What we talk about when we talk about illegal immigration

Us, and them

And after all we’re only ordinary men

Me, and you

God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do

When Pink Floyd wrote their epic and politically charged Dark Side of the Moon, the song Us and Them served as a seven-minute psychedelic manifesto on the senselessness of war and the moral bankruptcy of those who sacrifice young lives to shift lines on a map. The transcendental quality of Roger Waters’ songwriting, and perhaps the secret to its enduring success, is ambiguity. It allows listeners to shape a meaning themselves within its haunting.  In Us and Them, Waters invites us not only to scrutinise the absurdity of war but any social conflict that pits ‘ordinary men’ against each other, on the implicitly self-interested whims of a more influential class.

The political zeitgeist of Roger Waters’ Britain is not so different from our current reality. Much like today, Britain in the 60s and 70s was greatly concerned with the influx of immigration from abroad, which came in the form of Caribbean and commonwealth immigrants aiding the UK during the country’s post-war reconstruction. In 1968, conservative politician Enoch Powell’s speech ‘Rivers of Blood’ epitomised the targeted nature of the same rhetoric we are so accustomed to hearing in the 21st-century media. In suggesting that ‘in 15 to 20 years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’ and calling for a policy of re-migration, Powell planted the seeds of the anti-migrant sentiments  his ideological descendants would follow 60 years in the future.

Although fundamentally identical, the rhetoric of Farage, Sunak, and Powell manifested in different historical, political, and social contexts. No longer can a British mainstream politician so blatantly foreshadow a violent race war in which they see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. Instead, much of the discourse surrounding immigration in the UK is presented in legal terms, and many of the attacks against immigrants are predicated upon their status as ‘illegals’. This appeal to the rule of law is a tricky rhetorical tool manipulated  by many on the anti-migrant right to justify crackdowns on immigrants. Thus, it is worth exploring for what it reveals about the essence of the contemporary British anti-immigrant position.

For a detailed analysis of the legality of migration and the manner in which this legal status is nefariously manipulated, it is important to begin with the process migrants must undergo to obtain their British VISA. For an individual or family coming into the UK by normal means, the process of acquiring a VISA is long, and more importantly, costly. Once an individual manages to obtain their VISA, they are forced to pay the £1,035 surcharge to use the NHS and are denied income as well as housing benefits. The economic and fiscal impact of said migrants is complex and dependent on multiple factors such as age and occupation, but in many cases has been found to be positive given most migrants are young, of working age, and need to find employment to survive.

For all of Farage’s sensationalism about ‘undocumented migrants’, this too is an argumentative sleight of hand, as the very nature of being undocumented makes it very difficult to determine their exact numbers at any given time. 82% of undocumented migrants in the UK initially came to the country on a temporary VISA but were not able to renew their documentation given the money and time required to do so on top of working full time to support their dependents. Thus, despite having followed all the rules and regulations of the British immigration system, these migrants find themselves trapped, vulnerable, and at risk of being exploited by their employers for this very reason. In such a case, if the likes of Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick were genuinely concerned about the number of undocumented migrants in the UK, they would call for a reform of the VISA renewal process. It will become apparent later why such a solution was never suggested. 

I would like to briefly point out that as an immigrant to the UK myself, I have experienced first-hand the complicated and nonsensical process my parents went through to acquire their permanent residency and, later, their citizenship. Acquiring residency documentation in the UK is a long, expensive, and mentally taxing process, a fact Nigel Farage appears to be blissfully unaware of given he has never had to go through the ordeal he regularly criticises for being too lenient.

One look at the front covers of The Sun and The Daily Mail however, would seem to suggest that when we talk about immigration, we are in fact only talking about those migrants who  cross the English Channel on small boats. It is rather telling that Rishi Sunak chose to name his flagship anti-immigration campaign ‘Stop the Boats’ in an uncharacteristic moment of political transparency, putting on full display the core of his concerns regarding immigration. 

Once again, we find the issue of legality raised against migrants entering the country through the English Channel. It is important for the discussion ahead to distinguish between the legal terms denoting an individual as a ‘migrant’ or an ‘asylum seeker’. When a migrant chooses to leave their country voluntarily, often in search of a better life for them and their children, an asylum seeker is an individual with a specific legal claim to protected refugee status which is yet to be accepted. Asylum seekers typically apply for this legal status on the grounds that returning to their country of origin is too dangerous, and they would risk persecution if they did so. It is possible for an individual claiming asylum to be rejected, although this is often not the case, but while their claim is being processed, they are categorically not an illegal migrant, given the nature of their situation, which is yet to be determined.

Whilst they are waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, a process that can take over a decade, asylum seekers are given a meagre £200 pounds a month to live on, barred from working until their claims are processed, and crammed into small apartments with multiple other people, if they find a place to live at all. If the anti-immigrant right were truly concerned with the legal status of asylum seekers in the UK, they would avoid trapping claimants in a permanent backlog and simplify the process of claiming asylum in order to prosecute those individuals who break the law as it stands. Despite the fact asylum seekers make up 0.6% of the UK population and 7% of immigration to the UK, the right has found it much easier to blame them for the degradation of the British state.

This disconnect between the central critique of immigration on legal grounds, and the lack of action by the anti-immigrant movement to reform the legal framework as it pertains to immigration reveals the true essence of its concerns with individuals coming to the UK from abroad. Neither the statutes, case law, or legal terminology are relevant when migrants and asylum seekers are illegal in essence. Most recently, the conservative party’s debate as to whether the UK should leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) captures this irony perfectly. When asylum seekers are protected from deportation and, by definition, not illegal under an international agreement ratified by the UK government, the political establishment brushes aside the sanctity of law and determines that asylum seekers are unacceptable regardless of the rules in place.

In philosophy, this is known as the ‘is-ought problem’. An individual must distinguish between how things are and how they think they ought to be when making a moral claim. The Conservatives and Reform seem to be doing both at the same time; simultaneously upholding the rule of law that currently exists as sacrosanct and natural while critiquing the immigration law that does not embody what they believe it ought to be. The trick is, therefore, to apply the law as it exists when a migrant is caught not complying, often through no fault of their own as we have seen above, and to call for harsher legal sanctions when migrants are acting in a completely legal manner. The bottom line is that no matter their actions or legal status, migrants are unwanted.

It is not, however, all migrants and asylum seekers who are portrayed as illegal by nature, as we will come to see. A careful observation of the rhetoric employed by the anti-migrant establishment reveals the blind spots in their outrage, which, in turn, betray their deeper motivations. In an exchange between the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch and PM Keir Starmer, both politicians agreed on correcting a nefarious loophole in the government’s Ukraine Family Scheme which had been used by a Palestinian family to flee from their war-torn homeland. The implication of this revealing and rare moment of solidarity between the two leaders, of course, is that Ukrainian asylum seekers are deserving of respect and protection, whereas Palestinians apparently lack the luxury of human dignity.

This brief 2-minute exchange in the House of Commons displays the deeper dimension to the automatic rejection of migrants and asylum seekers to the UK by the political establishment. White faces are rarely, if ever, the targets of anti-migrant rhetoric, and in the case that they do find themselves in need of asylum, it is granted and extended when necessary. No Ukrainian families risked being burnt alive in the 2024 riots.

It is important to define the contours of the national conversation on illegal immigration as dictated by the political right. It has become clear that the discussion was never concerned with the legality of foreign migrants or their moral right to come into the UK as asylum seekers. The core of the debate never focused on the economic impact of migrants, given working-age migrant men are more likely to be employed than British men, and they contribute positively to the fiscal burden of the UK’s ageing population. So, what do we talk about when we talk about illegal immigration? It should be evident by now.

Reading Enoch Powell’s speech with 60 years of hindsight, it is startling to see the vitriol with which he decried foreign immigration to Britain, and how wrong he was about the future of the British state. There was never a race war in the UK, and Britain remains an influential player on the international stage. Only 3.7% of the population is Black, and only 0.8% of the population is Sikh. For all of Powell’s, and incidentally Farage’s, fears that the immigrant population refused to integrate into British society, the modern British norms in music, art, fashion, and food would be unrecognisable without the influence of the very people he considered beyond the pale. What is integration but to become an inalienable pillar of the culture which you inhabit? If Britain was truly ‘busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre’ in the 1960s, it has since forgotten to light the match.

There is, of course, a broader conversation to be had here about the source and mobilisation of people’s discontent with their standard of living. Migrants did not negotiate the terms of Brexit, and neither did they announce unfunded tax cuts, sending mortgage rates sky-high. Migrants are not responsible for the centralisation of the British state or the privatisation of British industry and public services. No austerity budget cuts were signed off by an asylum seeker, and it was not any asylum seeker’s decision to postpone the COVID lockdowns until the last possible moment. Alas, it would appear the British political establishment is not in the business of self-reflection. Deferring once again to Roger Waters’ elegant verse:

Out of the way, it’s a busy day

I’ve got things on my mind

For want of the price of tea and a slice

The old man died

Image: Flickr/Walt Jabsco

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