How the UK immigration system hurts people: May 2021
This month’s recap features stories of how EU citizens are treated at the border post-Brexit, and cutting off financial support to asylum seekers following a change in debit card provider.
About my monthly recaps
I’m spending 2021 doing a monthly running challenge to fundraise for the Join Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI).
Read my blog post about why I’m fundraising for JCWI
As part of the fundraiser, I will be writing a monthly blog post on:
- how the monthly running challenge went (on my running blog)
- what happened in the world of UK immigration and asylum in the past month (here on Medium)
Past recaps
Now let’s get to May 2021.
Causing immigrants to lose their documented status because the system is so complex and expensive
JCWI released a report on their research into the realities of life for undocumented immigrants.
Here’s a summary from The National:
Here’s the full report:
Threatening asylum seekers with removal to third countries…
…who haven’t agreed to take in those asylum seekers
Putting children asylum seekers at risk of being assessed as adults under new plan
Revoking indefinite leave to remain status from someone born in the UK and continuing to threaten him with deportation
Unlawfully making a Windrush woman choose between being separated from her family or forgoing her right to live in the UK
Lynda Mahabir was brought to the UK at 2 months old, taken out of the country against her will as a child, and then prevented from returning for 41 years.
When she was finally able to return after the Windrush scandal broke, the Home Office told her she couldn’t bring her family over without paying £20,000 in applications fees for them to come.
The High Court has ruled that this was unlawful.
Detaining people entering the UK looking for work
This headline focuses on EU citizens, but it’s wrong that anyone is detained.
Detaining people for up to a week before allowing them to return to their home countries
Seizing mobile phones from detainees so they cannot take pictures of removal centres
Detaining people who are coming to the UK for job interviews
Detaining people who are coming to visit family members
After enough of these stories, the Home Office said they would stop automatically detaining people and allow them entry on bail conditions:
Potentially unlawfully evicting asylum seekers during the pandemic
And then they finally U-turned on this:
Offering only £1,000 compensation for separating a couple for 8 months after incorrectly refusing a fiancé visa
Granting someone refugee status but not sending them their biometric residence permit
Confiscating the passport of a Windrush victim born in the UK for 20 years
Watch the whole video series that tells the story of Carl. This is absolutely appalling.
Beyond taking his passport, the Home Office also:
- confiscated his birth certificate and driving licence for a year
- tried to make him accept a biometric residence permit instead of a passport (a document that should not be given to British citizens)
- claimed that his 3 applications to the Windrush compensation scheme were ‘lost’
Unlawfully rendering a British citizen stateless for 3 years
Creating immigration plans that the UN says will damage lives…
…and the Law Society says poses a serious threat to rule of law…
…and does not align with a just Covid recovery…
…and will ignore the exploitation and trauma of trafficking victims
Putting in place border controls that give smugglers more power
Putting EU citizens in legal limbo due to a massive backlog of EU Settlement Scheme applications
There are more than 320,000 undecided applications. The Scheme deadline is 30 June.
Blocking an asylum seeker from joining his brothers in the UK
Planning to bar asylum seekers from taking appeals to judicial review
Asking protesters about their immigration status
Telling employers they had to go back into the office to conduct right to work check, before U-turning on that decision
Trying to detain 2 people, but thankfully the people of Glasgow stopped this…
…but the Home Office did detain someone else in Glasgow that same day…
…and then still decided to press ahead with deporting those two men anyway…
…and carry on with immigration raids in general…
…and make it seem like the Glasgow protestors were protecting murders and rapists
Asking a Scottish Sikh group to back the removals of people back to India
Claiming a deportation of a father would not be unduly harsh because his kids still did well in school while he was in prison
Deporting people without sufficient access to lawyers
Sentencing an asylum seekers to 26 months in prison for steering a small boat across the Channel, before eventually being acquitted
He was acquitted after already spending 17 months in prison:
Muting microphones and ignoring questions from Windrush victims at engagement meetings
Housing the decision making about immigrants’ lives in a department whose culture is one of fear and cruelty
Daniel Trilling wrote a thoroughly-researched article on what’s going on at the Home Office. I’ve pulled out a few quotes that touch on all the wrongs happening there that contributes to hurting people:
- ‘[The Home Office] worry about being seen as callous or racist — “like right bloody Nazis,” as one official told me — yet this is frequently outweighed by not wanting to be seen as weak on immigration. “You’re more nervous, frankly, about the Daily Mail than the Guardian,” said another.’
- ‘More often, though, the job [of home secretary] brings out a politician’s authoritarian tendencies. “It has an impact on the psyche, really,” David Blunkett told me, “because there’s very little joy in doing it unless you’re a masochist.”’
- ‘ A former mid-level civil servant who worked in the department during this period agreed that [Theresa] May set the tone. “If leadership is saying ‘We want you to treat people humanely’, you will use your initiative to treat people humanely,” he said. “If leadership is saying ‘Why is the system a mess? Why aren’t you removing people? Why are the numbers so high?’, you’re going to use your initiative and focus on reducing numbers and removing people.”’
- ‘I asked the former Home Office press officer, who also worked under May, how much attention they paid to criticism from liberal media outlets. “If I’m honest,” the former press officer said, “I think it was almost considered a joke. It wasn’t important.”’
- A government employee on the differences between people working in different government departments: ‘“Health is do-gooders, and education is beardy people who like to talk about education. The Home Office tended to be slightly more trad civil service — men in reasonably well-turned suits who are into prisons.”’
- ‘The former mid-level civil servant told me that when they were presented with David Cameron’s aim to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”, they immediately knew it wouldn’t be achievable, but felt they had to manage expectations while appearing competent. “Of course, your job is to make sure it is achievable,” said the former official. “So we turned over everything to see what we could do. But also, we don’t want to look rubbish, because for too many years, the department had not seemed fit for purpose.”’
- ‘Catriona Jarvis, another retired judge, told me: “I’ve had presenting officers [representatives of the Home Office in court] break down in front of me because they can’t bear hearing about the traumatic experiences of people whose cases they’ve been told to oppose.”’
- ‘Why does the Home Office insist on fighting cases it knows it will lose? According to Gibb, it all comes down to perception. “They are terrified of the thought that any concession by them that can be perceived as soft or liberal or sympathetic, might leak out and be another set of Daily Mail or Sun or Telegraph stories,” he said. “The outcome is legally inevitable, but it’s very important to them that it’s a judge who makes the decision, so they can say to the press: ‘We’re disappointed about the decision, we’re going to fight it.’”’
Causing EU citizens to apply for British citizenship because they fear a Windrush-like scandal
Unlawfully detaining a man for 3 and a half years
Conducting a traumatising immigration raid based on inaccurate intelligence
Checking the immigration status of school children
Schools have not been allowed to check immigration status since 2018.
Keeping torture victims in solitary confinement for up to a year
Creating a looming deadline for the EU Settlement Scheme when a third of eligible children in care or care leavers have not had an application submitted…
…and tens of thousands in total face losing their legal status
Wrongly telling UK citizens to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme or they will lose their legal status
Re-traumatising victims of violence by building a new immigration detention centre for women
And doing this despite outcry against it:
Increasing the risk of modern slavery survivors being re-trafficked because of lack of legal aid
Not complying with the Public Sector Equality Duty to understand the impact of hostile environment policies
When negative equality impacts were identified by the Home Office and stakeholders, they were repeatedly ignored, dismissed, or their severity disregarded at crucial points of policy development. This happened particularly when they were seen as a barrier to implementing hostile environment policies in a highly-politicised environment.
Refusing overseas applicants to the Windrush compensation scheme by telling them they don’t have strong ties to the UK despite close family members living there
Housing a torture victim in a prison-like hotel
Conducting immigration checks on key workers
Not letting 21 Windrush victims see a penny of justice because they died while waiting for compensation
Reducing human rights protections in the UK through hostile environment policies
Here’s a good thread summary of the report:
Reasoning that someone’s criminal records wins out over their right to family life when it comes to deportation for immigrants with precarious status
Conducting immigration raids to scare and divide communities
Taking 5 times longer to process Windrush compensation claims than predicted
Rushing to deport asylum seekers, which led to unprecedented levels of them being on suicide watch
Wrongly refusing a spousal visa for saying it didn’t meet financial requirements when it did
Stopping EU citizens with settled status at the border
Wrongly placing vulnerable asylum seekers in military barracks
Creating the conditions that have led to doubling the number of people crossing the English Channel to reach the UK
Threatening to strip someone of citizenship, not doing anything about it, and then trying to take it away from them 9 years later
Getting rid of physical proof of status for all immigrants by the end of 2024
Keeping unauthorised immigrants trapped
This article goes into many case studies of the lives of unauthorised immigrants. All have a common theme: feeling trapped.
Here’s one person’s experience:
Mimi, who had always been told she was born in the UK and was a British citizen, was stopped at passport control at Heathrow airport in 2011 when returning from holiday in Nigeria. Accused of using a fake passport, she found herself held in immigration detention for two and a half years. Mimi insists she was using a normally obtained UK passport.
She has since discovered she was the victim of trafficking while a child and that the people she regarded as her parents did not tell her the truth about her origins. “Where do I go to find out about myself? . . . I’m living here, I haven’t lived anywhere else. I know nowhere else . . . When you don’t have anybody to tell you your history, how do you recall your history?”
Looking out over the park’s spectacular view of London, she is exhausted by a decade of legal battles. Her once-satisfying professional life has been replaced by a monotonous regime in the poor-quality accommodation provided by the Home Office. “It has just been going round and round in circles. Basically, I’m stuck here; I cannot go anywhere; my life has been on hold.”
Making children listen to trafficking victims’ stories of abuse because of lack of childcare support
Making healthcare workers feels stressed and helpful because their adult dependent relative visas were refused
Treating modern slavery survivors as immigration offenders
Denying children funded nursery care because of No Recourse to Public Funds
Detaining people in prison-like immigration centres for extended periods
Making someone wait 5 months for a visa decision that should only take 6–8 weeks
Planning to charge EU citizens for non-urgent NHS treatments if they miss the Settlement Scheme deadline
Cutting off financial support to asylum seekers due to switchover of debit card provider
Unlawfully denying immigrants access to their personal data
Telling 1,500 asylum seekers they are going to be removed to EU countries that haven’t agreed to take them in
Detaining and treating visa-free visitors at UK border like they’re criminals
Proposing to make Commonwealth soldiers serve at least 12 years before they are eligible to have settlement application fees waived
They’re currently not waived at all, so while this story might seem ‘good’, it’s a pretty insulting concession to soldiers.
You have to be serving 4 years to be eligible for settlement. This plan says you need to serve an extra 8 on top of that to not pay the application fee.
Always amazed at how someone can declare there’s an arbitrary amount of time someone can go from being worthless to (slightly) valued.
Rejecting the EU Settlement Status application of a 10 year old despite all her family members being accepted
Separating a couple who are trying for a baby
Preventing 3,294 EU citizens from entering the UK January to March 2021, despite visa-free travel
82% of those denied entry were from 6 Eastern European countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic).
Inflicting force on suicidal asylum seekers as they were being deported
Angry? Disgusted? Ashamed? Then donate
If you are in any way appalled at what you just read happens in a single month in the world of UK immigration, please consider donating to my fundraiser for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
They’re doing the important work to both help those affected by the system, and help end the abuses of the system.
