Racism on the Border? A New Threat to the Common Travel Area

By Michael Potter, the Policy and Research Officer for the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP) in Dungannon, an organisation which supports vulnerable people in the community, including migrant workers and people from a minority ethnic background.

In what appears to be an election speech to an increasingly xenophobic public, Gordon Brown has announced a reduction in the number of professions allowed to be recruited from outside Europe, a tightening of the ‘labour market test’, where jobs will have to be advertised for longer locally before firms can recruit outside the country, and a cap on student visas. 

All of this comes hot on the heels of the announcement last week by the Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas, that European Union citizens from Bulgaria and Romania will be restricted for a further two years at least, extending their vulnerability to exploitation and destitution.

This has been part of a general move by the Labour Government to close down the UK’s borders to people from other countries.  The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act passed in July 2009. Amongst other things, the Act extended and narrowed the path to UK citizenship, while limiting access / rights of non-citizens.  The Act also extended the powers of customs and excise officers to act as immigration officials (and vice versa), permitting them to check the immigration status of anyone entering the UK.  In its original form, this changed the previous legislation, which exempted those travelling within the Common Travel Area, an arrangement by which people travelling between the different jurisdictions of the UK and Republic of Ireland could do so freely without immigration checks.  An amendment in the House of Lords protected the Common Travel Area in the final text of the Act.

However, the Policing and Crime Bill, in its final stages in the UK Parliament, empowers customs officers to check the immigration status of anyone entering the UK, only this time it has not been amended to protect the Common Travel Area.  This may not have a significant effect on most travel, but it has the potential to be a problem for the UK’s only land border: between the north and south of the island of Ireland.

Immigration checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are problematic.  Everyone’s immigration status will have to be checked, which will involve border posts, and will require anyone travelling between the jurisdictions to carry passports or equivalent documents. This would be against the spirit of, and possibly in violation of the terms of, the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The only alternative would be for officials to target people they consider unlikely to be UK, Irish or EU citizens.  The name for this is racial profiling, which is illegal.

 Concern about racism and racial profiling on the border is not new.  Operation Gull, which entailed ‘intelligence-led’ immigration checks, resulted in people whose skin was not white being stopped and asked for identification. The new legislation will allow this to happen all the time.

The government is developing a process in which where people are divided between those who are considered to belong here and those who do not.  Increasingly, this division has been according to who is and who is not a European citizen, marked by the colour of a person’s skin.  The more this distinction is made, the greater the likelihood and severity of racism and xenophobia in our society.  The passing of the Policing and Crime Bill will create the conditions for this to be played out on the border.

To join the Migrant Worker Support Network, please contact Keelin McGartland at keelin@stepni.org.