Pathetic Immigration Policy
I heard an interview with Barbara Roche on BBCr4 this lunchtime & it so pissed me off that by the end of the programme I'd written a letter to my MP. I'll review it when I've calmed down a bit, either make more or less ranting depending on how I feel, then post it tomorrow. But, just so as I get to inflict my opinions on the rest of you:
Dear Joan,
I'm writing to you as my constituency MP - and copying this letter to Barbara Roche and Jack Straw, the relevant ministers - to express my dismay at the proposal, discussed by Ms. Roche on BBC Radio 4 ("World This Weekend" Sunday 30th January) to ask for a deposit of money before allowing people from some countries to visit or stay in the UK.
Firstly, and most obviously, people are either entitled in law to enter or remain in Britain or they aren't. If they are, then why should the Immigration Service discriminate against those too poor to afford these proposed bonds? And if they aren't, should we allow our government to be bribed to overlook its own rules? The principle of the rule of law - which the Home Secretary has very correctly upheld in a number of recent controversies - is surely that government should obey the same laws that it sets for others.
Secondly, as I understand it these rules would only apply to visitors from certain countries. This is obviously inherently racist (for once I don't feel I'm being even a little "politically correct" in using that word) because people of different ethnic or national origins would be being treated differently, regardless of their personal circumstances.
It is proposed that we use this scheme to keep people from South Asia out - but India and its neighbouring countries are, more than anywhere else outside Europe, places with which we enjoy a "special relationship". Literally millions of people in the sub-continent have some British ancestry, or relatives living in Britain; and millions of people in the UK are of south Asian ethnic origin or have other family or business connections with the subcontinent. There are innumerable legitimate reasons for South Asian people to want to visit, or to stay in, the UK. In particular it would be shameful if, as has been suggested, the UK government were to permit the sale of arms to the Pakistan government - an oppressive, undemocratic, unelected government that supports brutal tyranny in Afghanistan, finances terrorists in India, wastes its money on nuclear weapons, oppresses women, and discriminates against non-Muslims - at the same time as preventing ordinary Pakistanis from visiting their friends and relatives in the UK, yet allowing the wealthy in whenever they like.
As a member of the Labour Party I am ashamed that a government I support can make such a proposal. I hope that it has been misreported, or, if it is a genuine idea, that it will be squashed at birth.
At the risk of turning this letter into a rant, I'm afraid that as a British citizen I am also ashamed of my country's continued and increasingly discriminatory attitude to immigration, and saddened that a Labour government seems to feel that it has to abandon the principles it held in opposition in order to mollycoddle the feelings of a racist minority.
Regardless of the moral aspects of freedom of movement (as a Christian I believe that the world and everything in it belongs to God and that neither governments nor anyone else have the right to restrict the freedom of movement of people accused of no crime- but I know that in practice no British government is likely to accept that so there isn't much point in arguing for it), and ignoring the plight of refugees (I am also ashamed that, for the first time in my lifetime, I see women with young children begging on the streets of London and I am no longer sure - as I would have been even during the Tory administration - that there is anywhere else for them to go), regardless of all this, so-called "economic migrants" have a disproportionately large input to the economy of their chosen destination country. They tend to bring vitality, imagination and a desire to work hard. They also help boost trade by their connections with their place of origin. It is ironic that a government which, in the interests of free trade (which is of course of the greatest importance to our economy) is prepared to stick its neck out in opposition to the EU withholding tax, is so zealous in controlling the free movement of people.
Migration has also been of vast cultural benefit. One of the reasons I like living in south-east London is the diversity of my neighbours. To be frank, it is more fun living amongst large numbers of people from all over the world.
Immigration has become vital to the economic, and increasingly to the cultural, life of this country. We should be encouraging it, not preventing it. (Any policy that is all three of morally right, wealth-creating, and fun is going to get my vote.) We should be proud that we have a country that people want to come to, and welcome them in. If this absurd and petty idea of bonds goes ahead I don't look forward to defending it on the doorstep during the London local election campaigns.
Ken Brown