Why Campaign Against Deportations???

Over the last two decades there has been increasing opposition to immigration controls. In particular there has been resistance within the immigrant community. This resistance has taken the form of individual campaigns against deportation and for the right of family reunion. The start of this fight-back can be accurately dated from the public campaign started in 1978 by Anwar Ditta to gain entry for her children from Pakistan.

Over the years campaigns have drawn in wide layers of support, not least from within sections of the trade union movement. At the same time the campaigns have began to challenge the whole racist ideology of immigration control. This is an ideology that depicts foreigners as scroungers, inferior, immoral and criminal. It is an ideology that on the one hand projects foreigners as "unnatural and abnormal" whilst on the other hand it justifies immigration controls as ``natural" and ‘ normal". The success of the campaigns has been to alert a growing number of people to the fact that immigration laws are not natural or inevitable. Rather they are a political construct aimed at foreigners which must and can be opposed.

Individual campaigns in themselves are not sufficient to destroy immigration controls. Campaigns are pockets of resistance. But they are crucial pockets and ones which constantly challenge the racist ideology behind all immigration laws. Above all they have created a culture of struggle and resistance..