Wise words from Diane Abbott in the Guardian today, some extracts:

"...immigration panics are cyclical and have followed an unvarying pattern for more than half a century... First, public panic is stoked by a media campaign... Faced with a tabloid onslaught, politicians then start to bleat about the need to deal with people's fears. Finally comes the "crackdown", the "five-year plan" or the hastily compiled legislation..."

"Ever since the industrial revolution, the demands of British capital have led to massive labour migration. Originally that migration was within the British Isles. In the past 50 years it has occurred across the boundaries of nation states..."

"The biggest myth about immigration is that people are coming here to live on benefits. People come for the same reason that my parents' generation of West Indian immigrants came in the 1950s. They come to work."

Read the full article here:

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1417301,00.html

Foe more of the history of this stuff see the manifesto of the No One Is Illegal Group:

"Immigration controls are not fascism. Detention centres are not extermination camps. However immigration laws are different from other laws in one other significant way. They are the result, at least in part, of organised fascist activity..."

 http://noii.trick.ca/OurManifesto

For a world without borders! No immigration controls!