Hansard

Early in 1948, a plane deporting migrant workers from the United States to Mexico crashed. In his song “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos”, Woody Guthrie displayed his anger at the prejudice faced by those people, even in death:

“The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says, ‘They are just deportees’.”

We cannot continue to delude ourselves into thinking, more than 60 years later, that we in Scotland do not have problems with the perception and treatment of migrants. This report shows clearly that we do.

Of course, many organisations—for example, the Scottish Refugee Council, the Black and Ethnic Minority Infrastructure in Scotland and Unite Against Fascism—have known that fact for years now and the trade unions are making every effort to tackle the many issues that are involved. Indeed, every year on St Andrew’s day the Scottish Trades Union Congress holds a march against racism. Last year, the STUC general secretary Grahame Smith said:

“Racism and discrimination have no place in our society. It is vital that we continue to challenge racism in all its guises and we have to ensure that black and minority ethnic workers are fully involved in our ‘There is a Better Way’ campaign to challenge any discrimination against black workers as the cuts take effect.”

Although the committee’s excellent report provides a good resource for the Parliament to continue tackling prejudice, exploitation and misinformation, Mary Scanlon was right to point out that it only scratches the surface. Unfortunately, as I suspected, the evidence taken by the committee shows that the public perception of migrants in Scotland is generally negative, with little distinction made between asylum seekers, refugees or migrants. The terms are simply not well understood. As Stuart McMillan pointed out, the term “bogus asylum seeker” has entered common usage, even though it is nonsense. After all, anyone who seeks asylum cannot be bogus or illegal. There is also a sad lack of understanding that anyone who flees their own country hardly does so on a whim; undoubtedly they are escaping war, violence or fear of persecution. Moreover, there is little knowledge of the positive contribution made by migration to our communities, although the committee has noted Scottish Government research carried out in 2009 that shows such an impact.

Although some sections of the Scottish media have adopted a more positive tone, overall reporting of migration issues has not been well balanced, with negative stories given prominence. However, the NUJ issued helpful guidelines following work carried out in conjunction with the Scottish Refugee Council, Amnesty International and Oxfam. Paul Holleran of the NUJ gave the committee some positive evidence on good practice.

A major conclusion by the committee was that politicians need to be well informed about migration in order to be able to speak responsibly on the issue and that they need to be mindful of the consequences of any public pronouncements that they make. That is important. Perhaps the report should be compulsory reading for all MSPs or even wider than that.

I urge the Scottish Government to reconsider its refusal to take forward an awareness raising campaign. Such a campaign would help to bust the myths and inform the public that migrants’ demands on public services are not as high as those of the general population. Migrants are housed largely in private rented housing rather than social housing, and migrants do not depress wages. Overall, migrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits and public services. Those are important facts that need to be widely known and understood.

The other part of the inquiry was about human trafficking. It is horrifying to realise that we are surrounded by modern-day slavery. Ignoring it is not acceptable and silence would make us complicit in the crime. As we have heard, trafficking can include forced labour, domestic servitude or sexual exploitation. Evidence was provided with regard to racism pervading sexual slavery, with women being marketed according to racial stereotypes.

Another piece of evidence, from TARA, highlighted the link between the making of pornography and sexual exploitation. I wanted to say more about that but, sadly, I have run out of time. Freedom for Scotland’s slaves must be a top priority for the Parliament in the next session.

The inquiry acknowledged that it has only scratched the surface of this major issue. We cannot continue to put up with attitudes of racism, misinformation, prejudice and enslavement. Public policy, action and funding must be directed at eliminating this scourge from our society.

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