Month: March 2013

[in Swedish: Gör hela Malmö till en fristad för papperslösa flyktingar]

I published the following article in Sydsvenska dagbladet on Sunday March 24: http://www.sydsvenskan.se/opinion/aktuella-fragor/gor-malmo-till-en-fristad-for-papperslosa/. Here in English:

 

The time has come to make the city of Malmö into a sanctuary for undocumented refugees. Police enforcement activities may even depend on such a decision. This is a reasonable conclusion, says Anna Lundberg, lecturer in human rights at Malmö University, after having followed an intense debate in Sweden lately about REVA – rättssäkert och effektivt verkställighetsarbete (legally secure and effective enforcement work) – from Colorado in the US.

 

In Colorado, USA, where I am a guest researcher this spring, the police for years has been trying to streamline their work. One strategy has been to stop searching for undocumented persons. The so-called ‘internal controls of foreigners’, which inevitably resulted in increased problems with ‘racial profiling’, i.e. people were being stopped solely because of their appearance, led to serious problems in police work. It was found among other things that people avoided to report crimes that they themselves or relatives had been subject to. In addition, experienced police officers felt that they were thwarted. This is exactly what Petra Stenkula, the deputy director of the County Criminal Police in the south of Sweden, has been warning for. ‘Internal controls of foreigners’ and less effective police work seem to be two sides of the same coin.

 

The independent U.S. research institute “Police Foundation” in 2009 published a report on these issues. The results were based on interviews with police chiefs and experts on issues related to crime in the whole of U.S. The study showed that a full 70 % of the police chiefs believed that victims of crime who also are immigrants are less likely than the general population to contact the police. Furthermore, over 15 % of the interview persons said that their personnel were asking questions about legal status.

 

One consequence of the above report is that identity checks have been eliminated in many locations here in the U.S. in favour of more emphasis on law enforcement in general. In addition, forum for dialogue with immigrant groups have been developed to ensure that victims of crime feel that they can turn to the police.

 

Scores of police officers around the United States today have voluntarily choose public safety as their top priority, and rejects some politicians claim that they should search, detain and deport people without a residence permit. The report Debunking the Myth of “Sanctuary Cities”. Community Policing Policies Protects Americans that was released last year by the organization “American Immigration Law Foundation” notes that the new community policing has made everyone safer. People in general are now given access to police protection and, in addition, they are also more likely to report crimes that affect others.

 

No less than nine cities in Colorado – in the U.S. as a whole, about 70 cities – offers people without papers a sanctuary. In these cities, the police don’t stop someone just because there is a reason to believe that the person is in the country without papers. Instead, the police focus on stopping suspected criminals. These are two categories that seldom coincide.

 

The idea of ​​ sanctuary is not new. Partially inspired by an initiative in Berkley in 1971, where soldiers who refused to fight in Vietnam was given a safe heaven; the police in Los Angeles in 1979 was banned to ask people about their immigration status. Under a special rule “Special Order 40” which still applies today in the city, the police may not take a police action with the objective to reveal if a person has a permit to reside in the country or not.

 

Of course, the picture is not unilateral. Never before have so many people been deported from the U.S. ‘Racial profiling’ is a major problem within the Police. As in Sweden, isolated severe crimes committed by immigrants are discussed in the media to prove that immigrants are the same as criminal. However, research has consistently shown that immigrants in general are no more likely to commit crimes than natives. If we consider undocumented persons it is rather the contrary since the consequences for them will be very serious if they get caught – they could be expelled from the country. In addition, police officers that stopped implement internal controls of aliens in the U.S. didn’t loose its power to arrest criminals regardless of immigration status. They are working with DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to identify criminals that can be deported if they don’t have papers, but this is not the majority.

 

Contemporary challenges in our migration politics is not solved by police work that produces undocumented persons. In light of the great protests among the population in Malmö because of REVA it is now possible to make Malmö a protected zone where persons who are undocumented can stay and be assured of their safety.

 

Anna Lundberg

Lecturer in human rights at Malmö University, spring 2013 visiting scholar at the Wolf Law School in Boulder, Colorado.

 

 

All children have rights. It is obvious and yet so incredibly difficult. Read about ECRE:s report on how law can be both a substantial barrier and an enabling tool for undocumented migrant families accessing basic social rights. Here it is: http://picum.org/picum.org/uploads/publication/Children%20First%20and%20Foremost.pdf

 

PICUM:s newly finished follow up-report on access to basic rights for undocumented migrant children in Europe reveals great discrepancies between legislative entitlements and main  practical barriers as regards education, healthcare and housing. Also the Right to have a legal identity, birth registration, where there is a clear lack of policy attention, is discussed in the report.

 

The report first presents an accessible description of the international agreements that entitles children rights in these areas. A conclusion is that campaigning action tends to be most successful when national legislation falls short in practice, but when national legislation omits legal protection to a certain right, advocacy action must be brought to first create a legal protection. There is also a guide on how to take legal action in ECRE:s report.

 

The national legislation in seven EU member states were studied; Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. Moreover in each of these states workshops were held to develop strategies to overcome the challenges identified. There are a few things I believe are especially noteworthy in the report, from the perspective of challenges in decreasing the gap between rights on paper and access to rights for undocumented migrants in Sweden:

 

First of all, as regards health care, the report refers to Article 3 in the European Convention for human rights, stating that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, and to the case of Pretty v UK where the European court of Human Rights found that “the suffering which flows from naturally occurring illness, physical or mental, may be covered by Article 3, where it is, or risks being, exacerbated by treatment…for which the authorities can be held responsible.”

 

As regards the right to housing a comprehensive right encapsulating access to appropriate, secure, and sustainable accommodation (established under international law in UDHR art 25, CRC art 27(3), ICESCR art 11(1), ECHR art 8, the European Social Charter art 31, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union art 34) the studied national legislations legislative frameworks exclude undocumented families from social (state subsidised) housing:

 

“Of all rights, undocumented families’ right to access housing is least protected in national legislation. in fact, no national legislation in any European member state explicitly protects undocumented children’s right to shelter or housing” (ECRE 2013: 79).

 

Italy and the UK who previously offered social assistance in the form of housing allowance to vulnerable undocumented families at risk of destitution, have progressively removed any assistance. At the same time it is also found that in the UK the law places legal duties on local authorities to provide accommodation support in specific circumstances including for undocumented families. Local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation support to avoid a breach of human rights.

 

A social enterprice in the UK called ‘Apps for Good’ offers classes is ‘Stop and Search.’ This is a mobile application designed to make stop and search a transparent and fair process. In the UK the police have the authority to stop people and ask them to identify themselves, or proceed to search them. The procedure makes young people feel disempowered, criminalised and confused. The mobile application allows users to learn about their legal rights under the stop and account and stop and search procedures. Using easy to understand pictograms, users can quickly understand what rights they have in law and so, not feel intimidated or confused should they be subject to such a procedure. The application has an added feature to allow users to log their experience into the centralised database. This involves rating their experience and providing simple, key data on themselves so that the application can analyse, draw patterns from and map stop and searches in the UK. Finally the application provides information to users on lodging a complaint against the police. The application could easily be developed to include rights in detention centres and contacts to lawyers and migrants’ rights groups.

 

A final section in the report is about regularisation as a strategy. Why do we need regularisation of irregularity and how can we do it?

 

I will get back to these questions,

 

Anna

 

Read these news about children’s best interests and migration control:

A baby could be left with a paralysed arm because of her family’s immigration status

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-21747912

“We have a lot of illegal immigrant children here, It’s ridiculous that they wouldn’t get access to school. Sometimes we make special arrangements for these students but it works, they are here and they should go to school”.

 

My son’s teacher said this during a meeting we had in January because of some VISA-problems of our own. It turned out later that the teacher, Dr N, had been researching Mexican migration to the US and the political situation for undocumented children here for years. At the same time she is giving language-classes to undocumented children.

 

The number of people living without documents in the U.S. is estimated at 11.5 million. If the DREAM Act passes, hopefully by the end of this year, young undocumented individuals would get a “path to citizenship”. DREAM stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors and would allow for as many as between 800000 and 1,6 million young persons who have been living in the US for five years and entered the country before sixteen years of age to stay legally. Applicants who meet the bill’s requirements would become so called “conditional non-immigrants” and elude the risk of being detained, prosecuted and deported. Further, if the Act passes the Secretary of Homeland Security would have the authority to adjust the immigration status for qualified individuals, allowing for an application of permanent residency.

 

The idea of regularisation is not new. For 12 years people have been pushing Congress to give undocumented youths legal status. In 2001 Representative Luis Gutiérrez initiated the regularisation-Act under the name “Immigrant Children’s Educational Advancement and Dropout Prevention Act of 2001”. At that time it was a compromise of all the immigration reform bills that failed to get through Congress since Reagan’s first immigration reform in 1986. Democrats finally passed the DREAM Act in the House in the beginning of 2011. It got 55 votes in the Senate but was blocked by Republicans. In the meantime 12 states in the US have their own versions of the DREAM Act, most deal with tuition for state universities (Texas, California, Illinois, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Maryland).

 

People being pro the DREAM Act keeps saying that this isn’t an amnesty programme that would produce a variety of social and economic benefits. And it is a fact that the US-borders are as secure as they ever can be. Not many people are coming now – this has to do with the economic downturn as much as with border enforcement. The US has spent an estimated $ 90 billion over the past decade to secure the Mexican border; annual border spending tripled over the last decade (only last year 18 billions were spent on border control); the increased spending has helped curb irregular immigration (http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/us-spends-90-billion-border-security-drugs-keep-pouring).

 

An argument against the Act is that the Dreamers, i.e. potential citizens, are going to take American jobs. But according to researchers this will not be the case. Most undocumented persons are already part of the labour force here. Except for some competition for the lowest skilled jobs, which Americans don’t want according to industry, peoples’ jobs are “safe”. Plus, US economy depends on undocumented migrants – households headed by undocumented workers collectively paid 11,2 billion in state and local taxes in 2010. Critics further contend that it would reward “illegal immigration” and encourage further immigration, inviting fraud. Of the American population 52% support allowing police to stop and question anyone they suspect of being “illegal”.

 

Undocumented persons in the movement, the “Dreamers”, don’t consider themselves “alien”, they are “undocumented Americans”, they are the unapologetics. A journalist expressed the problem in the following terms, as he “came out” in Time Magazine last summer: “I haven’t become legal because there is no way for me to become legal” (see http://ideas.time.com/2012/06/14/inside-the-world-of-the-illegal-immigrant/). The idea to ”come out” has shown to be tactical for Dreamers. For years undocumented learned to be quiet, to live in the shadows, and that their status was to dangerous to discuss in public.

 

No more.

 

Today, young immigrants are trained to tell their stories to anyone who will listen. Two years ago Dreamer-groups began holding coming-out ceremonies where students defied the immigration authorities with signs announcing they were “undocumented and unafraid” (see these YouTube clips: We Are Undocumented America: Fighting for Immigration Reform in 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2vW_mOzHwA Immigration Reform: The Fight to Pass the Dream Act http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz2yr-vPOeo).

 

To conclude. “Coming out” seams to be a successful strategy here in the US, for the DREAM Act to come true. It also appears – especially in the states where many undocumented migrants have lived for a long time (Nevada 7,2%; California 6,8%; Texas 6,7%), that a strong argument for the Act is practical. Undocumented persons are in the US; they won’t go away no matter how effectively the deportation machinery becomes.

 

At the White house web page Obama talks about a broken immigration system (http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/fixing-immigration-system-america-s-21st-century-economy). He says ”The law should stop punishing innocent young people whose parents brought them here illegally and give those young men and women a chance to stay in this country if they serve in the military or pursue higher education.”

 

Dr N, our son’s teacher, doesn’t give much for the political discussions going on in the US regarding regularisation. Getting access to the process of regularisation will be extremely complicated but might be a good first step in the right direction.

 

 

Anna

 

PS: Presente <http://presente.org> is an organisation providing relevant information in this field.

Most people would agree that human rights today have become a “lingua franca of moral and political claim making” (Ingram, James D. (2008) ‘What is a ‘Right to Have Rights? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights’ in American Political Science Review 102(4): 401-16). This, however, is certainly no guarantee that each and everyone’s rights are protected and respected. Too many examples have made this clear. It’s fair to say that human rights have fallen victim to their very success, that interventions in the name of universal human rights not seldom make things worse, and that living conditions of vulnerable groups are unacceptable in light of international human rights law. An obvious example of the latter is undocumented migrant children in Europe lacking access to basic human rights.

I assume that Hannah Arendt, who’s books I’m working with at the time of writing, would agree that there is a need in our time for a broader understanding of the basis of “universal human rights”. This is strongly suggested by her ambition to frame human rights philosophically and manifest them politically.

In the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) Arendt approaches human rights by giving a close account of the trial against the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem after the Second World War. Not so interested in whether Eichmann was a cog in the larger machinery or whether he was the engine behind, Arendt seeks an understanding of how serious violations of human rights can come about.

Eichmann, the book’s main character, completely lacked the ability to think himself into other people’s situation and position. He is described as an unimaginative bureaucrat without his own ideas and initiatives other than climbing the career.

In here analysis Arendt claims that Eichmann didn’t have a radically evil core or motivation that fuelled his monstrous actions, but a banal evil that was perpetrated by his thoughtlessness. The second part of the title “banality of evil” refers to Eichmann’s claims that he bore no responsibility because he was simply doing his duty; “he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law” (p 135). During the trial Eichmann maintained that he was never anti-Semitic nor willed the murder of human beings. His guilt came from obedience praised as a virtue under Nazism.

I think two main points in the book are valuable when exploring contemporary migration control mechanisms. Both have to do with bureaucracy as a way of organising governmental power. The first point is the following: When the space for individuals operating in complex bureaucracies to reflect upon their tasks is curtailed, it has an impact on their way of exercising power. Worst case, structures where room for reflection is limited facilitates and cause thoughtless use of power.

Although it is tempting to see Eichmann as a monster, it wasn’t the case says Arendt. In several parts of the book his anxiety for Nazi atrocities is described. As an individual bureaucrat Eichmann wasn’t demonic, but he was thoughtless. As most ordinary people operating in complex bureaucratic systems, Eichmann developed a tendency to obey orders without thinking more closely about the results of his actions. Perhaps most people, in a system with certain characteristics, can come to a point where they undertake terrible acts.

What, then, are these organisational characteristics? Here comes the second main point made by Arendt in the book, namely that complex bureaucratic systems through a division of tasks tend to diffuse responsibility. An organisation can actually insulate those acting within it from critical self-reflection with the inevitable consequence that intellectual processes through which bureaucrats achieve moral authority are degenerated.

With the division of tasks, combined with constant reference so “someone else’s orders”, it is very difficult to hold individuals responsible for the consequences of the organisation’s activities. In the Nazi system for example, giving the order to transport Jews to a camp where they would certainly be killed, was separated from arresting individual Jews or them away from their home. The scope of the organisation’s implications was veiled in obscurity to the subjects operating in it and thus it was almost impossible to ask someone accountable for the consequences of their actions.

To conclude, Arendt’s sustained analysis of the Nazi system in Eichmann in Jerusalem gives important insights as regards which consequences complex bureaucracies can have for bureaucrats’ domination over individuals.