Colleagues have mainly commented on the practicalities of these issues. The
comparison with Norway is not very helpful - it has a population of 4.5 million
and the capital city 0.5 million.
The real objections are based on civil liberty questions. As each one of us
registers our address or gets a card we isolate and expose those who do not -
we become involved in trapping others. It is not a case of 'those with nothing
to hide have nothing to fear'. For example people who entered the
country legally have been made illegal by retrospective measures. Others who
could be here legally as refugees took bad advice or help from friends and
family, or were duped into taking short cuts by crooks (for a fee). Yet others
made mistakes negotiating the labyrinthine UK rules. If removed they might be
at risk of everything from torture, imprisonment and death (or any combination
of the three) to poverty, debt and starvation. I don't wish to be involved in
cornering them for the authorities - I hope I would have the courage to risk
the penalties for aiding them.
European governments are now shifting from boasting about how many would-be
immigrants they are keeping out to parading their statistics of how many they
have removed or deported. As governments find themselves more and
more under pressure from the far right the opportunity to win a political
breathing space with mass deportations will become almost irresistible. What
could be better than a register of addresses with residents' ethnic origin for
implementing these measures? Made for the job! Local authorities could even be
set quotas.
As for 'entitlement cards' I think this is a smokescreen - but even if
they could be used to detected fraud, would they catch tax-dodgers and
corporate thieves, or just poor people? And it wouldn't be people-smugglers who
got caught by not having ID cards, but their wretched victims.
Robert
------------------------------
Professor Robert Moore
Department of Sociology, Social Policy
and Social Work Studies
The University of Liverpool
Eleanor Rathbone Building
Bedford Street South
Liverpool
L69 7ZA
tel and fax: 44 (0) 1352 714456
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