The case for Open Borders – A Refugee Week event speaker – Teresa Hayter
Tuesday June 19th at 7.00 pm – The Square Centre, Alfred Street North (which is just off top of Huntingdon Street), Nottingham. http://www.nottsrefugeeforum.org.uk
Teresa Hayter is an activist and writer.
She is a member of the Close Campsfield Campaign and an author of the No One is Illegal Manifesto…
** Read about other activities for Nottingham Refugee Week 2007 – 16th?24th June
The case for Open Borders – A Refugee Week event speaker – Teresa Hayter
Tuesday June 19th at 7.00 pm – The Square Centre, Alfred Street North (which is just off top of Huntingdon Street), Nottingham. http://www.nottsrefugeeforum.org.uk
Teresa Hayter is an activist and writer.
She is a member of the Close Campsfield Campaign and an author of the No One is Illegal Manifesto. She has written widely on poverty, aid, and migration. The second edition of her book Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls was published by Pluto Press in 2004.
Migration is the most politically charged issue in the UK today. On one side, the campaign to defend asylum
rights: on the other, a policy of deterrence ~ destitution, detention and forced deportation.
Refugee organisations call for the reform of the asylum system – for ?humanitarian? immigration
controls that protect the rights of asylum seekers. But can we defend the rights of asylum seekers without defending the rights of other migrants, ?legal? or ?illegal?? Can we talk about political refugees, as if repression and human rights abuse were inseparable
from the economics of poverty and conflict.
For Teresa Hayter and other advocates of ?open borders?, immigration controls are unjustified, ineffective and racist; and the cause of huge suffering, from the exploitation of undocumented workers to death, as crossing borders becomes ever more hazardous.
This is a controversial view. But Refugee Week offers us an ideal opportunity to reconsider both borders and
immigration controls’.