Latin American hustings: English lessons, citizenship and recognition

I attended the London-wide Latin American hustings for the Spanish and Portuguese speaking communities in South Bank University last night. A hundred people turned up for a lively debate. Candidates from all the main parties and the Greens, as well as myself and a few independents, were on hand to answer questions.

The topics that came up time often were the lack of free English lessons for migrant workers, the burning need for migrants to obtain a legal right to stay in the UK and the desire for official recognition for Latin Americans.

Education is a right

I was able to highlight my Anticapitalist demands for free education for all and an expansion of provision from school to college and university with full support for English for speakers of other languages (Esol) courses.

Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey, said all courses had to be paid for because of financial constraints – though he turned red and soon left after I pointed to the Lib Dems’ support for the bank bailout. Surely some of the £1 trillion we gave them in the crisis could be used to teach English to immigrants?

I also advertised the UCU lecturers’ union strike on Wednesday 5^th May and my support for Jenny Sutton, TUSC candidate in Tottenham and Esol teacher.

Open borders

There was a three-way battle over the potentially life-and-death issue of deportations and regularisation of immigrants. The Lib Dems had the most tortuous proposal: so-called “illegal” immigrants who had been here for 10 years, had no other criminal record, had a job, paid taxes, were prepared to do an unspecified amount of community service, paid the government an unspecified fee, had learned English and were of good character… could apply for citizenship.

Phew! No wonder this didn’t set the audience alight! The Greens offered, it seemed to me, a three year wait, not a 10 year one. Neither party talked of changing the racist immigration laws, merely of an amnesty.

There was clear support for our straightforward policy: scrap racist immigration laws and full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, to all who lived and worked here. Migrant workers were not just “consumers” of services, they were also producers. They should enjoy full and equal rights.

Invisible Latinos

Most controversial of all was the debate over gaining official recognition for Latin American people, who are ignored in most official forms and census and are therefore “invisible”. What does this mean in practice? There are no records of police harassment, hate crimes, school exclusions, unemployment rates and so on for Latin American people. If the discrimination is not recorded, then it cannot begin to be addressed.

The community itself seemed to be divided over this issue. Some, such as Minka News, preferred to be called Iberian-Americans and to be counted in with EU citizens from Spain and Portugal, which boosted their number considerably. Others said Central and South Americans had their own specific culture and set of problems and concerns, especially oppression by US and EU imperialism.

The Lib Dems – who have made a huge push for the Latino vote and had several candidates when the other parties had one – put their weight behind Minka News. This seemed to me to be a case of old-fashioned pork-barrel politics, where mainstream parties support token measures for ethnic minorities in return for votes.

I think it is up to the Latin Americans to decide how to take their case forward. I used the tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes to show how Latin Americans, Portuguese, English and others rallied behind the demand for justice. The family’s campaign co-ordinator was an old friend of mine, Asad Rehman, a south Asian!

Class, in the end, is what unites people. And it’s international class unity that will count in the months ahead as the financial crisis, now raging in Greece, Portugal and Spain, threatens to engulf us once again.

My thanks go to Isaak Bigiot and Minka News for organising the event and hope that the anticapitalist message – that the £1 trillion bank bailout and the crash caused the crisis, so they should pay the price – reached many of those that came. 

Check my Spanish language leaflet