People have moved around the world for the whole of human history, nation states are a particularly recent invention that, untill even more recently, were also built of populations shifting and evolving through migration and immigration. However, increasingly from the end of the 19th century countries have decided that these flows should be restricted. The Leaders of those countries believe that the rights and priveliges of citizenship in those states should be restricited to those currently resident - it's a kind of musical chairs approach - thousands of years of mobile populations and suddenly the music stops and those people lucky enough to be living in the UK can stay and the rest are locked out.
But surely we can't just let anyone in who wants to ?
Well actually we probably could quite easily. It might be hard to believe, but not everyone want's to start a new life half way across the world. No matter how poor people are, or how difficult their lives, only a tiny percentage are prepared to emigrate. Even those that do would mostly prefer only tempoarary relocation, to earn some good money or wait out a repressive regime in their own country, and would return home as soon as possible. It's also likely that those people who are determined to migrate already do so, mostly illegally and dangerously, paying huge sums to smugglers and working on the black market.
Immigration controls do not work, they simply punish people that are caught in the vain hope of deterring others from coming, but people still come - the war against immigration, like the war on drugs, is unwinnable. We would be a far better country if we accepted this and opened our borders to everyone who wants to come, spending the current anti-immigrant budget (at least one billion pounds per year) on helping these people in desperate need, and building decent communities for them to settle in.



News stories
Death on the border - 2nd July 2002
Asylum detainees break out in Australia - 29th June 2002
Refugee boat capsizes off Greek island - 29th June 2002
Asylum policies are form of apartheid - 23rd June 2002
Rights Groups Urge Europe to Open Doors to Asylum Seekers - 15th June 2002
Europe is alarmist about asylum, says UN - 11th June 2002
Blunkett faces asylum bill rebellion - 12th June 2002