Billy Jones, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
Sonita Gale’s brilliant 2021 documentary Hostile lays out the reality of what life is like for the vast majority of migrants to the UK. It exposes the falsehood that it is ‘the high life, claiming benefits and checking into swanky hotels’.
The film was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and follows various people as they try to survive. Farrukh came to the UK in 2003 on a student visa, and since then has settled with his family in Manchester. He has given over a decade to the NHS as an IT engineer – and yet is being hounded by the Home Office over his right to live in the UK.
The paperwork he is asked to fill out is not only complicated, but expensive; he has racked up thousands of pounds in debt trying to keep up with payments. This cruel treatment is not a coincidence, but part of the government’s ‘hostile environment policy’, instituted under Theresa May, which is designed to make life for those under immigration control so miserable that they decide to voluntarily leave.
The film shows the effects of the pandemic. International students, for example, have no access to public funds and many need to find work to support themselves (limited to a measly 20 hours a week). When businesses shut down during lockdown, many were left stranded. With no money coming in, they were kicked out by their landlords, locked out of their student accounts, and threatened with deportation.
Importantly, the film points out that being an ‘illegal immigrant’ is not a crime on the part of the individual, but is determined by changing government policies. Illustrating this, the film covers the Windrush scandal.
Post-World War Two, the government invited Caribbean immigrants to the country to address a shortage of labour. However, in 2017, policies changed and this aged ‘Windrush generation’ were classed as illegal migrants and told to ‘go back to their own country’ – despite having lived almost their entire lives in the UK. One interviewee takes the director to the detention centre he was held in due to this policy change.
It is made clear that both Labour and Conservative governments are responsible for the ramping up of anti-immigration policies, as well as that many coming to this country are fleeing crises which have been exacerbated by British military intervention. These policies are part of the divisive rhetoric used to try to sow divisions in workplaces and working-class communities, and can give confidence to the far right.
It is through genuine working-class solidarity against racist scapegoating, uniting in a fight for decent jobs, homes and services for all, that we can win a decent future for all.
