EuropaWorld 30/3/2001 Why Railway Fines Should Be Spent In Pakistan

Time was when 'third boxcar, midnight train' was almost the standard cinema cliché for seeking a new life. The wagons slowed, the refugees leapt aboard and freedom waited somewhere at journey's end. Today, as often as not the refugee family is sent packing and the owners of the boxcar - in this case English, Welsh and Scottish railways (EWS) - end up paying a hefty fine.

Since March 1st when a new British law came into force holding railway operators responsible for any illegal immigrants stowed away aboard their trains, EWS have collected a quarter of a million pounds in fines and now face the loss of their cross channel freight business. It is simply uneconomic if we have to pay these fines, they say.

Although it is the French railway company, SNCF, that is responsible for the security of the trains on the continental side of the Channel, the British Government maintain that as in effect EWS are in partnership with SNCF over the freight then they should share both security obligations and the fines.

All of this throws into focus once again the sorry mess into which Europe's immigration policies have descended. If ever there was a policy over which there was a need for greater co-ordination at the European level, then immigration and asylum is surely it. The fact is that there is no proper European policy, principally because a common policy would force European governments to face up to responsibilities that many would rather shrug off - their responsibilities towards the dispossessed.

Europeans are very good at expecting the right to live anywhere in the world they choose, but they are not so eager at demonstrating reciprocal hospitality. This despite the fact that the indigenous European population is actually falling and the absence of sufficient people to fill many public service posts is only too self-evident. Recruiting teachers and nurses from developing countries - in effect poaching from those countries hard won talent - while turning away asylum seekers many of whom arequalified - is both bizarre and, let us not be too squeamish, evil.

Mary Robinson, the outspoken and outgoing United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, has repeatedly expressed her concern about what she calls "an increasing tendency towards a 'Fortress Europe mentality'" at a time when Europe is in need of increased immigration for its own future economic security.

One statistic that British Ministers like to use to justify their hard line stance is that Britain receives more applications for asylum than any other country in the European Union. Like most statistics it is misleading for it ignores the size of the country's population - let alone the pressure on social benefits. The population related figures are actually very different.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, it is Belgium that entertains the highest number of asylum applications, equivalent to 4.2 per thousand of its population with Portugal at 0.02 per thousand recording the lowest. The UK, despite the general perception that it is the Europe asylum seeker's honeypot, receives only 1.6 applications per thousand inhabitants, only the seventh largest: Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and of course Belgium, all receiving more applications in relation to their population size.

What is certain is that there are few people who willingly leave their homes, families and countries simply to seek 'a better life.' The vast majority feel compelled to leave for more uncomfortable reasons, namely that they no longer feel that the jurisdiction under which they live offers them and their children basic rights, liberties and protection. The list of countries from which people seek asylum in Europe is a dismal but predictable catalogue not of the world's poorest countries but of those afflicted by ethnic or religious persecution, by armed conflict, repression and other turbulence - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Russia, China.

The vast majority of those displaced by famine or conflict do not, of course, travel to Europe. They shelter in neighbouring countries which are often as poor if not poorer than those from which the refugees are fleeing. Britain's strictures and inhospitalities against those arriving on its doorstep need to be seen against the actions of countries like Pakistan which shelters over a million Afghan refugees at great cost to itself. For every Afghan that asks for asylum in Britain, a hundred, equally desperate, seek refuge in Pakistan, Iran, India and other closer countries. The same is true of refugees from the Balkans, the same is true of refugees from African conflicts.

Later this year we shall commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention. This would be a suitable time for Britain to start making the headlines in more practical and effective ways than fining railway companies for being the unknowing carriers of a wretched human cargo. If we accept that refugees come from countries afflicted by deep conflicts and turbulence, then we must work harder through the European Union and the United Nations to reduce the incidence of such turbulence. Britain must also use its full influence on the international stage to ensure that the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR is fully funded.

We must also work to ensure that the whole European Union has a refugee policy that is both enlightened and humane, Every one of the more than 20 million people that UNHCR care for is potentially someone who, in extremis, may be pushed to taking the EWS railroad tfreedom. These days a quarter of a million pounds in fines would go quite a long way towards providing assistance in the squalid refugee camps of Pakistan - Afghan border.