The AC was founded in 1991. It's origin goes back until 1986, when a group of people squatted a shop in 'Oud-West', an 19th century neighbourhood just outside the centre of town. The shop was rebuilt into a meeting place for active people in the neighbourhood. The stress in activities from the beginning was on squatting, local anti-racist activities, actions against apartheid in South- Africa, and discussions about perspectives for a left extraparliamentarian movement in the Netherlands.
Over the years the AC developped into a political information and action centre that became well- known in the Netherlands. At the end of the eighties we decided to work more professionally and to concentrate more and more on migration policies, from our background as an anti-racist group. In our view at that time the biggest threat in the Netherlands for migrants did not come from neo- nazi, fascist or racists groups, but from the overall accepted and socalled decent political parties that were part of the government and were in fact making policies based on xenofobic and racist ideas and presumptions. This situation is still the same (if not worse).

General idea behind our work is that we want to support individuals who have been crushed by state-power, and to show people that taking back responsability over you own life is important, possible and that it you can even enjoy it at the same time. We are searching our way in a world that has different faces, from the vision that the world indeed should be considered as one. A world with people who have the same rights and protection wherever they live, who have enough to eat, who can express their skills and creativity, and who have the power to decide over themselves and their own surroundings. In order to bring this ideal closer, it is necessary to act. That is what we do. We do it in different ways: direct actions, campaigns, publications, research, concrete relief work, discussions.

As mentioned before, the stress in our work is on migration-related issues: because of our personal involvement with migrants, but also because of the political reality that migration is the focuspoint of a lot of structural failures within our social, political and economical system, and the fact that migration will be one of the biggest political topics for the next decades. We have chosen to work there where the conflicting interests of migrants on one side and the government on the other are the most intens. We are one of the only groups in the Netherlands who combine relief work, actions and research. With this combination we try to break through the image of the Netherlands as a tolerant country with a humane and social policy towards migrants. In our eyes a fundamental discussion on migration is only possible if the myths about the migration policy are taken away.

In practice our work related to migrants can be divided in some fields: selection, detention, exclusion and deportation. On those field we took several initiatives.

A very important part of our work is to make visible what is happening to refugees and illegalised migrants. Over the last seven years we have built up good contacts to the press. A lot of attention has been paid to our work, we did not have to give in to our principles and ideas for that.

Selection

More and more the Dutch state, as other European states, is making distictions between migrants in order to keep the majority of them out. The policy is no longer made on a governmental level (so one can see how the decision making takes place) but on a European level in vague or secret commitees on which no democratic control is possible. Possibilities for an alternative policy on national level are often denied by pointing at 'european agreements' or the restrictive policies in other EU-memberstates. In this way the Dutch government could produce the myth that we had to change our migration policy because the Germans forced us to: reality shows that it is more correct to tell that the opposit happened.
By investigating those European commitees and by consulting other critical groups in Europe who are doing the same we try to get clear how decisions are being made and in what direction the policy is developping.
Results of this research are published in our newsletter, every four months.

Detention

Since 1991 we are involved in activities against detention of people without papers. They are refugees who have been detained directly after arriving at the Amsterdam airport, or people who were detained because they have no papers. In our view this kind of detention shows the hypocryt western attitude towards the value of human rights, it also shows the conflict between an individual need and state interest.
In 1992 we started visiting detained refugees in the border prison in Amsterdam. Since then we published a book about this prison (1993), we organised three big demonstrations ('92, '94 and '97) and we regularly published press releases on hungerstrikes, demonstrations inside and attempts made by the Ministry of Justice to keep us out of the prison. With our experience we actively support (and started up) visitor groups in other prisons all over Holland. We are working on a national anti detention network. In 1997 we also organised a public hearing on detention in which the stress was on human rights aspects of this kind of detention, and the fact that criminal detainees are in a far better position compared to refugees and people without papers. About 200 people (activists, lawyers, judges, scientists and journalists) visited the meeting. It was the first time that so many different people publicly discussed this issue. A second book will be published in 1998.

Exclusion

Over the last years the stress in the policy against migration has been more and more on control. Within six years the next important measures have been taken:
* implementation of the Aliens Registrations System (in which all registered foreigners are listed) (1991-1996);
* re-implementation of border controls, by mobile teams, to hunt for refugees and illegal tresspassers (1994);
* a new law, bringing identification obligations into praxis (1994);
* the 'Linking Act' (to be implemented in 1998) legislation that will link the access to public services to the status of the applier.
Most important development (as a consequence of those measures) is that non-whites in the Netherlands will be obliged to identify themselves more often than whites. In 1996 we published a book on this growing 'administartive apartheid' (as we call it). The book contains an overview of all kind of measures, their political and social consequences, and what might happen in future. In this field we also organized two campaigns. The first campaign was against the identification law. One particular part of this laws defines that workers have to identify for their employers, who are obliged to keep copies of the passports in their administration. If one refuses to do so, he/she will be placed in the highest tarif group for taxes (60%). We called people to refuse to identify or not to allow the employer to copy the passport, because this part of the law is only meant to make controls on illegalised workers easier. We gathered around 400 principle refusers, and several legal procedures were started against the punishment with the highest tax group. Some of them were won: one court even said that parts of the law are contrary to the European Human Rights Convention. This means also the highest court in the Netherlands will have to decide on this issue (and after that maybe the European Court).
The second campaign was against the Linking Act, that threatens to exclude illegalised people from housing, health care, education, etc.. Together with several other groups we worked together agianst this kind of legislation: aim was never to stop parliament from accepting this law, but to use the proposal to make people clear what kind of level the Dutch society has reached with respect to migrants. The pressure the groups made together with teachers, doctors and others led to some adjustments in the law.

Deportations

One of the coping stones of a restrictive (racist) migration policy is the deportation of those who are not allowed to stay. The government has big problems in this field: it is the most sensitive part of the policy, and it can undermine the legitimation for the whole policy towards migration. How sensitive this issue is, can be shown from the next example.
On December 4, 1996, we organised an occupation of the headquarters of Martinair, the second largest aviation company in the Netherlands. Martinair is a charter company that was involved in group deportation to Zaire (5 times), to the Dominican Republic and to some European countries. The deportations to Zaire were joint initiatives of the Netherlands, Germany and France. The occupation came as a shock to the company, only two months before the start of the tourist season. It lead to two meetings with the directors (in january and february 97); Martinair decided to stop with group deportations.
Because of the sensitivity of the issue, the government is now working on programs of 'voluntary return'. To us it is only the old policy in a new coat. At this moment we are gathering information and trying to find out what those programs actually mean. It is already clear to us that a lot of selforganisations are not at all happy with the programs, in which regular organisations as INLIA, the Dutch Refugee Council (the dutch 'Pro Asyl') and the International Organisation for migration are involved as well.

All the four mentioned fields of work in a way come together in our consultancy and the info-cafe 'No Pepers'.

Consultancy
On tuesdays between 3 and 5 and on wednesday from 11 till 5 our office is open for consultancy. We can offer legal assistance, and we have a small housing project. The project is for six people, who can stay in a room for max. six months, during this period they are financially supported by us. All places are in communities (wohngruppen) that take over a part of the support for the illegalised refugees (because that is in genral what they are).
For most people who come to our consultancy hours there is not much we can do. Most have no legal perspectives at all; our group is really the last station before the streets and parks of Amsterdam.

No Pepers
In September 1997 we opened info-cafe No Pepers. It is meant as a place for illegalised migrants to meet, to discuss or just to drink coffee, tea or fruit juice. On tuesdays we have our consultancy in this place, and dutch language lessons. On Friday there are also lessons, and free meals for illegalised people. We started No Pepers because we want to offer people a safe place where they can meat 'people with papers', and thus breaking through the isolation in which so many illegalised people are living. No Pepers is also meant as a mean to stimulate self-organisation of illegalised people. In all we want to make visible that illegalised people exist, and to prevent that they will disappear in anonimity. Within two years No Pepers should completely be run by illegalised people themselves.

In spite of this work, we do not refer to ourselves as a refugee support group. We are also involved in other activities.

Over the last years we have been active in initiatives to look for new perspectivesfor an extraparliamentarian (radical) movement in the Netherlands. One of them was 'the Third Chamber', in which several groups tried to link up parts of the movement on issues as migration, democracy, wellfare state and environmental issues. Nowadays the 'third chamber' still exists on local level in different parts of the country. We were also involved in attemts to establish a new magazine (that stopped after two years).
This year we have spent a lot of time on the european summit in Amsterdam and the aftermath of it. One part was organising a meeting for groups from several EU-countries to found a network ('Admission Free') on issues as described above.
Within the working group 'Counter control' we planned several actions before the summit, also to get more attention for the third pillar of the Maastricht Treaty (on internal control, migration, drugs, etc.). After the summit, during which about 700 people were unlawfully arrested, we published a blackbook on the police and justice conduct. We are still working on getting financial and political compensation for those arrested. To us the police conduct was an example of what critical groups and individuals can expect from 'fortress europe': not only a fortress for those who want to come in, but also a prison for some groups already in.