By the Labour Campaign for Free Movement
Take a walk down the High Street and you can see people from all over the world live and work in the borough of Hounslow. But in recent years and in the European elections, the racist right has been gaining force, trying to persuade us that immigration is to blame for our problems.
The Immigration Bill currently progressing through Parliament is a major attack on our rights. The Tories want to end the free movement of people between the UK and Europe, replacing our right to move, live and work across borders with harsh visa controls. They plan to class all migrant workers earning under £30,000 as “unskilled” and deny anyone the right to stay in the country longer than one year.
The UK’s immigration regime already treats non-Europeans with violence and cruelty: detention centres; refugee deportations; NHS fees; and the “no recourse to public funds” policies that deny migrants access to the social safety net. Now Europeans too will face this same treatment.
Free movement is about workers’ rights. The rich can always move where they want. It’s the rest of us whose freedom is under attack: particularly low-paid workers, as the income thresholds for different visas make clear. As highlighted by a recent study, a high proportion of gig economy and zero-hours workers are themselves immigrants.
We are told that immigration controls protect British workers. But the evidence shows migration doesn’t reduce wages. It supports, not damages, public services. The real culprits behind low wages, zero-hour contracts and unemployment, the housing crisis, rip-off rents, and deteriorating services, are exploitative employers and landlords – and the governments that support them.
So our best defence is not borders but solidarity: joining across divides of nationality, immigration status and frontiers to fight for our rights and our livelihoods. Anti-migrant politics and laws make that harder. They whip up hostility between British and migrant workers to divide and rule. If a migrant worker knows that if they lose their job he or she and their family can’t fall back on social security or might even be deported, then it’s harder to stand up against low pay and poor conditions. If this new law kicks migrant workers out after one year, it will be harder to build powerful trade unions and campaigns together.
The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is a campaign by Labour supporters to argue within our movement, not just for defending free movement within Europe, but for further extending it and standing up for the rights of all migrants.
We sum it up as: “Build Unions Not Borders!” To support us and get involved, see labourfreemovement.org, where you can also find details of our National Meeting on 7 July – see you there!
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