DEPORTATION IS FREEDOM: THE ORWELLIAN WORLD
OF IMMIGRATION CONTROLS* by Steve Cohen
Reviewed by Leslie H. Morley**
IT WAS NEARLY FOUR DECADES AGO that John Lennon asked us
to imagine that there were no countries. How many of us, even as
immigration lawyers, pre-occupied as we are with national boundaries,
can deny that we were captivated by those words when we first heard
them? They evoked a future world in which people could travel
unfettered by border controls imposed, so the thinking went, to insulate
affluence from need. Then came 9-11, extraordinary rendition and
innumerable suicide bombings. Nowadays many of us would characterize the notion of a
world without borders as quaint, if not daft. Even more of us would regard one of our
colleagues who subscribed to such a notion - as Steve Cohen did throughout his career as a heretic. But then, Steve Cohen was never a typical immigration lawyer.
Cohen’s career is fascinating, as it offers a vision of a radical mind operating within a
distinctive immigration law practice. He spent part of his career engaged in courtroom
battles; part of it writing critiques of the immigration policies of developed nations; and
part of it at the barricades, megaphone in hand. It was a career spent beyond the range of
view of most downtown office towers.
A British socialist, activist, self-described “Zionist anti-Zionist”, polemicist and
immigration lawyer, Steve Cohen studied law at Trinity College, Oxford and
Birmingham University. He practiced law for 25 years, winning many landmark
immigration cases, often by supporting his legal battle with community campaigns. In
1989 he established the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, serving as its director
for many years. He was the driving force behind the No One is Illegal movement in
Britain, a campaign that he launched in September, 2003, after publishing a book of the
same name earlier that year. By the end of his career he was recognized as “one of
Britain’s foremost campaigners for immigration and asylum rights”.1
Cohen died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis on March 8 of this year at the age
of 64. An “enthusiastic workaholic”,2 towards the end, as he himself put it, he was
working “with one eye and one finger”,3 and yet he remained active in print and in his
support of social change. Wherever he has gone, says critic Tony Greenstein, “the fight
will continue”.4
T
HE ORIGINS OF COHEN’S THOUGHT shed some light on the development of his
career. After immersing himself in Trotskyism as a young man, he did some original
research respecting Britain’s 1905 Aliens Act5 which led him to the conclusion that the
real purpose of immigration controls was to keep undesirable people, such as Jews, out of
Britain.6 As Jenny Bourne of the Institute of Race Relations has written, Cohen:
“extended his notion of personal oppression, as a Jew, into an understanding of the racist
treatment of all migrants in a globalized world.”7 From there he developed his thesis that
the “immigration controls” of the state - that is, the rules that provide, for example, that
refugees are “bogus”, that some matrimonial unions are “marriages of convenience”, and
that some people are “illegal” - are inherently inequitable, and that state networks of
controls draw everyone into their web to enforce them.8
Cohen wrote extensively and with conviction and humour on these issues. His
publications include, amongst many others, Apartheid in Britain, a pamphlet opposing
the Prevention of Terrorism Act9; The Thin End of the White Wedge10; It's The Same Old
Story11; From the Jews to the Tamils: Britain's Mistreatment of Refugees12; Workers'
control not immigration controls: Why trade unionists should oppose immigration
restrictions13; and Standing on the Shoulders of Fascism.14
Of particular interest to immigration lawyers is Immigration Controls, the Family and the
Welfare State,15 which is a guide to British immigration law for welfare and refugee
workers and for lawyers, and which concludes with Cohen’s answer to the question of
whether or not there can ever be fair immigration controls or whether there must be no
controls at all (the answer is the latter!). Also worthy of note is Cohen’s Social Work,
Nowadays Jesus
would need a
work permit for
the second
coming
Steve Cohen and his son
Tom at a demonstration in
the 1980s.
Reproduced with the kind
permission of Harriet Grimsditch
Immigration and Asylum16 and, as mentioned above, No One is Illegal: Immigration
Control and Asylum17 a collection of essays written over 18 years, published in the wake
of the enactment of the Nationality and Asylum Act of 2002, which became the manifesto
of the movement of the same name.18
The title phrase “no one is illegal”, often
associated with Cohen, is actually taken from the writings of Elie Wiesel, who first used
it in a speech in 1985.19
Another of Cohen’s passions, both in debate and in print, was to analyze the treatment of
Jews, particularly within British society. His publications in this area include The Jews
and the Genitals, a book of poems20; the Epsteins and the Frankensteins, a story of
Jewish family life;21 and the pamphlet That’s Funny You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic, a
history of anti-Semitism in Britain that made the point that there was a new variant
emerging on the left of the political spectrum.22 When he died, Cohen had also penned
an unpublished novel that he was still editing.23
I
N SOME ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES there is a fairy tale about refugees that
for years has circulated on the internet to cries of indignation from those who oppose
immigration. The story goes that the social benefits provided to refugees exceed those
provided to citizens who are seniors. While this myth has been thoroughly discredited,24
its continued circulation is evidence that refugee claimants have been demonized in
Western society.
To Steve Cohen, immigration controls are founded upon and justified by this type of
story. As he writes in Deportation is Freedom!, asylum seekers are linked with terrorists
in the media and this message is then picked up by some politicians and jingoists, who
disseminate it further, and so inevitably, over time, refugee claimants come to be seen as
invaders and frauds, out to do us harm and to abuse our generosity. All immigration law,
he argues, is built on the notion of protecting the welfare system and the work force from
being accessed by those without status. As a consequence, a system of immigration
controls has developed, Cohen argues, which are rooted in nationalism and which, by
creating and re-enforcing huge global inequities, are inherently racist. Cohen describes
an immigration system that resembles a Kafkaesque nightmare, in which the refugee
claimant is presumed to be lying, the laws are ever-changing, the meaning of words is
elastic, and in which there is no humanity and no justice.
It is no surprise that Cohen sees the roots of anti-immigrant xenophobia in early twentieth
century anti-Semitism. He reminds us that the formalization of border restrictions is a
relatively recent phenomenon, not a natural one. The development of immigration
controls, he maintains, has been a function of the expansion of the welfare state. In
Britain, where paid work is prohibited for the asylum seeker, exclusion from the job
market is control by poverty.
Deportation is Freedom! is a relentless polemic against immigration controls. Its name is
a reference to oxymoronic slogans in George Orwell’s 1984 such as “War is Peace”,
“Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength". In Cohen’s view “Deportation is
Freedom!” is an apt title, as the subject of the book is an immigration system in which
indefinite detention or poverty may be relieved by removal. In this world common sense
is inverted, as it becomes rational to abandon sanctuary and submit to deportation in
order to escape jail or welfare. The system is dysfunctional and Orwellian. Cohen asks:
can one ever be deported with dignity? Can a person ever be illegal? To answer in the
affirmative, he argues, is to enter the realm of doublethink and Newspeak.
And that’s where the fun begins. Cohen takes hold of his 1984 metaphor and wrings
every ounce of allusion and nuance out of it. The metaphors come one after the other.
Big Brother is Britain’s Home Office. Ingsoc is the Labour Party. The proles are the
“sans papiers”. There is doublethink (the ability to knowingly tell lies while believing
they are true) in politicians’ protestations that British tolerance is under threat by those
fleeing persecution, and in the notion that voluntary departure can ever rationally be
considered either an alternative to detention or, in fact, voluntary. There is Newspeak
(contrived language developed to justify policy) in the concepts of “bogus child”, “illegal
immigrant” and “removals”, as applied to persons.
Cohen also identifies
“thoughtcrimes” which he sees as “the essence of immigration law”; and the memory
hole, in which is fabricated a golden age of immigration which, in fact, never existed.
The 1984 metaphors are occasionally effective, often thought-provoking and always
entertaining. Some, however, are inaccurate and others are tangential, and where they
are, the power of the overall argument is
dissipated. Clearly, Cohen’s mind was drawn to
allusions, but beyond superficial comparison, his
thesis is more poignantly illustrated by the
specific examples of abuses which he
occasionally cites. The 1984 construct is good to
a point but, in Deportation is Freedom!, Cohen
demonstrates an inability to appreciate the
difference between illustrating an idea with a
metaphor, and tying the facts to a metaphorical
rack and torturing them to death.
Also, many will consider Cohen to be
overreaching, for instance, where he compares
deportation from today’s Britain to the genocidal
acts of the Nazis, or where he likens allegations
that immigrants carry AIDS to the slaughter of
Jews suspected of having the plague in the Middle
Ages. Further, while the reader may accept the
assertion that asylum reform in Britain may have
little to do with improving the prospects for refugees, it may seem to be too much to
equate it to Hitler’s final solution, as Cohen does. For those who perceive such passages
as excesses, the clarity of the central message may be obscured.
In Cohen’s view, reform of the system of immigration controls can only be achieved by
their complete abolition. While this is arguably a laudable goal, its implications, other
than the dawn of the age of equality, are not addressed in this book. Cohen does not
explain in Deportation is Freedom! the process of transition to a world without borders.
How do we deal with a flood of refugees into Western countries? How can we afford the
cost of welfare for everyone? In the alternative, how do we protect the wages of our
domestic workers? We are offered in this book a searing critique of the current system,
and a vision of an intriguing alternative, but no roadmap directing us from one to the
other. Also, the prospect of the even bigger, global Big Brother who could develop in a
borderless society is overlooked, as are the salutary effects of the implementation of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,25 the Convention against Torture26 and other
international human rights instruments.
Cohen is on stronger ground where he addresses moral panic, a concept which describes
a society’s response to persons who are perceived to threaten its values and interests, and
which co-opts the media, the church, politicians and experts who unite in their opposition
to the threat, and to justify severe responses to it. It is true, as he alleges, that refugees
are often demonized. This was vividly illustrated recently when our own government
professed to protect our refugee system by imposing visa requirements that restrict access
to it not only by those whose claims are likely to fail, but also by those whose claims are
likely to succeed. As Cohen says, there is a culture of disbelief respecting refugees, one
that discounts those who do not report crimes to corrupt police, who cannot recall details
of their history that they perceive to be irrelevant, or whose emotional expression does
not seem natural or rational. It is also true that this moral panic is fueled by media
propaganda, distortion and misstatement.
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
John Lennon
Deportation is Freedom! is peppered with references to all manner of publications. The
breadth of background Cohen marshals in support of his argument is breath-taking. Not
only does he cite chapter and verse of 1984, but he also (and often more appropriately)
draws from British immigration statutes, case law, literature, newspaper articles, activist
websites, historical journals, Hansard, plays, literature, and popular music, reference to
all of which assists in establishing both the currency and timelessness of his argument.
Despite its flaws, Deportation is Freedom! should be read by all immigration lawyers. It
opens a window through which the heartlessness of Western immigration systems may be
seen, and offers a vision of a future without borders, and without immigration lawyers.
In its challenge to the whole system of laws, regulations, policy manuals and operational
bulletins within which we work every day, it is a reminder that the foundations of
immigration law may not - and perhaps should not - be as secure as they appear to be.
* Deportation is Freedom: The Orwellian World of Immigration Controls. By Steve Cohen.
London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006. 224 pp. $19.95.
** Leslie H. Morley is the Editor of Citizenship and Immigration, and may be reached at
[email protected].
1
“Review: Deportation is Freedom!,” in iRRnews: Independent race and refugee news network, by Jenny
Bourne, December 7, 2005. Available online at www.irr.org.uk/2005/december/ha000006.htm.
2
“In Memory of Steve Cohen”, by Ionnek. Indymedia London, March 10, 2009. Available online at
www.london.indymedia.org.uk.
3
Ibid..
4
“Steve Cohen – Don’t Rest in Peace Comrade – Keep Fighting!,” Tony Greenstein’s Blog, March 24,
2009. Available online at azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/03/steve-cohen-dont-rest-in-peace-comrade.htm.
5
“Remember Steve Cohen”, Socialist Unity, March 9, 2009.
Available online at
www.socialistunity.com/p=3730.
6
“Steve Cohen – Don’t Rest in Peace Comrade – Keep Fighting!,” Tony Greenstein’s Blog, March 24,
2009. Available online at azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/03/steve-cohen-dont-rest-in-peace-comrade.htm.
7
“Comment: Steve Cohen 1945-2009” in iRRnews: Independent race and refugee news network, by Jenny
Bourne, March 26, 2009. Available online at chwww.irr.org.uk/2009/march/ha000037.htm.
8
Ibid..
9
“Steve Cohen – Don’t Rest in Peace Comrade – Keep Fighting!,” Tony Greenstein’s Blog, March 24,
2009. Available online at azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/03/steve-cohen-dont-rest-in-peace-comrade.htm.
10
The Thin End of the White Wedge: The New Nationality Laws, Second Class Citizenship & the Welfare
State (Manchester Law Centre Immigration Handbook) By Steve Cohen. Manchester: Manchester Law
Centre, 1981. 56 pp.
11
It's The Same Old Story: Immigration Controls Against Jewish, Black And Asian People, With Special
Reference To Manchester. By Steve Cohen. Manchester: Manchester City Council Public Relations
Office, 1987.
12
From the Jews to the Tamils: Britain's Mistreatment of Refugees. By Steve Cohen. Manchester:
Manchester Law Centre, 1988. 56 pp.
13
Workers' control not immigration controls: Why trade unionists should oppose immigration restrictions.
By Steve Cohen. Manchester: Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, 1996. 36 pp.
14
Standing on the Shoulders of Fascism: From Immigration Control to the Strong State. By Steve Cohen.
Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books Ltd ., 2006. 176 pp. £17.99.
15
Immigration Controls, the Family and the Welfare State: A Handbook of Law, Theory, Politics and
Practice for Local Authority, Voluntary Sector and Welfare State Workers and Legal Advisors. By Steve
Cohen. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001. 352pp. $38.95.
16
Social Work, Immigration and Asylum: Debates, Dilemmas and Ethical Issues for Social Work and
Social Care Practice. By Steve Cohen. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. 224
pp. £19.95.
17
No One is Illegal: Asylum and Immigration Controls Past and Present. By Steve Cohen. Stoke-onTrent: Trentham Books Ltd, 2003. 220 pp.
18
“Comment: Steve Cohen 1945-2009” in iRRnews: Independent race and refugee news network, by Jenny
Bourne, March 26, 2009. Available online at chwww.irr.org.uk/2009/march/ha000037.htm.
19
“In Memory of Steve Cohen”, by Ionnek. Indymedia London, March 10, 2009. Available online at
www.london.indymedia.org.uk.
20
The Jews and the genitals: A valium of songs. By Steve Cohen. Self-Published. 50 pp..
21
That’s Funny, You don’t Look Anti-Semetic. By Steve Cohen. Leeds: Beyond the Pale Collective, 2004.
100 pp..
22
“In Memory of Steve Cohen”, by Ionnek. Indymedia London, March 10, 2009. Available online at
www.london.indymedia.org.uk.
23
“Steve Cohen – Don’t Rest in Peace Comrade – Keep Fighting!,” Tony Greenstein’s Blog, March 24,
2009. Available online at azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/03/steve-cohen-dont-rest-in-peace-comrade.htm.
24
“Refugee Whiz”, available online at http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/refugees.asp.
25
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217
A (III) of 10 December 1948.
26
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted
and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly Resolution 39/46 of 10
December 1984.