It becomes tiring and repetitive, but the point has to be continuously repeated – migrants and refugees are not the cause of the Age of Austerity – greedy bosses, their exploitation and oppression of the working class certainly is. And they’re organising to ensure it stays that way. My weekly Comment published in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.7.24) tried to explain at least some of the reasoning why we must say “Refugees are Welcome Here!”.

Keep them out! Last Thursday’s international summit, held at Winston Churchill’s ancestral home of Blenheim Palace, focussed upon the “threat” to Europe of from the East and the Global South. In short, the leaders of 14 countries determined they should collaborate to keep refugees out of Europe.

Of course, unlike the same policies in the USA, Europe cannot simply build a long, high and militarised wall to “keep’em out!”. The geography doesn’t allow for barricades. Instead, those seeking refuge will need to be turfed out, turned around, sent back, or imprisoned in regimes so inhuman as to act as a “deterrent” to peoples whose conditions are already inhuman. 

The leaders stood together to rightfully denounced the human traffickers, but focussed upon those arriving at Europe’s borders and Britain’s shores as “illegals”. Little or nothing was said about the reasons for this mass migration, or consideration of the causes rather than the effects upon their security, wealth and power.

The vast majority of people travelling northwards, in death-defying journeys of pain and fear, are escaping one of two never-ending horrors being experienced by those born in Africa and the Middle East. The first is the wars funded and armed by countries of the North, encouraged and applauded by the leaders dining at Blenheim Palace, producing extremes of wealth for the arms manufacturers and allied trades who pay the lobbying fees for their jamboree.

The second is the climate collapse engulfing entire regions of sub-Saharan Africa – some 46 countries – with tens of millions of humans marching away from their homelands, lands forever starved of water and arable land as a result of the fossil-fuelled emissions from the global North, heating the Planet towards mass extinction.

In these circumstances, humanity should be uniting to protect all. The opposite is the case. As if labelling human beings “illegal” isn’t inhuman enough, plotting to ensure they die “abroad” is despicable, outside of all the legal and moral tenets that are paraded at such grand political events.

Those of the far-Right reading this will be enraged. The white-supremacists and Capitalist entrepreneurs, driven by their quest for individual power and wealth, will be screaming at the page, arguing for a national pride that blames all Britain’s obvious social decline on Black people.

Refusing to consider the record profits and exemptions from paying tax that have seen wealth go from the poor to the rich at an accelerating rate through the past decade, they blame immigration for any and every social problem. 

The fuel bills that have tripled in 4 years have seen the oil and gas companies triple their profits into tens of thousands of millions of pounds paid for by us. The water & sewage bills that used to be covered by taxes as part of public services are now being raised whilst the owners harvest tens of billions of pounds from us, in profits. 

The low pay and long working hours culture that ensures at least 5 million of we, the working class, are reliant on top-ups from Universal Credit. 14 million of us live in subsistence poverty, including 4 million of our children, with 17 million homes requiring refurbishment. 

These numbers alone dwarf any cost to us attached to caring for refugees and asylum seekers. In fact, the tax money we pay towards subsiding the arms manufacturers and fossil fuel companies amounts to tens of billions pounds more than the costs of immigration. 

The skills shortages that are hiking costs in the service and construction industries could be solved by immigrant labour, but that solution is denied by the racist fanatics. Migrants allowed to work pay taxes, unlike the super-rich. It’s simple, working migrants produce taxes and fund commerce to a degree far higher than the initial costs of welcoming them here.

Stopping immigration will do nothing to stop the gross exploitation of working people here, will not reflate the Exchequer nor will it lower the bills. The politicians have let the racists off-the-leash and flagged migration as the key problem in order to create the cover for their continued profiteering and plundering of the public purse.

On Saturday, fascists and their racist allies are holding an anti-immigrant, white-supremacist march in London. Anti-fascists from across Britain will be joining forces to challenge their lies and hatred, supported by the national Trades Union Congress and dozens of trade unions. The rise of racism and fascism must be nipped in the bud before it swamps Britain and destroys the human rights we all require.