Immigration

Submerged cultures

A culture can be submerged without an immigrant presence. But an immigrant presence will have only a faint, and usually beneficial, effect unless the number of imigrants is very large, or their culture powerfully dominant...

A culture can be submerged without an immigrant presence...

[H]ardly a household in Britain is not now pestered by trick-or-treat extortions on 31 October...

There nevertheless is such a thing as a country's being submerged by immigration. Britain would indeed be in no position to complain of being swamped, even if any real danger of its being so existed. In two former British colonies the colonial authorities positively encouraged immigration that bade fair to submerge - or swamp - the native population: in Malaya and in Fiji...

Why does a nation have a right not to be submerged? Each person's sense of who he is derives from many circumstances: his occupation, his ideals and his beliefs, but also from the customs and language he shares with those about him...

[I]t is an injustice that immigration should ever be allowed to swell to a size that threatens the indigenous population with being submerged. It is very seldom that there is a genuine danger of this. It can happen, as we already noted, under colonial regime indifferent to the wishes of the inhabitants of a territory it governs. It can also happen when a government is determined to obliterate a minority, and sets about it, not by massacre, or not just by massacre, but by systematically settling large numbers in its territory who do not share the culture of the original inhabitants. Examples from recent times are East Timor and Tibet.
- Michael Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees, p.14-15, 17, 20

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.




CONVENTION RELATING TO THE STATUS OF STATELESS PERSONS

Adopted on 20 September 1954 by a Conference of Plenipotentiaries convened by Economic and Social Council resolution 526 A (XVII) of 26 April 1954
ENTRY INTO FORCE: 6 June 1960, in accordance with article 39


Article 7. - Exemption from reciprocity

1. Except where this Convention contains more favorable provisions, a Contracting State shall accord to stateless persons the same treatment as is accorded to aliens generally.

2. After a period of three years' residence, all stateless persons shall enjoy exemption from legislative reciprocity in the territory of the Contracting States.

3. Each Contracting State shall continue to accord to stateless persons the rights and benefits to which they were already entitled, in the absence of reciprocity, at the date of entry into force of this Convention for that State.

Article 16. - Access to courts

1. A stateless person shall have free access to the courts of law on the territory of all Contracting States.

2. A stateless person shall enjoy in the Contracting State in which he has his habitual residence the same treatment as a national in matters pertaining to access to the courts, including legal assistance and exemption from cautio judicatum solvi.


Article 26. - Freedom of movement

Each Contracting State shall accord to stateless persons lawfully in its territory the right to choose their place of residence and to move freely within its territory, subject to any regulations applicable to aliens generally in the same circumstances.


Article 27. - Identity papers

The Contracting States shall issue identity papers to any stateless person in their territory who does not possess a valid travel document.

Article 28. - Travel documents

The Contracting States shall issue to stateless persons lawfully staying in their territory travel documents for the purpose of travel outside their territory, unless compelling reasons of national security or public order otherwise require, and the provisions of the schedule to this Convention shall apply with respect to such documents. The Contracting States may issue such a travel document to any other stateless person in their territory; they shall in particular give sympathetic consideration to the issue of such a travel document to stateless persons in their territory who are unable to obtain a travel document from the country of their lawful residence.


Article 31. - Expulsion

1. The Contracting States shall not expel a stateless person lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order.

2. The expulsion of such a stateless person shall be only in pursuance of a decision reached in accordance with due process of law. Except where compelling reasons of national security otherwise require, the stateless person shall be allowed to submit evidence to clear himself, and to appeal to and be represented for the purpose before competent authority or a person or persons specially designated by the competent authority.

3. The Contracting States shall allow such a stateless person a reasonable period within which to seek legal admission into another country. The Contracting States reserve the right to apply during that period such internal measures as they may deem necessary.

Article 32. - Naturalization

The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of stateless persons. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings.

Refugees

The principal is frequently proclaimed by politicians that every state has an unrestricted right to determine whom it shall admit within its frontiers. In proclaiming it, they usually fail to make explicit mention of the exception to which they are bound by international law to which they have subscribed, the duty of a state to admit refugees, or, rather, not to send them back to the countries from which they have fled. This needs to be understood as obliging a state to which a refugee has applied for asylum not to send him or her anywhere from which he or she may be returned to that country, but only to a land where refuge will be offered.

- Michael Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees, p.31




1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
(28 July 1951)


Article 1
Definition of the term "Refugee"

A. For the purposes of the present Convention, the term "refugee" shall apply to any person who:

(2) ...[has] a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.