Does border control equate to racism?
Raptor Eye
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
I am an observer and apolitical - I see the merits and dangers on all sides (which makes it extra difficult to choose each time).
It was very noticeable in the last few weeks that, while most parties claim to be wanting border control and to manage immigration sensibly, the party which put this at the top of their agenda were called racist at every opportunity by all and sundry.
I only know one person who was standing for election in that particular party so I can’t speak for the rest, but I know that this individual is not racist, if that means having no issue with the ethnic background of anyone, and is ready to engage with everybody, while wanting to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to cater for all who live in the UK.
I’d be interested in your viewpoint - is a desire for border control racism?
It was very noticeable in the last few weeks that, while most parties claim to be wanting border control and to manage immigration sensibly, the party which put this at the top of their agenda were called racist at every opportunity by all and sundry.
I only know one person who was standing for election in that particular party so I can’t speak for the rest, but I know that this individual is not racist, if that means having no issue with the ethnic background of anyone, and is ready to engage with everybody, while wanting to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to cater for all who live in the UK.
I’d be interested in your viewpoint - is a desire for border control racism?
Comments
How about asking the question the other way round: how is wanting to implement a policy that disproportionally disadvantages people from particular races or ethnicities *not* racism?
I find the framing of the question somewhat disingenuous. How would *you* define what is meant by "manage immigration sensibly"?
If Donald Trump is denied future entry to the UK on the legitimate grounds that he is a convicted criminal, this might be an example of border controls serving their intended purpose.
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
That could well be the term used by the legislation.
It was suggested that I raise this here in Epiphanies @Gwai within a discussion on the election thread, by one of the admins. I wouldn’t normally come here.
The person standing for election found it frustrating that the racism name-calling was so prevalent and yet considered by them to be unfounded. Nobody who used it would engage in discussion about it, despite being invited to do so.
This was in January 1973, so things must have changed considerably since then. I hope the letter will be honoured if, as I hope, we return permanently. Meanwhile, there is never any difficulty entering the UK (usually through Glasgow).
Yes, as some racists do, well, maybe many. My mum didn't like too many Asians around, but was horrified to be called racist.
If it is border control which is targeted equally to those of every other country, and so immigrants from every other nation fall under the same criteria for entry, this surely does not disadvantage people from particular races or ethnicities?
So, experience does tell us we need some control for security purposes. The few times I have crossed the border, I have had little problem, though once we got delayed crossing over in Buffalo NY because the border agents suspected the car ahead of us was suspected of transporting drugs. We watched the agents strip down that car.
We do have a problem with mass migration through Mexico, but Mexico and Panama are working hard to choke off the immigration routes now. Personally, I think the most humane way of dealing with the problem is to provide economic zones in the countries where the migrants are coming from.
First, "border control and managing immigration" can mean many different things. It could for example mean setting up safe routes for refugees and asylum seekers to enter the country. But in the case of Reform it's being used as a euphemism for letting in as few immigrants as possible. It's reasonable to assume that if someone is using a euphemism for their real policy it's because they think there's something to be ashamed of in their real policy.
Second, why would a party think that "border control and managing immigration" (see above about the euphemism) should be at the top of their agenda, over treating sewage in rivers, facilitating trade with Europe, getting more staff for the NHS, improving education, and so on?
One: the numbers of people coming into the country without official recognition is relatively small compared to total immigration let alone the total population.
Two: there is strong evidence that higher immigration actually help solve the other problems listed, rather than contributing to them.
So when a party adopts a policy that racists (*) would adopt, refers to that policy by a euphemism as if it's ashamed of that policy, and has no obvious good reason to adopt that policy, then however candid one wishes to be, one comes to a negative conclusion.
As for their denials, well, people who are racist would deny they were racist, wouldn't they?
(*) Technically I suppose it could be xenophobia, but that doesn't actually make it any better.
That's pretty much a variant on "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
As I outlined above, the income criteria the UK uses are targeted fairly blatantly at British Asians, because the particularly history and demographics of those communities make them (a) more likely to want to marry somewhat who isn't a British or Irish citizen and (b) less likely to meet the income threshold. The goal is to keep the population whiter.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-uk-racism-electoral-commission-b2570688.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/07/clacton-labour-candidate-jovan-owusu-nepaul-reform-safety-fears-election-nigel-farage
This is a pernicious lie, which you ought to retract and apologize for immediately. None of the 911 hijackers entered the United States through Canada. This lie has become a talking point, but it ought to rejected and called out for the lie that it is.
"The myth that the 9/11 hijackers arrived in the United States through Canada contributed to the passage of laws that have increased the “thickness” of the border and hindered trade in the name of collective security." [url="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/terror-and-north-america-the-causes-and-directions-cross-border-extremist-activity[/url]
Some of this is correct, but it was only one man, not four. "Citing the only successful interception of a violent extremist (Ahmed Ressam) who traveled from Canada to the United States with the intent to commit a terrorist act, Flynn argued that the interdiction was due to luck and the intuition of border agents rather than any specific cross-border inspection regime. In fact, this one success came 18 months before the 9/11 attacks occurred." [source above]
Check your facts before you share stuff, Gramps.
The most basic criterion for visa schemes is based on nationality. Giving preference to certain nationalities over others might not be inherently racist, but the question is whether patterns emerge regrading the race and ethnicity of those admitted and rejected on this basis. And that's before you start taking other attributes of individuals into consideration, or the treatment and experience of people going through the formal or informal process.
So, while it might be possible to discuss an equally-targeted policy in theory, in practice there's little danger of such a policy being implemented by any nation any time soon.
In the context of immigration, the problem with the framing is that it treats racism as an attitude that some people have (and some people don't) rather than as the effects of actions and policies on people of particular races and ethnicities.
It seems that there is a prejudice against the Reform party in some which assumes a racist attitude of everyone affiliated with it, not only because of the desire to control immigration and the borders, but because this policy is seen as more likely to attract racists. The latter may be the case, which means that the party must be extra vigilant to distance themselves from such people if it wants to reassure those outside of it of the truth (if indeed it is the truth) that there is no racist agenda behind their policies.
That suggestion has yet to be proved wrong.
The almost complete absence of candidates for BNP, Britain First, EDL, etc. in the General Election also points in that direction. Where have their supporters all gone, we wonders, yeses we does, mypreciousssss!
Hiding in darksome holeses, with other nasty Orcses, yess...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/08/human-rights-groups-give-starmer-blueprint-for-asylum-overhaul
Labour have a lot to cope with, but I hope this will be one of their (many!) priorities.
I do appreciate that *own voices* are important, so maybe the change of regime will encourage some of those trapped within the tories' asylum mess to speak out for themselves.
This reminds me of literacy tests for voter registration in the Jim Crow south. The tests themselves were ostensibly race neutral but managed to keep voter registration of African-Americans at very low levels. The point of the tests wasn't to test for literacy. The point was to keep the apparatus of voter registration in white hands.
Most of Jim Crow was like this; laws that were facially race neutral yet had a de facto design to preserve white supremacy.
At some point in electoral politics you have to ask whether adopting policies known to attract certain demographics was designed to attract those demographics. It certainly seems the simplest explanation.
It also reminds me of
Not Safe For Work article - beware of clicking - L
All the people in my immediate family happen to have the same racial background. So any personal policy that I have that prioritizes my family over other people disproportionately disadvantages people from other races.
Yes, this is a silly example, but I don't think I'm being racist by prioritizing my family over non-family. What if I expand the definition of "family" to include people who I grew up with, and prioritized them over people I have newly met. People who share my opinions over people who don't? People who share my vision for what my locality should look like, and how people should behave over people who don't?
Depending on which categories I choose to draw lines in, there are more or less likely to be racial, class, or other disparities in the in-group vs out-group. The mere presence of racial disparities doesn't necessarily indicate racism, but I'd think it was enough evidence to ask the question.
At some level, whether it is possible for people from other racial backgrounds to be in the "in-group" is relevant. Is the racial bias mere happenstance, or are people from other races discouraged or excluded from membership?
It is, of course, completely clear given the public statements that they have made that many of the supporters of anti-immigration policy are actually racist, and this puts non-racists who think they want to control immigration in at least an uncomfortable position, because if they choose to pursue this aim, they will find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with actual racists. And at some level, you'll get judged by the company that you keep.
One way of looking at this would be to group visa applicants from different countries by education, qualification etc., and then look for racial differences. Are Black Americans with graduate degrees in engineering denied visas proportionately more often than white Americans with graduate degrees in engineering?
But there are other reasonable questions. Are equivalent people from Poland, Pakistan, and the Philippines treated the same way?
Yes, it does. But I'm not sure what you're suggesting here - are you suggesting that in order to not be racist, it is necessary for the UK immigration system to recognize the existence of structural racism in the US, and preferentially grant visas to a greater proportion of applicants from the US who are Black engineers than white engineers?
Or that in order not to be racist, it is necessary to consider how each applicant for a visa stands in terms of education and qualifications with respect to other people from their country, and not with respect to any kind of UK or worldwide standard?
@Leaf
You are right. I retract my previous statement with a most sincere apology. I did not mean to imply the fault lay. with the Canadian immigration system. I thought it had to do with the lax American system.
That part is true. The terrorists entered through the American visa system using various types of visas to enter the US. NONE came through Canada. There was the one attempt, 18 months earlier that was stopped by an American agent who had a feeling, More information here
As it is, the American Visa system is still broken. In any given year, between 650k to 850k overstay their visas, Over 40% of unauthorized migrants in the US are from overstays. (My former son in law was one of them). When you have over 11 million unauthorized people in the United States, it will be a herculean task to track them down and remove them if Trump has his way. I should note many of the overstays will eventually return home--it takes time, https://www.abc15.com/news/state/the-immigration-problem-that-no-one-is-talking-about
Again, to Leaf and other Canadians, my apologies for impugning your immigration system.
Notwithstanding what goes on on the US southern border, please can you fill me in on the immigrants to the UK that the UK has shot? Or indeed the people supportive of immigrants who have, in the UK, been shot by the UK?
And before anyone gets clever we’ll exclude for these purposes the heinous and high profile case of mistaken identity at a tube station a few years back.
The ridiculous thing is you and I are probably on the same side, but sloppy hyperbole and false comparisons help no one.
I was using the fairly standard metaphor of shooting the messenger. I accept that the current environment makes that possibly unwise, but there we are. My tolerance of the slavering for drowning people in the channel is officially over.
Fine, but some of us have actually done the job and in all honesty no one I served with at sea ever slavered over drowning people in the channel. And I’ve fished people out. What blowhard idiots at home did is more for the people at home to deal with.
As one of the people with the guns (then), no.
Wrong target.
Agree with all of that, and thank you.
Slight hair trigger (ironically) though on things being bracketed as the same both sides of the Atlantic (not in pond war terms of course, they’re just not at all the same, regardless of the similarities of direction of travel).
Idiots jump up and down arguing for machine guns in the channel or on the beaches.
HM Armed Forces (and not forgetting the RNLI) quietly carry on with the dirty job of pulling people out of the drink and getting them to safety. Their reward, far too often, is to be traduced or used as pawns by both sides.
It’s a grim task and there’s no thanks, because the people who should be glad they’re scooping desperate people out of the sea are too often the same ones attacking the people who think they should be shooting them - and both sides (not you) throwing rocks at the forces for either not shooting enough people or wanting to shoot people…
It’s a bloody awful world.
Not monitoring the thread but I’ve got to jump in here - that’s lovely but it’s what sailors do - ‘the only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, which man has made more cruel’
We lived that. And lived by it.