Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 15:25:14 +1000
From: saeed urrehman <saeed.urrehman-AT-anu.edu.au>
Subject: A review of Teresa Hayter's book _Open Borders_


Book
Challenging the closed borders
By Dave Davies
ONE OF New Labour's sickest acts so far has been its relentless attack on 
asylum seekers. In reaction to the tabloid and government offensive a 
substantial number of people have started to fight back.
Teresa Hayter is one such person. She has been a tireless anti-racist 
campaigner, and a protester against the Campsfield detention centre in 
Oxford where refugees are locked up. Her book Open Borders blows through 
the asylum debate like a gale of fresh air. She announces her position in 
the introduction: "Immigration controls should be abandoned."
The next 170 pages are a reasoned and passionate argument to this effect. 
Hayter begins by demolishing many of the myths about immigration. Human 
beings have always migrated. It is only relatively recently that countries 
have thrown up controls against such movement. Hayter deals with the 
hypocrisy behind this.
When imperialist countries or multinational companies try to spread their 
influence across the globe, they are hailed for being "dynamic" and 
"innovators". Yet when the victims of their policies brave incredible 
conditions to escape economic impoverishment or inter-ethnic wars, they are 
designated "scroungers" and "bogus".
Hayter also shows how Tory and Labour governments, in times of economic 
expansion, have encouraged people to come and work in Britain. But when 
times get a bit harder they turn round and kick these people in the teeth 
by clamping down on immigration. One of the most powerful sections of the 
book is when Hayter exposes the link between racism and immigration 
controls. She says immigration controls are born out of racism. In almost 
every instance they have followed a sustained campaign by racists, bigoted 
politicians and some in the media.
Instead of combating this racism, the government of the day introduces more 
controls to make the lives of immigrants and refugees even harder. This in 
turn feeds the racism and bigotry. Hayter argues that today's inflammatory 
language and the use of misleading statistics, which are often pure lies, 
are all about scapegoating and scaremongering.
The chapter on resistance is a welcome relief. Refugees are beginning to 
fight back and have found allies in the anti-racist movement and the labour 
movement, and from socialists.
This book is vital reading for everyone who wants to continue this fight 
into the new millennium. Our rulers will never give up on their attempts to 
scapegoat refugees. But we will never give up our struggle to defend them.
·       Open Borders by Teresa Hayter, £12.99.



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