Hand-in-hand with this drive to entrench the second-class status of immigrant workers, the government is moving to encourage a greater inflow of workers from Eastern European countries that are due to join the European Union (EU) in the next couple of months.

The “23 percent” boast appeared on the web site of the Home Office, the government department that enforces London’s anti-immigrant policies. The figure equals around 17,000 asylum seekers and their families. The web site also announced the opening in August of a new prison—dubbed a “removal centre”—near London’s Heathrow Airport, and reported that Home Office “enforcement activities” against immigrant workers are in an “ongoing process of improvement.”

According to the BBC, such “enforcement activities” include raids by immigration cops that led to the deportation of 14,000 people in 2003.

Such moves have been accompanied by a step-up in anti-immigrant hysteria in the media. A January Daily Express headline warned of “the Great Invasion 2004.” The paper claimed 1.6 million Roma people (Gypsies) from Eastern Europe were “ready to flood” into Britain “to leech on us”—that is, to claim welfare benefits.

Other right-wing newspapers joined the anti-immigrant chorus. Andrew Green, a former British ambassador and chairman of MigrationwatchUK, condemned the government’s “failed immigration policy” in the January 24 Daily Mail. In another article, Green said Home Secretary David Blunkett “has failed to wake up to the immigration nightmare.” The right-winger claimed, “there is a strong feeling here that we are losing our culture.”

The raids continue. Two workers from Guatemala and Brazil were arrested and deported after one such cop action on a motorway services station March 8.

A day later immigration police raided the homes of five meat processing workers from Eastern Europe employed at the Jeffrey Davies and Davies plant in Kent. The cops imprisoned the workers for two days and then deported them.

The deportations were carried out even though in less than eight weeks these workers would be allowed to live and work here, after their countries of origin become EU members. That fact illustrates how the real purpose of such persecution is to intimidate rather than drive out immigrant workers from Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

Under EU immigration rules, citizens of existing EU countries, and those of Cyprus and Malta, which are among the 10 countries joining May 1, are supposed to be able to travel, settle, and work in any other member state. However, the accession or entry treaty into the imperialist-run alliance allows for special restrictions to be placed on immigrants from the other eight new EU members from Eastern Europe for up to seven years. Propaganda aside, Britain’s ruling rich have indicated that they regard the numerical growth of the EU as an opportunity. Having gone further than their French, German, and other rivals in assaults on workers’ wages and living standards, they are licking their lips at the profits they anticipate making from the labor of workers from the east.

“We need to ensure that we can meet those big areas for unskilled employment,” said Blunkett in the February 9 Guardian. “This will be partly met by a sensible approach to the accession countries from May onward.”

The BBC reported March 3 that a big-business “economic forecasting group”—the Ernst & Young Item Club—said that immigration from Eastern Europe was needed to meet “growing labour shortages.” It also pointed out that immigration from the East has been declining in recent years.

David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, commented that “there has been too much scaremongering. Business should welcome workers from the accession countries.…” On February 23 Blunkett announced measures to control the entry of the expected immigrants. Rather than sign on to the existing work permit schemes, these workers will be required to register their place of work with the authorities, and will not be entitled to state unemployment benefits for a year.

“If they can’t support themselves they will be put out of the country,” Blair told the BBC the same day. The article was titled, “Blair tells migrants ‘work or leave.’”

Blunkett pointed to the planned introduction of a national identity card in Britain from 2007 as further proof of the Blair government’s determination to control immigrant workers.

Paul Davies contributed to this article.  
 
 
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