Nation of immigrants has its own restriction

Manan Dwivedi, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, The Statesman, Asia News Network, Calcutta

The outburst of emotions and a diplomatic war of words between the British and the French authorities shed light on the much so trite a tendency among developed countries to "dump" the immigrant load into each other's territories.

The immigration debate in the United States has dramatically changed colors. Only five years ago, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (the Jordan Commission) proposed to cut legal immigration by at least a third and eliminate illegal immigration through new workplace immigration measures.

This sentiment was reflected in the annual Gallup polls that new immigrants are doing less well today than in previous times. There is also a continuously burgeoning hostility in states such as California, Arizona and Florida which have the distinction of being heavily immigrant-laden states.

What is more disturbing is the undercurrent of seething hostility spreading to other parts of the country.

Surprisingly, all this led to nothing but record levels of immigration into the U.S.: More than 1.1 million annually, about 400,000 higher than the previous water-mark of around 700,000 annually during the 1900-1920 "Great migration".

The immigration policy today is driven by businesses that need more workers -- skilled and unskilled, legal and illegal. Even the Silicon Valley folks have in the recent past clamored for a steady and undwindling influx of immigrants for serving their purposes.

Another hugely apparent but disturbing prospect is that if not all but a vast majority of HI-B workers intend to stay permanently in America. "We will have to create a miracle economy to absorb everybody," says Robert Bach, associate commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The instances of increased crime, falling wages and unemployment call for a long look at the current state of immigrant inflow, seeking to grasp the millennia opportunities that the land of milk and honey has been providing to thousands in the past few decades.

A major plank used by these new, dreamy-eyed and glamour- struck venturers is the inclination to use their kin blood relations to take the great leap across the Atlantic.

The provision in the immigration laws to encourage the practice of uniting families is one of the few loopholes being used for gaining entry into the American land.

But the immigration laws suffer from three major hangovers which has facilitated the influx. The U.S. felt obliged to be more open on account of its past: Distrust of aliens; its discrimination on the basis of race, creed and color and sidelining of the US foreign policy interest.

Gone were the days of komagota maru when a ship-load of Indians were turned back for Burma (Myanmar).

The arguments in favor of an increased immigrant intake were many. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants, so why quibble over half million more people a year? Does not the country need more workers to pay taxes for an aging population? The last assumption being that illegal immigrants are eventually legalized anyway. The U.S. had to realize its manifest destiny.

The rationale for throwing open a red carpet for the dream- seekers is clear. They have become the source of the U.S. strength.

The U.S. global security and economic interests get served because of its kaleidoscopic population which links it to every region and continent and makes immigration a foreign policy tool. But the time has come to recognize the hazards of unreasonable and uncontrolled immigration. It has begun to create imbalances in education, income distribution, employment levels and welfare demands.

This shows up in suits brought by several states against the federal government to recover social charges related to immigrants, and disputes among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies about how to apprehend, process, detain and repatriate immigrants.

If the recent instances of sporadic violence against the Asian-Americans are anything to go by, then a mere visit by President George W. Bush to the Islamic center in New York would amount to mere window-dressing in an effort to stem the hostility after the terrorist attacks on New York.

The hyper response of British Home Secretary David Blunkett in response to the trenchant media criticism of Britain's "soft immigration" policy should be viewed as an indicator of times to come.

With the reported free movement of terror-mongering fanatics in Europe, the issue warrants more than a second look. More importantly, the dilemma that most nations have to live through are some United Nations strictures. The "non refoulment" measure enshrined in Article 33 of the UN conference on Refugees poses a question mark on its implementation on the field.

The structure places the onus of defining the refugee on the receptacle state. Refugees once proved that way cannot be forced to return to their country of origin. But in the case of political asylum until a seeker objectively proves his/her well- founded fear from his country of origin, his application can be outrightly rejected.

It is in this provision that Britain and other nations facing the scourge of refugee influx can breathe easy and seek ways to deal with domestic pressures which are normally anti-refugee.

Developing countries bereft of well-organized refugee sorting structures have to be careful as a mere sealing of the borders has not shown an appreciable decline in the thoroughfare across borders, aided by inhospitable terrain. The movement of Afghan refugees into Pakistan and central Asian republics was a case in point.