Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Bella Caledonia, October 2007

In his influential study How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney pointed up the role of economic exploitation and military excesses of the European colonialism in the impoverishment of the potentially rich African continent. The encounter with European colonialism was little different in the rest of the world. If anything has changed in the intervening years, it is that the exploitation has become more sophisticated, efficient and complete. The combined ravages of the IMF, WTO and World Bank coupled with imperial wars preclude prospects of meaningful development in the global South. Neoliberal economics and neoconservative strife together have an effect of adding to the ever growing pool of destitutes in the developing world whose choices are often limited between annihilation at home and exploitation abroad.

While the proponents of economic globalization have been diligent in pursuit of open markets for their goods, and open borders for their capital – they remain none too keen to accord the same privileges to the human capital travelling north. The raging debate in Western Europe in recent years has been an alleged threat to the European identity from alien influx. To be sure, Europe has use for these immigrants: they work more hours for less, they contribute to ‘labour flexibility’ (read job insecurity), they pay taxes without the state having invested anything on their education or health – and above all, they lend themselves to easy demonisation in an age where fear substitutes for tangible service in the repertoire of politicians made increasingly redundant in democracies subverted by the neoliberal order.

In the seemingly polarized debate on immigration, what often gets subsumed in the charged rhetoric is an appreciation of its merits on either side of the political spectrum – albeit for decidedly different reasons. For the internationalist Left it extends opportunities to the wretched of the earth, for the capitalist Right, it is an inexhaustible source of exploitable labour which also furnishes an indispensable scapegoat for everything from moral decline to rising unemployment. There are countries with declining populations that have actively courted migrants, while others, like the United States, seek to add barriers which merely multiply the possibilities of exploitation. The one factor too often overlooked is the cost to the country of the immigrant’s origin. From Poland to Pakistan, societies have been impoverished by the brain-drain endemic to this iniquitous system. Therefore no immigration policy can be considered truly progressive unless it takes this into account.

While Western states may favour skilled immigration for economic reasons, they remain less keen to open their borders to asylum seekers – very often escaping persecution or war, spawned in most cases by the same Western powers. Tony Blair’s wars alone have generated 5.1 million refugees in Iraq and countless others in Afghanistan. The few Iraqis who sought asylum with their self-styled liberators were summarily deported back to their war-ravaged country – in some cases awaiting certain death (US has allowed entry to only 7,000). The same fate has befallen some Afghans. Yet more disgraceful was Australia’s response, which locked 200 Afghan asylum-seekers away in a desert surrounded by electrified barbed wire, leading to some committing suicide (Contrast that with the outraged expressed by Western governments when Pakistan – already host to 3 million Afghan refugees – closed its borders in the face of the mass exodus precipitated by the US bombing in 2001).

While the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates the costs of the Iraq war at nearly $2 Trillion (for US only), UNHCR is expected to provide relief to the millions of Iraqi refugees with a meagre budget of $21 million!

With the Scottish Nationalist Party’s victory in the 2007 Holyrood elections, the prospect of independence seems less of a pipe dream. Unlike the continental brand of nationalism, SNP’s remains inclusive, and given the generally progressive disposition of Scottish politics, this holds the prospect of a genuinely multicultural Scotland where everyone is confident enough in their own identity to allow for greater cultural osmosis. Ever since devolution Holyrood has been in conflict with Westminster over immigration policy which remains under the purview of the latter. With a modest population of just over 5 million the Scottish government, unlike Westminster, is keen to increase immigration. The public however remains as resentful of immigrants as the rest of UK thanks to the systemic xenophobia encouraged under Blair’s New Labour government. An independent Scotland is unlikely to repeat Blair’s folly, and absent the albatross of the so-called War-on-Terror, there will be little motivation for demonising minorities. Monstrosities like Dungavel will be superfluous in an independent Scotland.

SNP’s nuanced response to the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport has already compelled Westminster to tone down its rhetoric, which for too long has relied on the ‘Islamic threat’ to deflect attention from its failures, both foreign and domestic. Scottish independence is likely to dampen English enthusiasm for foreign entanglements whose costs it finds itself unprepared to bear. Clinton militarized the Mexican border in 1994 to coincide with the passage of the NAFTA to prevent campesinos fleeing the ‘economic miracle’; similarly, Blair made a failed attempt to revise the rights of refugees anticipating the large-scale flight from its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Scotland instead could choose to accommodate all the asylum seekers it can, while at the same time working towards eliminating the conditions that create them. Unless it can make room for a substantial number of Iranis, Syrians and the Lebanese, Scotland must seek no part of future Imperial aggression. With its ageing population and its youth seeking greener pastures south, Scotland has much to gain from a liberal immigration policy. Flexible entry requirements would encourage economic migrants to stay no longer than what their economic needs might suggest. There are very few who are willing to break permanently with familiar milieus, and with fewer obstacles in their way, the human traffic will stop being unidirectional with as many returning home as those entering. This will also prevent the much feared brain drain.

While Rodney offered a methodical deconstruction of the colonial apparatus that underdeveloped Africa, the president of Tanzania recently offered a straightforward remedy. We don’t need your aid – he said – all we need is a level playing field. While in the case of Scotland a radically liberal immigration policy remains a viable prospect, it holds promise of a different kind for the rest of Europe. Perhaps it is the fear of a swelling refugee population that will finally compel Europe to address its role in the impoverishment of the South.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a member of Spinwatch.org. His commentaries on politics, art and culture appear on Fanonite.org