Interview with Helmut Dietrich 12/30/2007 in Berlin
My name is Helmut Dietrich
I'm working to the refugee and migrations politic for many years
In the beginning especially at the German-Polish border
For the last years, I live in North African countries.
Could you outline the refugee and migration politic of the EU?
What's happening there? What are the interests of the EU?
cheap manpower
There is an interest on illegalized manpower since several centuries.
The EU is a fabric that grows.
It depends on expansion to persist economical and political.
It depends on increasing opening to the outer world
accompanied by increasing demarcation.
The borders get shifted to east.
In the south, the borders are fix at the moment.
When the borders disappear, when they get porous
The possibilities of reproduction, the wages,
the self-confidence of the people are increasing.
It gets possible that the living conditions are equalising.
The keeping of borders or the creation of new borders means
that the inequity gets consolidated.
outboard and inboard.
The graduation of hierarchy and debasement
of the living-conditions reflect itself inboard.
Are there studies, can you name numbers
which economic value so-called illegal immigrants have?
As a rule of thumb: The so-called "econonic miracle" of the 60s
is based on the so-called guest-worker-migration.
On the south european migrants, who came into the factories back then.
And similar another rule of thumb you could say:
The economic reconstruction in the European Union
leaving behind the old industries and the new service-sectors
is only possible with the help of the illegalized.
This applies worldwide. This applies for North America,
for Australia, the arabic gulf states,
for Singapore, for Warsaw. In the centres of this boom
the illegalized are planned in tightly at present.
A complete legalisation would change the conditions radical to the positive,
would lead to an equalization of the living-conditions.
The only definition of complete legalisation is an opening of all borders.
The deadly consequences
What we discuss here as EU refugee-politic
is for many people a death sentence.
Can you say something about that?
Until 1992 there was no visa-requirement for people from North Africa.
Until 1992 they could come over the Mediterranean Sea
with simple boats or big ships.
The problem was that they couldn't get a pass from their origin country.
But here in Europe they got a legal status very quick.
With the introduction of the visa-requirement, with the Schengen-politic 1992
the european countries introduced parallel
the visa-requirement for north african people.
This spacial separation meant to the people which came over the Mediterranean Sea
not only an illegalisation,
but they had to come by small boats that are not seagoing.
They die in the sea.
The spanish government said that 6000 people
were dying on their way to the Canaries in 2006.
If we project that on the time until 1992 we have to speak about
the biggest mass grave in postwar Europe.
In the Mediterranean Sea, around Gibraltar, the Canaries, and Sicily.
Bulkheading
A part of the strategy of the EU politic
is the integration of origin and transit countries.
What is happening there?
The goal is that the authorities, police but also the people
are supposed to rethink.
and see migrants, refugees from other african countries as a threat.
There is for historical traditions a latent racism in North Africa
against people from South Africa.
With the integration of the transit countries in the bulkheading politic
it threatens to switch to open racism.
This is a very volatile chapter.
It is not only an integration of the north african countries
but it is a form of export of frictions, of war risk.
The EU can represent itself inbound as civilized, peaceful, stable
and exports dangers, a thinking of bulkheading.
On the back of the people. On the back of the refugees from the south.
You have to say that the so-called development aid to the african countries
is fallen behind the armament exports.
The exports of frictions, armament
Development politic and neighborhood politic and association agreements
make a nicer picture but in reality there are developing
war regions, hunger regions in Central Africa.
Maybe the migration and refugees politic serves as a way
to cut the African continent from the developments.
Open the borders
What would happen if the borders were opened right away?
If you look at the immigration from north african countries,
it is a gradual increasing, since the 60's until today.
There is no cut in 1992, there is no crash in the developing of the migration.
You can be sure that an opening of the borders would mean ongoing migration.
It was similar at the eastward enlargement.
Some have spread fear and said
there will come hundreds of thousands or even millions.
It was similar at the enlargement to Spain.
These threat scenarios are unfortunately part of Schengen,
the free travelling of the EU citizens
and we have to set out everything to disintegrate the link between
free travelling inbound and bulkheading outbound.
Making free travelling possible for all, like we can.
Solidarity and repression in transit countries.
Do you know of solidarity in transit countries for the refugees?
Are there structures who help and want to change
the awareness of the own population?
In Marocco are many refugee groups, solidarity groups, self-organization
students, other solidary groups, relatives of drowned people
They are able to document very good when a raid happens
when deportations happen, when people are drowned.
And this documentation is spread until Europe using email-lists.
So you can know what's happening and you can get in contact directly.
This applies for Marocco, other countries have less or nothing
because that are partly very repressive countries
where imprisonment, disappearance, camps are happening day by day.
When you think from the european perspective,
with which groups you could get in contact?
You have to consider at first that that are very repressive structures.
Young people get imprisoned, disappear, they don't know why themselves.
They get tortured sometimes, interrogated about anti terrorism, Iraq war, ...
In this field incurs the immigration-countering.
There are processes every week, where young people get convicted
because they wanted to leave the country "illegal".
They get convicted from half a year to 2 years.
The people who organized it even longer.
Every week.
Living together in another world
We have to work directly with the people together
and experience the links to the south consciously and to live.
start discussions how we wanna live together in another world
Apart from the petroleum fences, control technologies and bulkheading.
We have start a dialogue from below.
We have to try to build up perspectives together with the south.
There lies the future. There are lying
the possibilities to do something about the economic disparities.
Work together to develop perspectives against the wars,
to invent new things for social co-existence across the borders.
Thank you.
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