Short open letter to Teresa May

Dear Home Secretary

"Human rights" is a funny old expression isn't it? I mean it makes it sound like people are actually entitled to these things. And weirder still it makes it sound like all humans might be entitled to them - even the brown ones, and the lesbians and Olly Murs.

Now when I hear you want to deny people their human rights my blood is already starting to boil. But I want to hear you out, to understand your point. I don't really believe that human rights legislation nowadays means mass murderers are entitled to champagne cocktails. But maybe you picked up a copy of the Daily Mail on a train and some of the lies sank in by osmosis and you're too busy to check them.

However even you must be able to see what's wrong with this sentence from you as reported on Sky News:

"I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have some problems with it, I see it, here in the Home Office, particularly, the sort of problems we have in being unable to deport people who perhaps are terrorist suspects."

Now those who've been convicted of "terror" (presumably this includes people who stand up in cable cars ... if not it should!) can be locked up. Those who are only suspected of terror however - surely you do realise that they could be innocent. In fact so far in the UK the vast majority of terror suspects have turned out to be innocent.

So you're advocating deporting the innocent? That seems just a little bit mean. Actually it seems criminal and evil - terrible in fact. And you've clearly stated that that is your position so I suspect YOU of plotting an act of terror. The act of deporting people for the sole crime of being pointed at by a neighbour or corrupt police official.

This makes you a terror suspect. And you believe in deporting terror suspects. So...

Get out.

Thanks very much.

We Need To Talk About Immigration

On a Monday I teach English to a group of female asylum seekers. I know it's a cliche to say that voluntary helping-people work is terribly rewarding but, sorry, it is, they're an amazing group of women and I learn a great deal from them every week while all they learn is the difference between "would" and "could".

One thing I'm always in need of is reading books for them. It's a tricky balance because I need books in simple English but I don't want to give children's books to middle-aged women. If you have such books you'd like to donate please get in touch. But that's not the point of what I want to say...

I went book-hunting in a local second hand shop the other day and explained my situation to the guy behind the till. He replied rather sneeringly "asylum seekers? so mostly from Eastern Europe then?". No. Not at all from Eastern Europe. How can people who no doubt have strong views about immigration also have so little grasp on how it actually works and who these people are?

I also noticed throughout the election whenever the subject of immigration came up it was treated as a de facto problem, with no mention made of the contribution to our economy and society made by immigrants of all kinds. At the hustings in Hammersmith a guy wanted to ask a question about why so few of the new jobs created by the Olympics had gone to British workers - which is a stupid question because is anyone actually proposing that we start discriminating against foreign workers on specific prestigious projects? How would such a law even work? It would almost certainly be illegal to have such a law.

So here's a quick guide to immigration in the UK.

1) Immigration from the EU. People from EU countries are allowed to move to to other EU countries without a visa. If you're British you can go live in Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany, wherever you like in the EU and work there. People from all round the EU can come here and work. Typically what happens is that young educated, skilled workers show up from Poland and do plumbing and building jobs at a fraction of the cost and twenty times the politeness and professionalism of British tea-drinkers (sorry - workers).

2) Immigration to do specific jobs. So there are some government rules (constantly changing) about letting people come to the UK to do either jobs that we seem to be having trouble filling (nurses, etc) or for well-qualified people who are expected to help grow British business or start new businesses in the UK.

3) Immigration for family reasons. So if you're British and you marry someone who isn't they get a visa. This has it's problems since visas are granted on a "no recourse to public funds" basis because of public paranoia over immigrants eating all our biscuits. This means if (to give the most common example) a woman arrives from a third world country to marry a British citizen (who she may hardly know) and he is violent towards her she can't get a place in a domestic violence refuge.

4) Asylum seekers. These are people who have come to the UK to escape persecution in their home country. They are not allowed to work while their application is considered (which often takes many years) but are not allowed either to claim "regular benefits". Single asylum seekers live on an asylum seekers allowance of £37.77 per week (and that's expected to cover accommodation and food) while couples and families get less than £30 each a week. As you would expect they mostly come from places with fraught political situations - Eritrea, Afghanistan, Congo, Iran, Zimbabwe, Burundi. Many live in homeless shelters, including some I know with serious health problems. Risk of Female Genital Mutilation is not grounds for granting asylum so your tax-payers money is spent by the British government rounding up young girls, sending them to prison, then deporting them to have their clitorises violently removed with unsterilised equipment. About 40% of asylum applications are ultimately granted and there are many documented cases of rejected asylum seekers who have been forcibly returned to their countries of origin and are then thrown in prison or even executed.

5) Illegal immigrants. We don't know how many of these there are because (clue's in the name) they don't exactly announce their arrival... Many are "overstayers" who have stayed after their visa has run out or holiday ended. Others have been smuggled into the country or trafficked. They are unable to claim any benefits at all or register with a doctor, etc and are trapped in the black market economy where they are often paid next to nothing or actually nothing. An example would be the Morcambe Bay cockle-pickers who earned next to nothing and worked in dangerous conditions without and support from health and safety legislation. Currently after 14 years in the UK these people can apply for a visa which of course as soon as it's granted means they no longer want to work for sub-minimum wage illegal organisations. If we cut this time limit (dramatically) we could probably close down big sections of the black market.

It's also worth noting that in spite of the draconian rules on work visas, in fact immigrants to the UK contribute considerably more in tax than they use in public services, etc. British people moving out of the UK are predominantly older people looking to retire in the sun so we end up not paying for their health care and other services as they get older.

Just saying, if you're going to pick up a copy of the Daily Mail any time soon, it's worth knowing what immigration really means and is.

Borderline Reporting

From today's Independent:

Firstly, how did the press get hold of this story? It's in a number of papers, Mail, Telegraph, etc so it's not that a journalist happened to be at customs at the time of the incident. Someone's written a press release. It's unlikely to be the woman herself since no version of the story has a quote from her explaining her actions. It does however have quotes from the border officials. Which means it must be them who let on to the press about the story. Why? Did they think it would boost their image? Or did they think it was funny? Either way a bit sick and screwed up.

Secondly, the piece seems to be saying that the woman was coming of her own free choice to the UK to seek sex work and was turned away. But imagine if you were going overseas to take on a job that required a specific type of clothing. Would you pack only the specialist clothing (wet suits? bee-keeping gear? workmen's overalls?) you were planning to wear while working? Or would you also pack some "normal" clothes to wear when you went shopping or for a night out? I think I would.

So it's possible they totally misunderstood, that she's actually a model only visiting for a one-day photo shoot and she's brought a range of clothes for the job and they haven't bothered to listen to her story. If so she's been unjustly denied entry and had her time and money wasted.

But more likely is that she's being trafficked to the UK to do the kind of sex work where you're not allowed out of the house at all. In which case refusing her entry is going to make no difference because whoever is trafficking her is just going to keep trying. What they should have done of course is found out who was controlling her and how (drugs? money? threats?), found a safe place for her to be rehabilitated either here or at home and then chased down the organisers of the racket and jailed them.

It's really irresponsible of newspapers like The Independent to treat the issue of sex work as a saucy "and also" space-filler. This is about women's lives and wherever you stand on the subject you have to accept that many sex workers are working under duress. How to deal with that problem and make sure women who want to get out of the industry can do so is - or should be - the real story here.

Why Are We Sending the VICTIMS of Crime to Prison?

Another horror story about the UK immigration system's treatment of trafficked women. The story itself is disgusting:

"She tells of a time early on in her abuse when she was with one customer who had asked for two girls.

The other girl was showing her what to do but Anna started to cry when she saw the customer lying on the bed - it was the first time she had seen a naked man."

So a man went in to visit a brothel and one of the girls started crying, and yet evidently he didn't go to the police or report the incident, or if he did the police did nothing. Is that the kind of society we live in now? Of course the treatment from the pimps themselves is the most horrific:

"she was forced to have sex and faced ice-cold baths, starvation and beatings if she did not do as she was told"

So when at long long last she was rescued from this horrific life, from a life of being raped by different men up 15 to 20 times a day (oh and up to 30 around Christmas - cos all those devoutly religious people know the best way to celebrate the birth of the Lord is with a trip to a cheap brothel...), and frequent violent abuse too, how does Britain respond? We lock her up in Yarl's Wood detention centre.

She was 12 when she was trafficked out of Albania. She's 20 years old now. She fears she'll be forced back in to prostitution if she goes back to Albania. So we're deporting her straight back there.

Answering Back

This video is just great. Why don't journalists ask these questions?!

Spot The Intelligence

I guess they call them intelligence services for a reason, and I'm expected to blindly accept that along with everything they say. You'd have to forgive me for wondering though when Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi went to Gambia to set up a peanut processing factory, what exactly made MI5 think they were plotting to engage in terrorism. Whatever it was*, evidently it was pretty compelling because now Mr el-Banna is now being released from Guantanamo Bay without charge. [Well of course in a bout of frightening double-speak he has been "cleared for release", which is the new way of letting inmates go without charge without admitting you had no reason to lock them up in the first place!]

The Home Office has responded by pointing out that because he was away for more than two years, he has forfeitted his visa to stay in the UK where his wife and five (British citizen) children live.** Mr el-Banna's ten year old son Anas has written a letter to Gordon Brown, pointing out "My Dad was only out of the country because he was locked up over there." Now that is definitely intelligence.

On the upside Harriet Harman, the Cru-blog's on-going candidate of choice for the deputy leadership (from those running that is) is campaigning for Britain to raise the long-overdue issue of Guantanamo at the UN Security Council.

*If you're really wondering it was a battery charger the men bought from Argos.

**Oh and if you really want to know why they don't want him back in the country it may just be an attempt to hush up the horrific story of how badly MI5 mis-handled the case throughout.