Thread by @SimonFRCox

THREAD. Read news reports on individ immigration cases with caution + especially when worrying what it means for other cases. CW fear of officials 1/

Many more immigrants in trouble with HO are going to press in recent years, and great journalists are reporting.

But you may not see all the key points in every case. I’ve been a lawyer in similar cases.

Why? 2/

1. People don’t always tell whole story
2. Lawyers can be difficult.
3. Home Office don’t co-operate with press - they don’t want people to understand
4. It’s complicated. 3/

Journalists can only go on what people tell them. When there’s no-one around who will tell the other side, all they may have is that person’s account. They’ll corroborate it - but they may not know what they’re not being told. 4/

And it’s hard to get people to talk about what they don’t want to talk about - the “bad points”. And if the case “against them” isn’t clear, it can be hard for a journo to ask the right Qs. 5/

Lawyers often don’t like their clients talking to the press. It might get them sympathy - but it’s risky, and lawyers like control.

So lawyers may advise their clients to keep things confidential, or if they must talk - only talk about X. 6/

Often excellent reasons for confidentiality. It may be something even the person’s closest family don’t know about. Some terrible thing that happened to the person. 7/

But some people seeking attention to their high profile cases have kept confidential even the legal arguments they already made to court.

Probably because their lawyers don’t want them debated. 8/

Home Office could remedy this. Where someone has told their story to press, they’d be justified in saying what they thought was factually and legally wrong.

But they almost never do. 9/

Why doesn’t Home Office explain themselves in cases where migrants go public? IMO they don’t want to be judged in the court of public opinion. They want you to fill in the gaps of a fight between dodgy migrants & battling Home Office. 10/

Plus - explaining individual cases would require HO to *justify how the rules in those individual cases*

Why should someone here since primary school be deported for a crime when they’ve served their sentence? 11/

If HO engaged with press where immigrant isn’t telling the whole story, they would be under pressure to respond where it’s *Home Office* who don’t want full story to be understood.

So they say “we can’t talk about individuals”. When they can - they just don’t want to /12

If HO did explain their side, public might see what really motivated the decision. Why was X deported, but not Y?

But HO don’t want you to understand their actual choices and priorities. 13/

Why? HO will tell Ministers “if immigrants know how we really work, they’ll try and game the system”

But that’s a convenient cover for a mostly disorganised, demoralised & bitterly cynical department. 14/

Home Office knows their work is opposed. (They see themselves as battling to uphold immigration control.) They don’t want to change hearts & minds. They just want their base to be happy & want them to think about the worst crimes of immigrants, not the sad effects of controls 15/

HO talking to public would also make them show that Ministers have made immigration processes & rules *fantastically* complex.

Expensive senior civil servants want their gratuitous red tape out of the public eye. 16/

So secrecy - or partial secrecy - and consequent confusion serves Home Office and some immigrants & their lawyers.

Read with care. 17/17