Download the manifesto "No One Is Illegal" in full as a Word document (62 kb)

No One Is Illegal!
For A World Without Borders!
No Immigration Controls!

Defend the outlaw!

Immigration controls should be abolished. People should not be deemed ‘illegal’ because they have fallen foul of an increasingly brutal and repressive system of controls. Why is immigration law different from all other law? Under all other laws it is the act that is illegal, but under immigration law it is the person who is illegal. Those subject to immigration control are dehumanized, are reduced to non-persons, are nobodies. They are the modern outlaw. Like their medieval counterpart they exist outside of the law and outside of the law’s protection. Opposition to immigration controls requires defending all immigration outlaws.

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The manifesto goes on to outline the origins of immigration control as a response to racist and fascist agitation, highlight flaws in the arguments for "non-racist" immigration control, and set out specific demands for action to oppose all immigration controls:

The way forward - break the links, pull the plug!

• To build the widest possible alliance in all struggles against immigration controls amongst those of differing political views. But to do this without collusion with controls and without compromising with the principle of no controls. To do this on the basis of challenging and winning over those involved to a position of opposition to all controls. No One Is Illegal - No Exceptions, No Concessions, No Conciliation.
• To raise the demand for no immigration controls within all actions and campaigns in support of migrants and refugees. A no-controls position should not be a necessary precondition of support for any particular campaign, but we should argue constantly within all campaigns for such a position. We should argue for campaign slogans to reflect a position of opposition to controls, not refugees are our friends or refugees are welcome here but slogans which recognise that we are in favour of freedom for all as a right, not a charity: No One Is Illegal - Free movement ... No immigration controls.
• To support and build every single campaign against deportation. To do this on the basis of solidarity not compassion. No One Is Illegal - No Need For Justification of Presence!
• To support and build every campaign against detention/removal centres, since these are one of the clearest and most outrageously brutal and unjust consequences of immigration controls. No refugees or migrants should be detained simply because they want to be in this country. All detention/removal centres, and also all accommodation, induction and any other repressive ‘centres’ designed to enforce the unenforceable, should be closed. No One Is Illegal - No detentions!
• To fight against all forms of collusion with immigration control and with the Home Office. In particular this means local authorities and voluntary sector organizations refusing to implement the new poor law. Local authorities should refuse to act as sub-contracted agents providing accommodation (often otherwise unlettible) for the forced dispersal scheme. Voluntary sector agencies should likewise refuse Home Office monies to enforce the poor law either through the provision of accommodation or advice. No One Is Illegal - Break The Links Between Welfare Entitlement And Immigration Status!
• For workers within the welfare system to refuse to comply with the denial of benefits or provisions based on immigration status. Most workers within the welfare state, at either local or national level, entered their jobs in the belief they would be providing some form of socially useful service. Instead they now find they are denying services and have become part of the apparatus of immigration control. No One Is Illegal - No Compliance, Be In And Against The State!
• Of course non-compliance by individual workers would leave them absolutely vulnerable to victimization and dismissal. Non-compliance requires major trade union support. It is manifestly important to try and win trade unions to a position of no immigration controls. To do this it is equally important to form rank and file groupings within unions of welfare workers who are being obliged to enforce internal immigration controls. No One Is Illegal - Workers’ Control Not Immigration Controls!
• For a massive trade union campaign of recruitment of undocumented workers - of immigration outlaws. Such a recruitment campaign would help break the division between the documented and the undocumented. It would enable a campaign to develop against sweated labour and for the protection of migrant rights - rights to a fair wage, right to proper work conditions and, most of all, the right to work itself - as now it is unlawful to work without the correct immigration documentation. It would also provide another base for the undocumented to resist deportation and to fight for the regularization of their status. No One Is Illegal - Everyone has the right to work, the right to be in a union, and the right to have proper working conditions!

Download the manifesto in full as a Word document (62 kb)

Steve Cohen (Manchester)
Harriet Grimsditch (Bolton)
Teresa Hayter (Oxford)
Bob Hughes (Bristol)
Dave Landau (London)

Contacting us:

Please contact us if you wish to add your or your organisation's name as a supporter of this manifesto -- or if you would like a speaker at one of your meetings. If you would like to help us financially in the production of campaign material please make cheques out, in sterling, to "The No One Is Illegal Group".

Postal address:

No One Is Illegal, Bolton Socialist Club, 16 Wood Street, Bolton, BL1 1DY.
Email: info@noii.org.uk
Web site: http://www.noii.org.uk

September 6th 2003