British immigration policy. The word is oppression. A thread with solutions.
1. Two excellent articles by @garyyounge and @alexmassie on the plight of the “Windrush generation” of immigrants. They’ve been caught in a trap not meant for them. They are its collateral damage.
2. The trap is the anti-immigrant ratchet. Immigration is not a problem in the UK, only its perception is, and it’s a perception not related to reality.
3. But because it’s only a perception, the announcing real measures to tackle it has the reverse effect. They increase its salience without changing the underlying phenomenon (because there’s no underlying phenomenon to change).
4. The “Hostile Environment” policy is intended first as a signal, then as a deterrent.
5. The signalling is easy: don’t come here illegally, because we’ll be horrible to you. That’s why Theresa May sent the “Go Home” vans to areas with a high immigrant population.
6. So it would be reported, and people living elsewhere (who fear immigration) could feel that the power of the state was being used to get a handle on the “immigrant problem.”
7. The deterrent is impossible and deeply corrupting.
8. Impossible because when people are fleeing bombardment by chemical weapons, or rapist militiamen, or a even a shortened life, malnourished and drinking contaminated water, the deterrent has to be very strong.
9. Corrupting because of the logic: to stop people coming here illegally, we need to make their lives so unpleasant that they should try their luck elsewhere.
10. First, they were denied the means of subsistence. They are not allowed to earn a living.
11. Then they were deemed “health tourists” and welfare fraudsters, so having been prevented by the state from earning a living on their own, their lack of earnings are used as an excuse to deny them social welfare.
12. Then, were are denied the right to pay for a roof over their own heads: this was the most grotesque outrage of the 2014 and 2016 immigration acts.
13. They are also detained without trial (e.g at Yarl’s Wood) - Habeas corpus is no use to them.
14. Two barbarities have so far been stopped: the attempt to put their children at the end of the education queue. @NickyMorgan01 courageously blocked that; and
15. so “called non-suspensive appeals”: that is, you would only have been able to challenge your deportation after you have been deported.
16. Enforcing all these measures would require a police state. So rather than do that, the Home Office has inverted to historic principles of British justice.
17. The first principle is that we’re innocent until proven guilty. Not in immigration law we’re not. We have to prove that we are innocent (and, don’t think having a British passport is enough for the Home Office to stop them deporting you: ask Elwaldo Romeo)
18. The second is that we should not have to act as the State’s spies. Yet landlords, employers, even health workers and homeless charities have all been conscripted into the dragnet.
19. The “Windrush Generation” are the unintended victims of this oppression, which is intended to tell the people falsely worried about immigration that something is being done about tit.
20. There are calls for an amnesty for them. They may well be granted, eventually. That will leave the system free to focus on the unpopular and undeserving oppressed.
21. They’ll be sacked, detained, dehoused and deported so satisfy the infinite demand that “something must be done” about a problem that only exists in the minds of swing voters and the media that cater to their prejudices.
22. There’s evidence that the Home Secretary is appalled by the system she’s inherited. My appeal to @AmberRuddHR is this: don’t just give the Windrush Generation an amnesty. Use it to start dismantling the cruel system of which they were unintended victims.
23. Begin a serious inquiry about how to enforce immigration control humanely and in line with British ideals. It cold produce solutions like this.
24. Repeal the requirements on landlords and employers to act as government spies. (There’s probably a parliamentary majority for this)
25. Ban government departments from linking funding for charities to a requirement immigration violations to the Home Office.
26. Prohibit discrimination on grounds of immigration status. If someone is here without permission that should be a matter for law enforcement and the courts, and intelligence led.
27. She could even argue for the policy once favoured by the Foreign Secretary and institute an amnesty for law-abiding long term undocumented immigrants, regularising their situation and bringing them into the tax system. ENDS
