We have nothing to learn from Giorgia Meloni on immigration

Given Albania’s location near Italy, that plan makes sense logistically. But who would our Albania be?

September 16, 2024 2:51 PM(Updated 2:57 PM)

“Stop the boats,” said Rishi Sunak. He didn’t. “Annual net migration in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands,” Tory manifestos under David Cameron proclaimed. That didn’t happen. “The aim is to create a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants here in Britain,” Theresa May, as Home Secretary, said grimly. She did, but it didn’t reduce the number of people coming here – it just contributed to the Windrush scandal.

“Smash the gangs,” Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper sing in unison. They probably won’t.

Today Keir Starmer meets Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Meloni has stoked the conspiracy theory about replacing Italians with immigrants, calling immigration to Italy “ethnic substitution”.

In addition to fanning the flames of hatred, politicians across the political spectrum in Europe have positioned themselves to pretend that they can stop people from moving around the world. They can’t. People move. They are driven by conflict, persecution, famine, or tempted by better opportunities for themselves and their loved ones.

I moved to London over 20 years ago. Where I grew up, the jobs I’ve done for the last two decades – in politics and media – simply don’t exist. I migrated. It may be across county lines rather than national borders, but it’s the same impulse: moving for a better life. There’s a better story to tell about migration and how it’s had a positive impact on our cultural life – our sporting ability, our cuisine, our taste in music.

And more importantly, there is a functional story to be told about how many of our public services depend on migration to survive.

We don’t fund enough doctors and nurses, so people come to fill the gaps. We don’t fund social care nearly enough, so a disproportionately large group of migrants make up the numbers. And since public funding for universities has been cut, they are heavily reliant on attracting – you guessed it – migrant students who pay higher tuition fees and subsidise domestic students. So if you want that operation for your father, that care for your grandmother and your child still has a university to go to, you should rationally want more migration, not less.

“Ah, but you’re talking about skilled migration,” is the reply. “It’s these illegals who come in boats.” It should be a source of pride that our country offers asylum. Even if it doesn’t, the UK has a legal duty under the Refugee Convention to offer refuge to those fleeing war and persecution.

Of those who apply here, most appear to have a genuine claim (and that’s under a system that has become much less accommodating in recent years). If we are to stop the deaths in the Channel, a workable policy must be based on safety and humanity, not on the “get tough” rhetoric that has failed for decades.

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Successive governments have presented that moral imperative as a burden, something to be resisted, someone else’s problem. But it is other countries that are taking the pressure, not Britain. The UN estimates that more than 100 million people have been displaced by war, persecution and famine. Around half are internally displaced – meaning they have been forced to flee their homes but are still in their own country. Many of the rest live in neighbouring countries, with Refugee Action estimating that 73 per cent of refugees are in countries bordering their own. Turkey, which shares a land border with Syria, Iran and Iraq, currently hosts around four million refugees.

And we are a big part of the problem: we have launched wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya over the past decades – none of these wars have made those countries safer (quite the opposite). We have armed some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Our foreign policy and arms trade are increasing the number of displaced people. Destroy the gangs by any means necessary, but also destroy our unethical foreign policy.

But what about the practicalities of Italy’s asylum deal with Albania – which Starmer is discussing with Meloni today? This is not like the costly, ineffective and most likely illegal Rwanda plan that Starmer rightly dismissed as one of his first moves in office.

Under Italy’s arrangement with Albania, asylum seekers in Italy are processed in Albania by Italian officials, with successful applicants travelling to Italy legally. Given Albania’s proximity to Italy, the arrangement makes logistical sense, but who would our Albania be?

At present, most people crossing the Channel have no other option. The lack of functioning safe and legal routes from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and other conflict zones leaves these desperate people at the mercy of criminal gangs to facilitate the dangerous and too often fatal journey across the Channel.

That Channel crossings are facilitated by “criminal gangs” is a deliberate policy. Prohibition in the US also handed the alcoholic beverage industry over to criminal gangs. It did not stop people from buying, selling or consuming alcohol, it only made it more dangerous.

If asylum seekers could be processed en route – and those who do were successfully and safely transported to the UK – it would do more to defeat the gangs than even the best Eliott Ness-like member of the new Border Security Command.

Andrew Fisher is a former Executive Director of Policy for the Labour Party