Migrants have a voice

Those who have defended the contribution of migrants have frequently fallen back on facts and statistics. But the case made by the likes of Ukip is about emotion and, all too often, the power of stories. The problem is they tend not to be true. Ukip is a party of con artists, myth peddlers, charlatans and professional shysters. But they have succeeded in poisoning the debate on immigration . Now, in contrast, there’s the opportunity to promote the honest, emotional case for the rights of migrants. The migrants’ fightback has begun, bringing a reminder that the problems we suffer are not caused by those who have benefited this country in ways words alone cannot describe.

Ake Achi moved to London to improve his English and seek opportunities. It was a life of hard graft. He juggled a full-time job as a security guard with full-time studies at Kingston University. Today he is a full-time union organiser, helping workers to combat injustices perpetrated by the powerful but all too often blamed on migrants. He has also founded Right2workuk, to protect Britain’s migrants’ right to work. Achi is part of a new movement – One Day Without Us, or 1DWU – that seeks to give Britain’s frequently demonised migrants their own voice.  Migrants will organise to challenge the xenophobia surging on our own side of the Atlantic. Across Britain migrants and non-migrants alike will be encouraged to link arms, grip their placards and take a picture in a national show of solidarity. The arrival of 1DWU is not before time. Migrants have lacked a prominent collective voice: the debate has all too often been about them rather than with them. 

“Immigrants have always been blamed when things go wrong in a country,” says Achi. The government now bans non-EU skilled workers from settling in Britain permanently if they have lived here for less than a decade and earn less than £35,000 a year. That has an impact on many NHS workers, for example. As Achi points out: “The NHS wouldn’t survive without us.” It is all too convenient to turn on migrants propping up Britain’s beleaguered health service, rather than addressing the government that plunged it into what the Red Cross describes as a “humanitarian crisis”.

Birgit Möller, a 55-year-old German works for a nursery, driven by her passion for children and education. She has a husband and a son here. It was London’s multiculturalism that first attracted her, “the buzz of so many people from so many places coming together in one community”. There are many problems in this country, she says, that have nothing to do with migrants – “like huge income differentials and problems with businesses having too much power”. Like Achi, she notes that “it is very convenient to find a scapegoat to deflect from real issues, because real issues are much more difficult to tackle”.

Silvia Aced has lived in Britain for two decades and is an advocacy worker for disabled children. “I have a child with autism myself, and I’ve dedicated my life to things like that,” she tells me. “I know first hand what it’s like to have a child with special needs and how difficult it is to advocate for them.” The scapegoating of migrants is nothing less than “horrendous”, she tells me. The principle behind 1DWU is simple: “Imagine we didn’t go to work just for one day. It’d be chaos. People complain when the Underground goes on strike – but it’d be nothing compared to the chaos that would be unleashed if we didn’t work.”

It will not be easy to transform the debate on migration. Successive British governments have failed to build housing, provide the secure well-paid jobs people need, defend living standards, and – in recent times in particular – properly invest in public services. Immigration has become a catch-all narrative to explain problems caused by capitalism. This is not a debate that can be won with facts and statistics. When we consider issues, emotions and gut feelings play a critical role. Migrants have been missing from the debate about them. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/16/migrants-scapegoats-ukip-compelling-stories-win-over-xenophobes