No One Is Illegal is both
a rallying cry and a loose international network that
challenges the immigration policies of Western governments. According to No
One Is Illegal, immigration controls and international borders must be completely
opposed and dismantled because they perpetuate human suffering by
constructing a system of global apartheid. No One Is Illegal has chapters in
many Western nations and works with other immigrant and refugee rights groups
in order to fight against deportations, racial profiling, detention centres
and other
abuses resulting from immigration controls.
Cross-Issue Solidarity
Anti-Racism/Colonialism
State Domination
Capitalist Exploitation
Steve Cohen
Teresa Hayter
Direct Action Casework
Border Camps
Marches/ Demonstrations
(Flying) Pickets
Flyering/ Postering
Vigils
Working the System
Revolution
No Border Network
Refugee Action Collective (RAC)
Solidarity Across Borders Campaign
Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees
Action Committee of Non-Status Algerians
Pakistani Action Committee Against Racial Profiling
Block the Empire
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights
Anti-Racist Action (ARA)
Conventions
Conferences
Workshops
Fundraisers
Community Film Nights
Art Projects
In the UK:
Web homepage: http://noii.trick.ca/
Email: info@noii.org.uk
Snail mail:
No One Is Illegal,
Bolton Socialist Club,
16 Wood Street,
Bolton, BL1 1DY.
Spokespersons: Steve Cohen (Manchester), Harriet Grimsditch (Bolton), Teresa
Hayter (Oxford), Bob Hughes (Oxford), Dave Landau (London).
In Australia:
Web Homepage: http://www.antimedia.net/nooneisillegal/
Email: nooneisillegal@netscape.net
Snail mail:
po box 432 Carlton South, VIC 3053
Spokespersons: n/a
In Canada:
Web Homepage: n/a
Email: noii_van@hotmail.com (Vancouver), noonisillegal@yahoo.com (Toronto),
noii-montreal@resist.ca (Montreal).
Snail mail: n/a
Spokesperson: Jaggi Singh (Montreal).
In Germany:
Web Homepage: http://www.contrast.org/borders/kein/
Email: kmii-mail@web.de
Snail mail:
kein mensch ist illegal,
c/o Rasthaus,
Adlerstr. 12,
79098 Freiburg
Spokespersons: n/a
In Poland:
Web Homepage: http://www.zcnjn.most.org.pl/
Email: n/a
Snail mail:
Zaden Czlowiek Nie Jest Nielegalny,
rozbrat,
skr. poczt. 5,
60 - 966 Poznan 31
Spokespersons: n/a
In Sweden:
Web Homepage: http://www.ingenillegal.org/
Email: webmaster@ingenillegal.org
Snail mail: n/a
Spokespersons: n/a
Chapters have sprung up
wherever immigration controls are denying entry or are
actively deporting ’illegals’. By default, No One Is Illegal groups
can be found
predominantly in Western nations such as: Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany,
Sweden, Holland, and France, along with Ireland, Poland, and Russia.
1990’s - present
The phrase, ‘No One
Is Illegal,’ was first used in 1985 by Elie Wiesel, a refugee,
writer and holocaust survivor, at a speech in Tuscon, Arizona in defence of
refugee rights in the US.
Although, organized resistance to controls certainly predates No One Is Illegal,
two campaigns in particular have provided the necessary impetus for the
founding of the group.1 They took place in Britain where controls were enacted
as early as 1905, with parliament’s passing of the anti-Semitic Aliens
Act.
The first, the Nasira Begum Campaign, revolved around Begum’s right to
leave
her marriage and to remain in Britain. In 1971 she had been threatened with
deportation, when upon leaving an abusive husband the British Government
denied her settlement application on grounds that she married out of
convenience and that marriage was illegitimate in the first place. Begum
successfully refuted the government’s objections and a campaign in her
name
eventually succeeded in 1981, with Begum being granted the right to stay in
Britain.
The second, the Anwar Ditta Campaign, grew in response to the British
government’s attempts to prevent Ditta and her husband from reuniting
with their
three children who were living in Pakistan. Ditta’s struggle begun in
1977, when
her children applied for and were denied entry to Britain. The British Home
Office
denied that the children belonged to Ditta claiming instead that she had never
been to Pakistan and that the children belonged to another woman by the same
name. Ditta’s case assumed national prominence as she herself campaigned
MP’s and spoke at rallies. The campaign attracted the attention of the
media,
specifically Granada Television, which investigated the claims in Pakistan,
successfully refuting Home Office‘s claims against Ditta. In March 1981,
Ditta’s
children were granted entry clearance.
Both campaigns are crucial to No One Is Illegal in that they established some
of
the parameters of pro-immigration/ pro-refugee struggles. As Cohen notes, the
meetings at which activists gathered, “were democratic and open to all
who
supported the campaign… [and] Support was sought and gained from many
different organizations both locally and nationally”.2 The willingness
of
campaigners to enter into temporary alliances with labour, anti-racist, and
feminist groups set the tone for No One Is Illegal today, as it aims to mobilize
large numbers of supporters. It should be noted that both campaigns also utilized
a wide variety of political tools (leaflets, petitions, posters, court sit-ins,
demonstrations, etc…), which today are characteristic of No One Is Illegal
groups throughout the world.
No One Is Illegal is a…
collective acting to question borders in all their forms. We
are part of a loose network of groups around the world using the kein ist mensch
illegal/no one is illegal idea which began in 1997 at Documenta X.
We want to find answers to questions like: why are there borders? Do we need
nations? Is a global community possible? How can we remove the barriers
between us?
We are inspired by actions throughout the world, both inside and outside the
camps, and see ourselves as part of a global struggle against capitalist neoliberalism
and all its borders. We oppose a world where money and corporations
are free to travel, but people are not. We believe people fleeing poverty and
ecological degradation have as much right to move as those escaping
dictatorship and persecution. We wish to join forces with others to end
mandatory detention and to start creating the future now.
Often we use the slogans: open the borders : full rights for all migrants :
close the camps as a shorthand for some of the changes in the world we hope
to see.
We experiment with different methods and ways of bringing about change in
society: civil disobedience, direct action, writing, speaking, and artistic
interventions.
(From the Melbourne-based collective, available at:
http://www.antimedia.net/nooneisillegal/aboutus.htm)
Defending and fighting for the rights
of immigrants, refugees, and migrants
means that No One Is Illegal engages in a wide array of tactics. For them,
direction action assumes a multiplicity of forms involving: marches, (flying)
pickets, border camps, the physical ‘invasion’ of detention centres/
entering
forbidden zones, property destruction (the cutting of fences around
military/detention centres), and assisting ‘illegals’. Education
efforts are also
broad and may involve: postering/ flyering, writing articles to local media;
activists appearing on radio stations; conventions, workshops, fundraisers and
community film nights. No One Is Illegal also makes notable effort to work the
system, by: lobbying government officials (i.e. petitioning, letter writing,
telephoning) and attending court hearings.
Although No One Is Illegal
does not explicitly associate itself with any theoretical
body, it can be said that there are certain implicit theoretical connections
to
anarchism and anti-racism that surface on their websites and in their
publications. Also, Steve Cohen, a lawyer and activist in Manchester, can be
named as the foremost theorist of the ideas behind No One Is Illegal. His work,
No One Is Illegal: Asylum and Immigration Control Past and Present can serve
as a primer to some of the governing assumptions, values, and beliefs of No
One Is Illegal activists.
Cohen claims that at the core of No One Is Illegal lies the value that “Anyone
wishing to come or remain here should be supported irrespective of the facts
of
the case.”3 That is, all immigrants, refugees, and migrants should be
allowed
entry to any country regardless of linguistic, educational, economic, legal,
or any
other seemingly rational or neutral criteria. This value amounts to nothing
short
than a demand for the abolishment of all controls and borders, and the defence
of “all immigration outlaws”4, in favour of unrestricted movement.
The position of ‘no controls’ necessarily rejects all arguments
in favour of “fair”
controls. Since immigration controls are needed to maintain a “vast edifice
of
repression”, there cannot be any talk of positive reforms regarding controls.5
The rejection of controls implies that campaigns against deportation cannot
make appeals on humanitarian grounds (i.e. the refugee faces political
persecution in her home country) because even these allow states to maintain
a
distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, refugees, and migrants. Even
seemingly innocent arguments -for example, those based on compassion- must
be rejected since they favour some by excluding others. Worse, they may make
certain undesirable conditions (i.e. ill health, domestic abuse) desirable,
since
these become the criteria upon which permission to stay may be granted.6
Arguments in favour of immigrants, refugees, and migrants must therefore be
made on the grounds that all controls are unjust.
There are several charges laid against controls by No One Is Illegal. First,
controls deny freedom of movement. They are fundamentally authoritarian
measures enacted by states in order to ensure success for what Foucault
regarded as manipulation and control of the body via technologies of discipline.7
A rejection of the sovereign claim of absolute political franchise is rejected
by No
One Is Illegal on principles characteristic of anarchism. The sovereignty of
the
individual is elevated above the sovereignty of states, when Cohen proclaims
that controls ought to be rejected because they “can never be acceptable
to
those not accepted by them.”8 If anarchism is “the purest expression
of
individualism in political thought”9, then the defence of individual interests
above
those of collective interests by No One Is Illegal certainly attests to the
group’s
anarchist leanings.
Second, controls succeed in masking and building upon the legacy of
colonialism. According to one No One Is Illegal document, the national border,
which is an integral feature of controls, functions as “a fictitious demarcation
that
slices throughout traditional unceded territory.”10 Such references to
indigenous
history and interests are characteristic of anarcho-indigenism: the attempt
to
create a dialogue between anarchist critiques of power and indigenous peoples’
struggles against the state (and its borders). More importantly, the strains
of
anarcho-indigenism that run through No One Is Illegal are reconciled with the
critique of the ’illegal’ status of immigrants, refugees, and migrants.
This allows
No One Is Illegal to account for “the possibility of disparate identities
co-existing
in contested geographical and symbolic-historical spaces”11, without recourse
to
separatism or the more popular liberal concepts of ‘self-determination’
or ‘self government’ within the white settler states.
Third, No One Is Illegal maintains that controls are inherently racist. According
to
the group’s manifesto, controls in Britain were enacted deliberately to
exclude
Jewish refugees in 1905, and black people in 1962.12 The group seems to
suggest that such historical cases ground controls in the “logic”
of racism
allowing for the construction of a distinction between an ’us’ and
a ’them’.
Although we might question whether such discrimination is inherently tantamount
to racism, the No One Is Illegal group in Britain reminds us that the very exercise
of controls is based on “the assertion that the British have a franchise
on
Britain”.13 The group throws such privileges, as the right to decide who
is illegal,
into a matrix of power that hinges on such racist concepts as native and ethnic,
without necessarily providing us with a thorough theorization of this matrix
or its
concepts. Nevertheless, to the extent that the group attempts to challenge
controls on the grounds that they are necessarily racist, an anti-racist position
is
implicitly present in No One Is Illegal.
The Manifesto of the No
One Is Illegal Group maintains that “[t]he struggle
against the totality of controls is certainly uphill - it may well require a
revolution”.14 In accordance with revolutionary aspirations, everything
from the
state and its agents to the economy and immigration control reformers, are
named among the enemy. The necessity of controls is often linked by No One Is
Illegal to the “policies of neo-liberal globalization”15, and to
the foundations of
Western societies which must be challenged and transformed.
In the immediate short term however, No One Is Illegal activists target detention
centres and borders, creating small windows of opportunity for immigration
outlaws. They are also active in picketing embassies and immigration bureaus.
Internet: numerous websites;
e-mail list-serves.
Print: the Manifesto of the No One Is Illegal Group; sporadic newsletters;
numerous articles; Steve Cohen’s No One Is Illegal: Asylum and Immigration
Control Past and Present, (Sterling: Trentham Books, 2003).
Sometimes in the context
of anti-globalization protests, in which case No One Is
Illegal is represented as part and parcel of “vandalism” and “anarchy”.16
At other
times the coverage is more sombre, as in when No One Is Illegal spokespeople
are cited in opposition to deportation orders.17
Can be broken down as follows:
1. Direct action - (child-friendly) marches and demonstrations; pickets and
vigils
at various government departments; border camps.
2. Education and outreach - fleering and postering; hosting and attending
conventions, conferences, workshops, fundraisers, and community film nights;
writing articles for local media.
3. Defence - direct action casework involves: ‘days of action’ held
to highlight
various immigrant, refugee, and migrant cases; financial support for legal costs;
providing transportation and support to other activists willing to help.
4. Playing the system - courtroom solidarity and support; letter and petition
campaigns.
1. Anti-Racist Border Camp in Ustrzyki Gorne.
When: July 13-19, 2000
Where: The triangle of borders of Slovakia, Ukraine, and Poland.
What: A border camp was organized under the banner ‘No One Is Illegal’.
The
organizers informed the public that the intent was to have a “spontaneous
and
cheerful event” that would manifest as a “interesting happening”
at the border
junction.18 Around 150 activists showed up from Poland, Germany, Ukraine,
Belarus, Russia, Slovakia, Holland, Finland, Austria, Bulgaria and Spain. Three
actions took place: 1) “a demo in front of the border police in Lutowiski…
where
people shouted slogans and burned a symbolic border crossing”; 2) a border
crossing that required a 4 hour hike up a mountain trail; 3) “a protest
at the
building site of a new border guard… [where] people climbed a tower and
hung a
banner”.19 In total, only 25 activists decided to face the torrential
rains and make
the hike. Upon arrival they encountered 1500 members of the border police who
had been mobilized three days in advance to prevent them from crossing. The
actions received press coverage and were regarded by the activists as “fairly
successful despite the rain.”20
2. PublixTheatreCaravan
When: 2001 - ongoing?
Where: Touring through Europe
What: The PublixTheatreCaravan consists of a double-decker bus touring in an
attempt to “provide a means of direct connection and communication”21
between
the various border camps, conferences, and anti-summit mobilizations taking
place in Europe. The caravan is also conceived as a “mobile noborder
laboratory” that advances the principle of ’freedom of movement’
to “politically
and culturally different public places in Europe.”22 Touring under the
slogan
“noborder - nonation - stop deportation", the bus provides activists
and interested
persons with “room for guerrilla communication, a laboratory of resistance
technologies as well as for a virtual and physical interaction. The media bus
of
the PublixTheatreCaravan is a mobile action-and documentary centre. On board
are computers, radio and internet station, bar, information and video-tape
library.”23
The PublixTheatreCaravan has helped organize street parties, workshops, and
conferences; appeared in front of detention centres and at border camps; and
took part in G8, anti-war, and anti-globalization protests. In so doing, the
activists
who took part faced numerous arrests. In September 2003, the
PublixTheatreCaravan stood on trial in Italy with the arrest of all of the caravan’s
participants.
3. Campaign in Support of Osama Saleh Omar
When: April 23, 2004 - April 28, 2004
Where: Montreal, Canada
What: A one week phone, email, and fax campaign in support of Osama Saleh
Omar, who was targeted for deportation from Canada to Palestine. Working with
the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees, No One Is Illegal
contacted numerous organizations and individuals in order to enlist their support
for Omar. Utilizing e-mail list-serves, No One Is Illegal urged activists to
pack the
courtrooms and provided activists with a template letter that, in part, criticized
the
government’s position that allows it to acknowledge Palestine as a high
risk zone
to Canadian tourists while at the same time forcefully deporting refugees there.
It
should be noted that the campaign also made appeals on compassionate and
humanitarian grounds in contrast to other No One Is Illegal anti-deportation
campaigns, which have highlighted the need for unconditional solidarity with
all
immigration outlaws. The campaign succeeded on April 28, 2004, with the
Federal Court rendering a judgment to stay the deportation.24
As Steve Cohen points out,
underlying the organizational drive of No One Is
Illegal is the belief that “it is quite possible for those of different
political
ideologies to embark on joint political action.”25 The Nasira Begum Campaign
of
1978, which set the tone for No One Is Illegal, was characterized as a broad
campaign that utilized support from far-ranging groups, such as: trade unions,
women’s groups and the Asian Youth Movement.26 Today, in similar fashion
No
One Is Illegal appeals to any grassroots organization that is willing to offer
support for particular campaigns.
Lowry, Michelle & Nyers,
Peter. “No One Is Illegal: The Fight for Refugee and
Migrant Rights in Canada,” Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees
21:3 (May
2003), pp. 66-72.
Nyers, Peter. "Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the
Anti-
Deportation Movement," Third World Quarterly 24:6 (2003).
Nyers, Peter. “Emergency or Emerging Identities? Refugees and
Transformations in World Order,” Millennium: Journal of International
Studies
28:1 (1999), pp. 1-26.
Steve Cohen, No One Is Illegal:
Asylum and Immigration Control Past and
Present, (Sterling: Trentham Books, 2003).
Teresa Hayter, Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, (Sterling:
Pluto Press, 2000).
Articles on a wide selection of topics pertaining to No One Is Illegal:
http://www.antimedia.net/xborder/
Culture Jamming campaign in support:
http://www.deportation-class.com/
Affinity groups:
http://www.noborder.org/news_index.php
http://www.contrast.org/borders/noone.html
http://amarc.org/vsf2004/public/en/