Britain’s stance and general attitude towards immigration appals me. It’s grotesque and completely uncivilised. I could go so far as to say the irrational fear of immigrants, both those who work and those who don’t, borders on the xenophobic or fascistic. Even the term for removals is crafted to sound sanitary, and yet a cadaverous odour pertains. Deportation could easily be used in livestock or movement of goods.

My opinion has always been verified by cases of extreme inhumanity or misfortune that are uncomfortable to read about. For example; the case of Mehdi Kazemi, who faces being sent back to Iran, where he faces execution for being homosexual. As heinous as the law in Iran is, how can we believe ourselves just in sending him back to that?  Is there perhaps collective washing of hands as if to say “its not our fault”.
 
This is not the only example. I believe that most of the readers of this blog will have at least on anecdotal story they can remember. My own involves the deportation of a terminal cancer patient to a country that is ill equipped to ease her passing, effectively condemning here to a slow and painful death. Despite having expunged from my memory most of the facts that humanise the case, such as her name, age or even the country that will be receiving her, I am distraught every time I think of it.

Now two major independent bodies have decried the handling of immigration by this country. The fist is the report by the Independent Asylum Commission, the government’s own investigative body. They had little good to say about the Border and Immigration service, calling it “not yet fit for purpose” and “Inhumane and oppressive”. They did praise the group for some improvements, mostly in the “fast track” system, which allows for far quicker rejections of desperate people. This is only one of many reports the commission will eventually deliver; one cannot expect the rest to be any better.
 
The second is a potential lords revolt, demanding a moratorium on all deportations, as a response to the Kazemi case. That they, of all people, can rouse a cry shames me that I have not examined the issue closer myself. I will not allow it to pass me by anymore.
 
First and foremost is the manner in which immigrants are treated. It is bad enough when you come from a comparatively stable country, seeking to earn a better wage. One must still leave behind the family and friends, and transition into a hostile culture. Imagine then if you came from a war torn or poor country. Hoping for a life, for your family and for you. Then to experience a culture that views you with an emotional spectrum ranging from hate or fear to embarrassment.
 
But still it continues, when the supposedly enlightened government from which you seek succor locks you, perhaps your children and even your pregnant wife away in a ‘detention centre’. If you had any illusions of fair treatment, surely this prison euphemism has erased them. If not there is always the crushing poverty, sorry destitution that’s the preferred term, that will be forced upon you and then used as an excuse to boot you out of the country and back into the third world. All of this is abhorrent and the safe guards against sending an immigrant into danger are clearly weak or ineffectual.
 
What is forgotten by the more intolerant parties, by the tattooed serial benefit claimant who may have served time but now is only qualified to drink Stella Artois of stereotype, by the fearful men and women who see human desperation and mistake it for alien greed of reality, is that aspirations or ambitions are not crimes.
 
Who chooses where they are born, or what supranational club their home nation belongs to? Who thinks that economy class is just too bourgeois when there is the fetid cargo hold of a leaky ship? Who chooses to be desperate for a life without fear?

This is a sick sad world where the ‘enlightened’ west can try to force democracy, or capitalism whichever you think is really the point, on the rest of the world with guns and bombs. For them, no us, to turn around deny these principals to people from the third world within our own borders seems to me to be hypocrisy of the very worst sort. People seem to have forgotten that a high level of immigration is an indicator of capitalist success, the system that much of the west is predicated upon. They seem to have forgotten the distasteful, or odious jobs that are populated by foreign workers who may have been casualties of war or torture. Forgotten the history of our nation is one population movement, both immigration and emigration (even rampant colonialism).
 
I did a bit of research for this, and found out the name of the woman I mentioned above. Her name was Ama Sumani, she was 39 and had two children She died in Ghana this month (20th March). If you want to prevent this sort of thing from occurring, if the plight of people in similar situations moves you at all then you should have a look at some of these sites:
Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org.uk
Asylum Aid: www.asylumaid.org.uk
Refugees international: www.refugeesinternational.org