Politicians and newspaper editors have convinced many people in Britain that it is a ‘soft touch’ for foreigners who want to settle here illegally or live off benefits. In reality, a harsh immigration system hurts families and damages society.
Politicians and newspaper editors have convinced many people in Britain that it is a ‘soft touch’ for foreigners who want to settle here illegally or live off benefits. In reality, a harsh immigration system hurts families and damages society.
In October the trial of a vicar and others accused of conducting hundreds of sham marriages collapsed after Judge Nic Madge strongly criticised UK Border Agency officers giving evidence on behalf of the prosecution.
“I am satisfied that officers at the heart of this prosecution have deliberately concealed important evidence and lied on oath,” he said, according to Channel 4 News.
According to the judge, “The bad faith and misconduct started in 2011 when two of the principal defendants were arrested and has continued throughout the course of this trial.” He added, “In my judgment, it has tainted the whole case.”
In his view: “It is a case in which the prosecution should not be allowed to benefit from the serious misbehaviour of the officer in the case or the disclosure officer.”
It is not the first time in recent months that determination to ‘get tough’ on immigrants appears to have triggered large-scale lawlessness on the part of state officials.
In August in the High Court in London, deputy judge Anthony Thornton ordered the Home Office to pay Radha Patel, a “wholly blameless” woman, £125,000 after her “visit of a lifetime” became a “nightmare of unimagined proportions”.
The mother-of-two from Gujarat had been invited by relatives in Britain to make a short visit while her in-laws looked after the children. But when she arrived at Heathrow airport, she was harshly interrogated without adequate translation by immigration officers who took against her, then detained her.
“This case is a precautionary tale” which arose because two immigration officers “considered that it was appropriate to manufacture evidence to secure what they considered to be the rightful outcome of an unlawful entry even though there was no basis for that belief and no evidence to support the proposed outcome of instantaneous removal of someone who had arrived in the UK with leave to enter”, according to the judge.
He explained that: “This outrageous behaviour was assisted by” the lack of legal safeguards in such situations. “It is to be deeply regretted that this behaviour was meted out to a wholly blameless family visitor who was an adult, female, vulnerable lone traveller whose sole purpose in entering the UK was to pay an extended family visit to her parents and other close members of her family who were permanently resident in the UK and three of whom were British nationals.”
The Home Office remained unapologetic and expressed the intention to appeal, politics.co.uk reported.
According to a recent Legal Action Group report, when home secretary Theresa May spoke of creating a hostile environment for those who have no right to be in the UK, “it’s unlikely she would have been thinking of 53-year old Aubrey, who arrived from Jamaica in 1973 as a boy”, settled down, became a father but lost his passport with an ‘indefinite leave to remain’ stamp. He was sacked when he could not prove his immigration status.
Another case they described was of 56-year old Anne Marie, who arrived in 1974, and whose passport was destroyed in a house fire in 1985, along with all her belongings. In an increasingly hostile climate, she too has had to rely on family and friends to survive.
Various other “Surprised Brits” who find they are living with “irregular immigration status” were interviewed. It is not only people in such situations, but also their family members who are hit by a system renowned for bureaucratic error and injustice.
Meanwhile human rights are being rolled back, supposedly to stop undeserving ‘foreigners’ taking advantage of ‘our’ generosity. Yet when those who applaud such measures find themselves at the receiving end of injustice by the powerful, they may be shocked to discover that they too have lost their rights.
Against a background of austerity, some people worry that their own job security or living standards may be eroded if migrants and immigrants are treated too well. Yet the answer is better protection for all and an end to growing inequality.
What is more, values such as truthfulness and integrity are undermined when vulnerable social groups are treated as ‘fair game’, damaging society as a whole.
Self-interest, as well as commitment to compassion and justice, should lead more people to resist the abuse of state and corporate power.
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© Savitri Hensman is a widely published Christian commentator on politics, welfare, religion and more. An Ekklesia associate, she works in the equalities and care sector.