EU Referendum


Immigration: more push than pull


20/06/2014




There were some who wondered why I should have written about the S. Korean fishing ban, under consideration by the EU. But the real question should be why, of late, I have written so little about such issues. 

As it happens, I was sent details of the S. Korean affair by a colleague, who thought I might be interested – and indeed I was. It fitted perfectly into a wider study on immigration that I am writing up for the Flexcit plan, to illustrate the role of so-called "push" factors as a causal mechanism.

We have written about the effect of fishing in third country waters many times, such as here in 2006, and here, and this piece, where I referred to the then current wave of migration to the Canaries, "entirely due to the effect of the predatory third country fishing agreements, which are depriving Africans of their livelihoods".

I then asserted that the immediate answer was to stop stealing African fish. Scrap the third country deals and help countries develop their own fishing industries, complete with processing facilities which give the added value.

The interest goes back much earlier, however, and we were actively engaged in this issue in 2001 when I was working in the European Parliament. It was then that Kim Willsher fronted for Channel 4 a revealing film about the depredations of the "EU fishing fleet" in Mauritania.

We got in touch with Kim Willsher, and I started to make arrangements for Nigel Farage to go out to Mauritania himself, to draw attention to the predatory third world deals. But when I set up meetings for TGL in Brussels, to progress this idea, he never showed. Eventually, the idea fizzled out – a major opportunity missed, in my view.

But even then, we were well aware that the EU itself was responsible for much of the pressure on migration, and that to contain the problem required a concerted effort to deal with these "push" factors, about which I have more recently written.

This is part of the reason why I find the UKIP "pull up the drawbridge" policy on immigration so objectionable. It is not that that I would disagree with the need to control the flow of migrants into this country. It is that - as Farage well knows – the measures we need to take are far more comprehensive than just improving (or re-asserting) border controls.

Further, in political terms, there was far more capital to be made in taking a global approach to controlling immigration, than projecting the "little Englander" drawbridge mentality.

What again brings this into focus, though, is a piece in the Guardian today, headlined: "Why illegal fishing off Africa's coast must be stopped". Sadly, it is rehearsing exactly the same issues that Kim Willsher was addressing more than a decade previously, and which Farage so egregiously failed to pursue.

Says the Guardian: "The livelihoods and nutrition of millions of people in Africa are being put at risk by foreign fishing fleets in their waters", then pointing out that up to a quarter of jobs in the region are linked to fisheries. Take the fish and you take the jobs, and add to the migration pressure.

Yet, not only does the EU (alongside Russia, China, S. Korea and other countries) take obscene quantities of fish, via the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, it is paying €6.5 billion from 2014 to 2020 (up from €4.3 billion in the previous period) to subsidise the fisheries sector.

A very large proportion of that (more than a quarter) is paid to Spain to stave off unemployment in the politically sensitive Spanish fishing industry. Hence, taxpayers' money is being paid to reduce European unemployment, only to export it to Africa.

However, it is not just predatory fishing policies which are doing the damage. Coincidentally, in the Guardian, there is a report on the destructive effect of cotton subsidies on West African farmers.

In this case, it is not the EU at fault. Since the McSharry CAP reforms, and with the implementation of the 2010 reforms, 94 percent of agricultural support is unrelated to specific production and is thus "uncoupled". The main offender here is the United States, which aggressively subsidises its own growers (albeit at a reduced level over the last year, as a result of rising world prices).

This apart, there are other, substantial problems which handicap West African growers, not least the prohibition on granting US Aid for projects which would compete with US farmers. This is the so-called Bumpers Amendment, which we met in Afghanistan, and which continues to have a worldwide effect.

More generally, we see a report here which sets out some of the other issues currently holding Africa back. It also puts losses in West Africa from illegal fishing at $1.3 billion annually and, in Senegal alone, at around $300 million in 2012. That is equivalent to around 2 percent of GDP. The supposedly "legal" fishing, though, costs much more.

It takes very little, therefore, to hunt out and understand these issues and their role as "push" factors. They even apply to within the EU, where intelligent policy could reduce migration pressure from member states, as well as from outside the external borders.

However, the saddest thing of all is that, considerably more than a decade after such issues have been raised, virtually nothing has changed but the rhetoric. We are facing exactly the same problems and, if anything, are further from solving them than we ever have been.

FORUM THREAD