ask how many of the British and Irish living in the Iberian Peninsula learn Spanish, Portuguese or integrate?

Presently in Ireland, the urgent message emanating from sections of the media and other institutions concerns the effects of alcohol and drug addiction. Yet, the Irish government is concentrating its energies on the formulation of a new immigration and residency policy ( read more). Again, from listening to the debate one is given the impression that immigrants are a threat to state security rather than both an asset and a need for the economy and society.

THE SCRAMBLE FOR DISPOSABLE TALENT
And as this bill is being debated Ireland and other states are engaged in a scramble for skilled workers. (read more)

Why just skilled workers? There seems to be an assumption that most difficult, dangerous and difficult manufacturing jobs will be done cheaply in Asia or the Caribbean by low skilled workers. The high skilled immigrants will service the needs of the information, affluent economies and under new temporary migrant programs can be easily recycled when not needed. Few questions are asked about the effects of underdevelopment caused by brain drain under these temporary migrant programs in the migrant’s countries of origin. Of course temporary migrant workers will be denied family reunification, health, equal pay, housing and welfare rights.

These programs managed by agencies on behalf of states will administer their own procedures in which a rights-based welfare society will be replaced by an opportunity society in an atmosphere of corporate social responsibility. Transnational recruiting agencies will manage migration. States will control immigration to meet the needs of international investment.

This operation in the use and abuse of migrant workers resembles the policies of the West Indian plantocracy in a previous century, United Fruit in the last century, the post war guest worker programs in Germany and presently the temporary migrant worker procedures in the Middle East and Asian Tigers. Hopefully, in democratic countries that have signed and ratified human rights declarations these disposable worker programs will fail as they did in Germany and elsewhere. Immigrants will seek their rights to welfare, housing, health, education, welfare and family reunification. Is it wishful thinking that their home states will support their desire to be treated with human dignity as equals?

But the question must be raised in regard to the shortage of personnel needed in affluent countries to do the service, health, caring and heavy lifting work? These are jobs and work that cannot be exported to Ghana, China, Algeria or Lahore. Developers have little interest in building houses for Irish people in Accra or rest homes in Bangalore. It is in these areas of the economy and society that new immigration policies must take account of.

But to return to the tabloid headlines born out of a cocktail of security and sentiment, immigration policies need to be posited on objective information. The danger lies in the present security, sentiment-led atmosphere that synthetic patriotism of tabloid headlines will rule the day and serve up a dusted-down market-state relic from the past. European states and their affluent former colonial extensions cannot continue to allow racism a place in any civilized global or local interaction. How good it would be to have equal enthusiasm to rid Europe of racism as there seems to be to control human movement?

Kumar has little to show after three and a half years mixing concrete at Singapore construction sites, without a single day off. After rent, food and a small remittance to support his family back home in India, he has just enough to repay the agent who found him his job, for a fee of $5,400. Once he blew his knee in a work accident, Kumar could no longer do his job. So he is legally required to go back to India, where he’ll pay another broker in order to return to Singapore. “We don’t have any savings” he says. “Nothing has really changed”. (Newsweek)

WHY FRAME KUMAR?
It’s an appalling vista.