Immigration reporting centres are places of fear for asylum seekers, who have to report to them monthly, weekly or even several times a week. From reporting centres asylum seekers are often detained without warning and sent to removal centres to await deportation.

Seeking asylum – fleeing imperialism
No to deportations! Defend asylum seekers and migrant workers!

Asylum seekers and migrant workers are organising in defence of their right to remain in Britain Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! supports this fightback. We understand that racism against immigrants in Britain is intrinsically linked to Britain’s imperialist wars and plunder around the world.

The British Empire today
Britain is a wealthy country. It is spending £2.6 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan. British companies dominate and impoverish numerous underdeveloped countries, making super-profits from plundering African oil and Asian textiles, and from the brutal exploitation of the masses of workers all over the world. As well as stealing wealth from abroad, capitalists require cheap labour in this country and the British state therefore encourages the immigration of new workers into this country when it needs to do so.

Aliens, settlers, refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers
The history of Britain is the history of migration – a continual process of people moving into and out of this country. Over the centuries Celts conquered the land, the Imperial Roman army marched in, and Vikings, Normans, Irish people, Africans, Jews and Italians settled in Britain, all contributed to forming the Britain of today. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have left Britain, emigrating to settle around the world.

Wanted – cheap labour
Peoples and communities have always travelled and settled: from countryside to town or within empires to escape from poverty and flee persecution. At times capitalism welcomes this, because it needs new labourers, like the Caribbean and south Asian immigrants of the 1960s or the 300,000+ migrants from Eastern Europe who have come to Britain for work in the past five years, often at or below the minimum wage, in temporary jobs with no holiday or sick pay. Overseas labour has long been the backbone of the NHS, for example, where 50% of workers now come from abroad. Even when well paid, such workers are cheap, as Britain has not had to invest in their education or training.

Not wanted – victims of persecution
At the same time as it encouraged the east European work force into Britain, the British state has been tightening controls on immigration from other countries. Since coming to power in 1997 the Labour government has introduced successive Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Acts, each more draconian than the last. These laws are designed to refuse entry to and deport asylum seekers from war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, or Democratic Republic of Congo where British multinationals are violently robbing the country of its gold, coltan, oil and other natural resources.

Racism – divide and rule
Those who bear the brunt of imperialist domination, suffering starvation, unemployment, war crimes and brutal exploitation, are then met by further brutality from the British state when they seek asylum here. A web of laws to limit entry to Britain is criminalising refugees. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Employers who take on workers without permits are fined; teachers and health workers are encouraged to spy and report on pupils and patients. Dawn-raids, detentions and deportations are tearing families apart. Then, to add insult to injury, a tumult of racist lies from the press and government is directed against asylum seekers, encouraging British workers to see immigrants, instead of the state, as responsible for poverty, unemployment and cuts in services.

Join the fight back
Where there is repression there will be resistance and asylum seekers, migrant workers and their supporters are fighting back. Schoolchildren petition and protest against deportation threats to their friends, communities protest against dawn-raids and low-paid immigrant workers are organising to defend their rights.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! supporters around Britain are active in support of these struggles. In Newcastle we work with Tyneside Community Action for Refugees; in London we organise regular demonstrations outside Communications House Immigration Reporting Centre, where asylum seekers have to report monthly, weekly or more frequently, and from where they can suddenly be arrested and taken to detention.

The racist state attack on asylum seekers in Britain cannot be separated from Britain’s imperialist wars and plunder throughout the world. Let us unite to increase and build resistance to these attacks. Fight racism! Fight imperialism!



NO DETENTION! NO DEPORTATIONS!
SUPPORT ASYLUM SEEKERS AND MIGRANT WORKERS!
NO TO STATE RACISM!

For more information tel: 0207 837 1688

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