01.07.08

today’s immigration idiocy

Posted in politics at 11:02 am by Rob Fahey

First post of the new year – hope you all had a good holiday, and are feeling sufficiently refreshed after your break to put up with some utterly ridiculous nonsense from the nation’s media and would-be leaders.

This report on the BBC this morning effectively illustrates the extent to which immigration has become a meaningless, pointless political football. I’ll spare you from having to read it – in summary, it’s about a memo which was circulated in the Immigration Service saying that students who have marginally outstayed their visas should be given some leeway, unless they have broken some other laws.

The example given is of a university student from China who had to resubmit her application due to an error in the first form she sent, which brought her a couple of days over the expiry of her original visa. Under new rules, the immigration service was preparing to deport her, but the agency’s chief executive stepped in to prevent this, and has now issued a guideline saying that in similar circumstances, leniency should be applied.

Hands up, anyone who has a problem with this? Come on, nice and high where we can see them! No, didn’t think so. We’ve probably all had friends who are overseas students in the UK – the concept that they would be deported from the country for making small clerical errors on their forms, or sending them in a little late, is abhorrent, just as it should be. We all despise unhelpful, jobsworth style behaviour, and it should be nice to see the chief exec of a civil service agency doing her bit to make her agency more friendly, more helpful and more willing to treat people as human beings.

Well, not if you’re the Daily Mail. It’s hardly a surprise that the Mail is willing to jump on this story, and the nation’s most hateful rag is quick off the mark with some lovely unsourced statements to set the tone of its article.

“Last night insiders in the service said hundreds of thousands of students – including many who never had any intention of studying – could be staying on illegally and were effectively being granted an amnesty,” it breathlessly reports. Now, this is typical Mail journalism. It’s a contentious, unpleasant statement, which isn’t backed up by any kind of figures or research – but is passed off as legitimate (and put right at the top of a prominent news article) by attributing it to “insiders in the service”.

This is the kind of sneaky trick which I despise in journalism. Note that there isn’t an “insider” being directly quoted here; it’s a statement being made by the paper, but attributed without quote marks to someone else who conveniently can’t be named or identified. They’re claiming, in essence, that this is the gist of what they were told by some people they won’t name – and intriguingly, they haven’t bothered looking up any figures to confirm it. This line changes students who’ve messed up their forms or forgotten to send them in on time into evil, scheming immigrants who are here to steal all our jobs, benefits, women, etc. – and it does so without actually giving a single shred of evidence to support that picture of things.

You expect that from the Mail, though. You also expect the utterly disgusting rent-a-quote Andrew Green to say something foul and bigoted in an article like this, and he helpfully supplies a quote. But what, might I ask, is David Davis doing keeping company like this? Why, he’s electioneering, that’s what. David Davis is intelligent enough to know that an immigration service, like any other civil service, must have priorities and must be willing to be flexible under reasonable circumstances. Sadly, he is also unprincipled enough to say exactly what the braying, selfish masses who consume hate rags like the Daily Mail want to hear, even when he knows it to be untrue, unfair and downright cruel.

Not, of course, that our incumbent government are any better on this issue. Lin Homer, the immigration service chief exec, wouldn’t have had to intervene in this case were it not for ill-conceived new Home Office guidelines demanding stricter, harsher application of the laws in all cases – an utterly unreasonable demand on the Immigration Service, and an utterly unreasonable way to treat people who have come to the UK to study. The accusation that the Home Office is effectively legislating off the pages of the Sun and the Mail seems to hold more water with each passing day, as the gaping flaws in the logic in new legislation and guidelines become increasingly clear.

Stories like this one make it clear that there really is no immigration debate in the UK – all there is is an ill-informed, bigoted and unpleasant shouting match, in which any reasoned voice is sadly being drowned out. The demonisation of illegal immigrants (one of the most exploited, un-protected and ill-treated segments of our society, who are deserving of our pity, not our hatred) is complete; now the deep undercurrent of distrust and racism which sadly underlies much of the British population has moved its sights on to legal migrants, and even students.

This despite the fact that the economic case for migration is overwhelmingly positive, despite the fact that the figures regularly trotted out by the anti-immigration lobby have been proven time and again to be dishonest, despite the fact that every month brings a new disgrace for anti-immigration activists who are shown up as racists or members of racist groups.

In a debate, these things would matter – in a shouting match, they don’t. In the meanwhile, those who have come to the UK to study, to work, and to legitimately build their lives in this country, are the ones who suffer.

(As an interesting thought experiment, imagine the reaction of the Daily Mail and its ilk if there was this kind of unpleasant furore, thinly veiled racism and all, about British people emigrating to the United States, or the Far East, or Australia?)

Technorati Tags: BBC, immigration, politics, Daily Mail