Policies / Immigration
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The use of immigration as a political battlefield is quite frankly offensive to us. No human being is illegal... The world is full of refugees, the vast majority of them never reach this country: those that do have come through enormous difficulties and hardships to reach here. How many people would actively choose to leave their family, smuggle themselves in a boat or a lorry and travel over vast distances to this country if they were not pushed by a great need? Many of these people have travelled from countries where the UK has been actively involved in creating the situation of hardship that these people face. We have created havoc in different countries in order to serve our own economic interests and then we throw our hands up in outrage when the refugees start coming! We create stigmatic terms like “bogus-asylum-seeker” and illegal immigrant in order to allow the right wing parties and press to breed discrimination and violence against these people. We propose to target our resources to transforming the conditions in the countries where the majority of immigrants come from. We will do everything we can to overcome poverty in the world. We will promote social justice and non-violence around the world. The Secretariat of Cultures, Migration and International Cooperation of the European Region of the Humanist International has prepared the following position: "No human being is illegal" In a moment when European countries are searching for a common constitution and in which the people of Europe believe that they are at the point of passing to another stage of their history, one of the most important issues of the region, immigration, continues to be treated in an undignified and obsolete manner. The cultures living together in Europe are all the cultures of the world and immigration is the principal manner that this coming together has been produced. Some come from very far and others were born here, we have a common aspiration that one day the differences in treatment and opportunities due to reasons of sex, age, religion, culture and origins are finally overcome. They way we respond to immigration and cultural diversity in Europe jeopardizes our vision of the human being, our relationship with the rest of the world and finally, the relationship with ourselves. Unfortunately, the purposes of the constitutional treaty in this field is inspired by the utopian model of a "Fortress Europe" and recent restrictive and security measures of European governments continue in this same direction that will have disastrous human consequences. Although the Spanish government (interested in collecting more taxes and improving their demographic importance) has carried out a process of regularisation of immigrants living in Spain before August 2004, this has been limited to those who could produce an employment contract, so excluding more than one million people who remain underground. This limited gesture has, however, set off alarms in their neighbours and France, the UK, Italy and Germany have criticised the measure, they have speeded up the closing of their doors even more. The same Spanish government have promised a hard hand from this moment; inspections to persecute irregular employment and expulsions of immigrants "without papers". The Italian government, after a similar campaign in 2002 has now signed an agreement with the French government to re-enforce the controls and deportations at the border. The French government expelled 15,000 people last year and wants this number to reach 20,000 in 2005. Current laws (the last one from May this year) puts people in increasingly difficult conditions (strengthened police and controls, visas with fingerprints taken in the countries of origin, verification of mixed marriages carried out in overseas countries). We denounce these expensive, fierce and inefficient practices. Not only do they not prevent people continuing to flow towards the West, but rather they stigmatise foreigners and push them increasingly to dead-end situations, generating growing unrest and violence. European governments mistake their direction because they try to respond to inequality and poverty, not with cooperation and justice but with police measures and repression of liberties. This dangerous blindness is leading us to militarization of our borders, despicable massive expulsions and broken principles of the equality of human beings. We denounce the use and multiplication of Internment Centres, in which, people, guilty of nothing more than wanting to cross a border, are confined, and treated as "illegal immigrants" or "bogus asylum seekers" without respecting their fundamental rights (restrictions to freedom of movement, absence of respect for the right to asylum, to a private or family life or the rights of children.) These governments consider immigration as a necessary evil and only useful if it becomes a controlled reserve of frightened, cheap and submissive manpower. They do not have solutions for immigration. They don't have a solution to its logic. While European countries do not recognise that a large part of their wealth comes from exploitation of the countries of origin of these emigrants, no international humanist solution is possible. In the meantime, the people of our "developed countries" are increasingly pressured. It is therefore necessary to clarify the population so that the halting or loss of labour rights, the shortage of housing, the progressive deterioration of public health and education, etc are understood to not be the fault of immigrants but rather of this inhuman system solely based on the attainment of money at any cost. Antihumanist tendencies deflect the real conflicts towards immigrants: precisely the weakest and worst treated…. The Humanist proposal is therefore for everyone to work together to achieve a future that will either be for everyone or else no-one. We demand: Internal policies that create an effective real democracy with equal rights and equal opportunities for all that include the right to elect and be elected in all electoral events. The immediate closure of Internment Centres that go against human rights and the abandonment of the project of external centres. This European Humanist Regional, a point of encounter for parties and grassroots organisations invites everyone and commits itself to work for these objectives, demanding the courage and the strength for the non-violent struggle.
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