This month has seen the implementation of Home Office plans to make foreign students carry biometric ID cards and force lecturers to keep registers of their attendance. This has been framed as a response to the scandal over the ‘bogus colleges’, almost 300 of which were uncovered last year, through which applicants could obtain a student visa and then work illegally (See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7719476.stm).

The discriminatory move has been slammed by the University and College Union, whose members have previously rejected government requests that lecturers spy on “Asian-looking” students and report to special branch police (See: this article: ‘Defend muslims!’) As well as being massively unpopular with lecturers, it is difficult to see how the scheme will actually prevent ‘bogus colleges’ from operating; attendance records are easily faked. It is unlikely that foreign students studying at genuine institutions and paying inflated fees of £12-20,000 a year would work illegally, so attendance registers are pointless in real institutions and come at the cost of antagonising lecturers. So why is the Home Office prosecuting this heavy-handed response? Partly, the scheme is yet another opportunist anti-immigrant policy, aimed at mollifying the right wing press after their pig-in-shit scandalising of the ‘bogus colleges’.

Gordon is watching

But there is more to it than that; it is also part of the government’s strategy of softening up public opinion for biometric ID cards, which store fingerprints and a scan of the bearer’s iris, and entrenching the use of this data by the police and bureaucracy. People in other countries wishing to study here make an easy target; dispersed and with no real way of organising against this attack. The furore over the ‘bogus colleges’ has made them a particularly useful target, since fear of immigration can be used to soften up opposition to ID cards from Labour’s right. And even if some prospective students are put off by the prospect of being effectively criminalised as soon as they cross the border, there will be many who are willing, a British degree being considered very prestigious globally.

As communists we must defend foreign students from this scapegoating and criminalisation and openly stand against all the border controls of the capitalist states, which are anti-working class, serving to control the supply of labour and maintain imperialist domination. We must also oppose all attempts by the state to increase it’s capacity for surveillance. As well as biometric identification cards, Labour is pushing for a giant database which would store copies of every email, phone call, and internet session made in the UK. Both of these measures pose grave dangers for the future ability of working class militants to organise.

Dave McCauley