Immigrant Workers: Police Harrasment in Cardiff

[waterloowelshy]

i meant.....grow the fuck up!!!!!

you need to make yourself clearer? - funny, as i always believed that childish people resorted to swearing.

 

[Sweaty Betty]

You are a piss poor troll!!!!!!!!!!

clear enough for you........?

You can have the last word on me, make sure its a goodun ...

 

[waterloowelshy]

You are a piss poor troll!!!!!!!!!!

clear enough for you........?

You can have the last word on me, make sure its a goodun ...

i very much doubt if any one gets the last word around you my dear.

 

[llantwit]

Can I have the last word?
Or maybe we could talk about detention of immigrants?

 

[waterloowelshy]

Can I have the last word?
Or maybe we could talk about detention of immigrants?

that would be 'illegal' immigrants would it not?!

 

[llantwit]

Actually, we don't know if they were here illegally yet. That information hasn't been released.
It's equally likely at this point that the workers who got detained were assylum seekers who were waiting for a decision to be made on their cases.
Absurdly, it's illegal for them to work while they're here too, so they have to exist on (paltry) handouts from the state/taxpayer or work illegally.

 

[waterloowelshy]

Actually, we don't know if they were here illegally yet. That information hasn't been released.
It's equally likely at this point that the workers who got detained were assylum seekers who were waiting for a decision to be made on their cases.
Absurdly, it's illegal for them to work while they're here too, so they have to exist on (paltry) handouts from the state/taxpayer or work illegally.

but they would still be defined as 'illegal' in the eyes of the law. as i have said many times the police are merely carrying out orders and working within the laws that govern these situations. they are not allowed to turn a blind eye if instructed to go ahead. so the thread title 'police harrasment' is hardly true is it.

 

[nwnm]

if you got banged up i think you'd feel a bit harrassed

 

[waterloowelshy]

if you got banged up i think you'd feel a bit harrassed

if i got banged up for doing something illegal id probably feel caught! - ass opposed to harrased. there is a massive difference.

 

[llantwit]

You're not familiar with the concept of empathy, are you waters?

 

[waterloowelshy]

You're not familiar with the concept of empathy, are you waters?

it depends on the context and situation.

 

[llantwit]

Here's an article that uses some of the quotes in Echo article and sums up what I feel about this (it's gonna go in Gagged!, the South Wales anarchist newsletter):

Cardiff Immigration Raids: Nobody is illegal

A Kebab-house was closed and five takeaway workers arrested after Cardiff cops and immigration bureaucrats raided chip shops in Cardiff’s Caroline Street (Chip Lane) at the beginning of July. Chaos ensued as officials closed the street down and harassed people for hours.

One worker at Dorothy’s Fish Bar said: “There have been lots of police here, at least 20 officers. They sealed off Caroline Street at both ends and have been through all the takeaways looking for illegals. They checked all the staff’s passports and their status.”

It is not yet known what these people were nicked for – just that they were working illegally. They could have been so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ (people who have entered the country at great risk to themselves in order to find a better life away from poverty and oppression), or they could be asylum seekers awaiting Home Office approval to stay in the UK.

Under current laws refugees fleeing war or oppressive regimes are not allowed to work or earn money while their applications to stay are processed, and are instead made to live of tiny state handouts. When they do try and work, to make a bit of cash and claw back some self-respect, they are forced into low-paying menial jobs, and if discovered they are treated as criminals and deported.

This is a scandal. Counter to the lies of opportunist politicians and the racist tabloid press immigrants are actually good for the economy. In fact any financial ‘burden’ from asylum seekers comes mainly from repressive attempts to keep them out (border controls, prison-like detention centres), and keep them down (not allowing them to work and making them live off paltry benefits).

Most asylum seekers are from countries where there has been military intervention by the West (in particular from Iraq immediately before the invasion), and others are mainly from countries whose repressive regimes are armed and supported by the West. We have a responsibility to give these people a second chance.

But the most important point is that nothing can justify the suffering that is imposed on innocent people like those arrested in Cardiff in the name of ‘immigration controls’. The rich can settle in whichever country makes them pay the least tax, and bankers make vast sums of money cross borders at the touch of a button, but the poor are forced to risk their lives to cross borders and try and make a better life for themselves.

Gagged! supports the right to free movement, together with equal rights for all residents, and the right for people to decide for themselves where they wish to live and work.

For more info email: [email protected] or visit: http://noborders.org.uk/

 

[waterloowelshy]

Here's an article that uses some of the quotes in Echo article and sums up what I feel about this (it's gonna go in Gagged!, the South Wales anarchist newsletter):

you still havent answered the point about the owners of these places exploiting workers and not paying taxes / national insurance and therby becoming rich off the back of the illegal immigrants.

doesnt this benefit to the business owners totally contradict with your stance?

 

[llantwit]

it depends on the context and situation.

Could you empathise with someone in this situation:

You are a professional living in a smalll flat with your family in the Al A'Zamiyah area of Baghdad working at a local teacher training college. A US bomb kills your parents (they live near a now-destroyed water treatment works in the Al Mulla Alwan district a few miles north of where your flat is) just before the coalition of the willing enter Baghdad. You stay put with your family, and grieve for your loss thinking that all willl become a bit more stable after the americans come. It doesn't.

The security situation worsens, and as you live in a Sunni area and your wife is a Shia, you send your wife and kids to stay in the UK with family and seek asyllum. You use the little savings you have left to buy air fares to Britain because you fear that if they tay they will be killed by one of the militias. You stay behind. You're job doesn't exist any more, and you haven't been payed for months because the state institutions have broken down. But you are earning a little working for your cousin making deliveries for his grocery store that is still open and trading. It's dangerous work, but at least you're making ends meet.

One day you're making one of your deliveries and a roadside bomb goes off on the opposite side of the street. Shrapnel embeds itself in your left leg, but the wound is superficial, but you decide enough is enough. You're going to join your family in the UK. You haven't got enough cash for a plane ticket so you make your way overland through Turkey and eventually to France, ilegally crossing borders. You work for a while as a pot washer in a big hotel in Northern France (again ilegally) so you can get enough cash together to pay a people-smuggler for the privelege of sitting in a cramped and airless lorry that will take you accross the chanell.

You eventually make it to Britain, where you slowly make your way to Cardiff to find your wife and kids. You find them, and aproach the authorities with your story and seek assylum. They are angry with you initially for not declaring yourself when you first entered the country, but are pretty lenient, and let you stay in Cardiff with your family while your application is processed (theirs was accepted). Meanwhile, they tell you you are not alowed to work to support your family, and must live off a state handout of £35 a week to be given to you in the form of food vouchers that you can only spend at certain stores.

You hear that some shops in town are hiring 'illegals'. The chip-shop work is unpleasant, and the hours long, and you do feel like you're better than this, really. But in order to gain that modicum of self-respect that earning your own cash and providing for your loved-ones can give you decide to take a job in Caroline St. You hate the work, and don't realy approve of the lifesttyles of the drunken locals you see every night, and you get a fair bit of racist abuse. people call you a terrorist and Ben Laden, but you put up with it because you have little choice.

One day the police and imigration officials cordon off the street where you work, and demand to see the papers of everyone who works there. You don't know what to do. You think about running, but there's no way out. You try and hide in the cellar, but they eventually find you. When they find out you have no papers they tie your hands behind your back with a plastic cable tie that bites into your skin. The police are courteous, but the immigration officials are less so - they tell you that you're working illegally, and are breaking the conditions of your assylum application. They take you initially to a cell in a nearby police station. You do not know what will happen to you next, and you worry that you won't see your family again.

Apologies for the melodrama, but this is an entirely plausible situation. Every single 'ilegal' has a human story and often these stories are gut-wrenchingly sad and difficult to hear. The point I'm making is that the mere fact they're 'breaking the law' doesn't mean that the law is right, or that they should be dismissed as criminals. Undoubtedly my 'no borders' position could be labelled idealist, but what's the alternative? 'Pragmatism' is so often the refuge of the self-interested and the apathetic.

 

[llantwit]

you still havent answered the point about the owners of these places exploiting workers and not paying taxes / national insurance and therby becoming rich off the back of the illegal immigrants.

doesnt this benefit to the business owners totally contradict with your stance?

My point is clearly not in support of the owners of businesses who employ people who work illegally. It's about the fact that their work should not be illegal in the first place. Clearly many such employers are exploitative, but it's the social, legal, and economic context that forces these workers into illegal work that should be changed. The iniquities of the employers are a symptom of, not the root cause of a corrupt and unjust system.

 

[waterloowelshy]

My point is clearly not in support of the owners of businesses who employ people who work illegally. It's about the fact that their work should not be illegal in the first place. Clearly many such employers are exploitative, but it's the social, legal, and economic context that forces these workers into illegal work that should be changed. The iniquities of the employers are a symptom of, not the root cause of a corrupt and unjust system.

But if the police do not make these arrests then the business owners will continue to profit off the black market labour supply. Your latest point therefore reflects back to the ideology behind your argument – i.e the law itself and has nothing to do with the police who merely enforce the law. By arresting the ‘illegal’ workers the police are also cracking down on the exploitative owners of these businesses. Maybe you should repost this whole thread and argue against the law behind the arrests as opposed to merely having a dig at the police for doing their job. Your argument has just unravelled royally and is inherently flawed!


eta - as much ass you may not believe it - i am also in support of a no borders policy. Quite frankly if you want to work somewhere and there is a demand for your skills I think you should be able to go wherever the hell you want. So its not your ideology I object to – its your irrational and stereotypical labelling of the police as the ‘harassers’ when they have nothing to do with making the law of the country, and in this case (border control) of the world.

 

[llantwit]

I didn't make the original post, for starters.
But, and this is a big but, what planet are you on?
Surely it's perfectly consistent with my disagreement with the law that I should sympathise with a characterisation of said law as 'harrassment'??
Can you really not see that?
As long as this unjust law stands employers will continue to make hay from this (unjust) situation.
And as I said yesterday, most of the time this law isn't enforced anyway because the government know just as well as the employers that ilegal work is an integral and important part of our economy, and if they arrested every person wrking ilegallly in the country at this moment then there's probably be complete economic and social collapse.
Policing of this law is patchy in the extreme, and more often than not motivated by the need to TO BE SEEN TO BE doing something about immigration.

 

[llantwit]

How about the empathy question?
Or are we still to just dismiss these people as chancers who knew what they were getting themselves into and got what they deserved?

 

[waterloowelshy]

How about the empathy question?
Or are we still to just dismiss these people as chancers who knew what they were getting themselves into and got what they deserved?

as i said - i have empathy depending on the situation. and clearly would in this case. but you are still moaning about the wrong people - the police and not the politicians.

 

[llantwit]

Why can't you see it's perfectly consistent to moan about the cops and the politicians - the people who make the laws and the people who prosecute them?
For me the police are also part of the problem. I think you were moaning about the wrong people when you were going on about the employers (clearly exploiters, but not, for me, the root cause of the exploitation).
The cops aren't the root cause either, but for me to characterise their application of this unjust law as harrassment is entirely consistent with my position on imigration and imigrants (illegal or otherwise) working. That's clear, for me.
I also don't like stop and search laws, either, as you know. And I would also characterise individual cops carrying out these laws as harrassment too. The fact that they're just doing their job/just obeying orders, is honestly just not important to me.
Plus, as an anarchist, I have a predisposition to dislike the structural role police play in our society as well as the way many of them go about their jobs. I'm not trying to convince you I'm right on this - that would be pointless, but that's also clearly not what I've been trying to do throughout this thread.

 

[llantwit]

This is quite an interesting debate, btw. Ta.
Leaving work now, but migt look in later on tonight if you want to continue this.