Why being tough on migrants actually undermines effective immigration control
Shortcuts to boosting public confidence in immigration control actually have the opposite effect by making real control harder.
There are three basic functions for a government immigration department:
Controlling entry;
Integrating those who are admitted; and
Ensuring the departure of others.
Those are not simple things to do in practice. Two of them, aren’t, at any rate. I will say nothing here about what the criteria should be for controlling entry. Integration isn’t actually that hard: the first thing to do is stop actively obstructing it. Ensuring departure is extremely difficult and a topic for another day.
The point I want to make here is these are the three core objectives that an immigration department should be focussed on achieving. Activities that do not contribute to these objectives should be deprioritised. Activities that actively obstruct these objectives should be stopped.
Yet over and over again we see the Home Office taking action and pursuing policies that are actually counter productive. The latest case, which has prompted me to finish writing this short piece, is that of Nelson Shardey. What follows is a long and slightly rambling piece. I’m sorry about that; I’m thinking this through and making it up as I go. It’s a bit of a messy process!
The case of Nelson Shardey
Nelson Shardey is 74 years old and has lived in the UK since 1977, a period of nearly 50 years. But he has recently been placed by the Home Office on the ten year path to settlement. This means that, after 50 years of living and working in the UK, he has to apply again for temporary status every two and a half years for the next ten years. In doing so he must navigate the nightmare that is making a valid immigration application. And he must pay thousands and thousands of pounds of immigration fees. At today’s prices I’m estimating that as about £13,500 extra over ten years. Normally, he would also need to fund the cost of paying for an immigration lawyer to help so that his time doesn’t get re-set again.
The same thing happens to the many families who are placed on the ten year rather than five year route to settlement because, for example, they don’t meet the minimum income threshold but have shown there are insurmountable obstacles to living together abroad. Some will say “good, the minimum income rule exists for a reason, they can’t be treated the same as someone who does meet the rules”. But what purpose is actually served? It cannot incentivise the sponsor to just “get a better job” or “work more hours”. The minimum wage is about £22,000 a year. The minimum income threshold is now £29,000 per year. It doesn’t encourage anyone to leave. It doesn’t really control entry either. But it does actively harm the integration of people whose long term future lies in the UK.
The burden imposed on Mr Nelson and others like him is hard to understand for those who are unfamiliar with the process. It is not just the financial cost but also the less obvious costs of enduring-but-temporary immigration status. The uncertainty and lack of security is emotionally punishing. It has subtle but powerful social and economic impacts as well. Employers and the individuals themselves are reluctant to invest in an uncertain future. The fact that many migrants with temporary status will stay permanently is known by immigration professionals but it is not at all clear to the ordinary employers and landlords who have to carry out immigration checks as part of the hostile environment. Faced with proof of immigration status that has a specific end date, many employers and landlords will take that as a departure date. It makes it harder to get good jobs and good accommodation.
The direct financial and the indirect status burden imposed by the Home Office both hold people back. This actively harms the integration of people whose future lies in the UK. It does nothing to ensure departure of people who ought to depart.
I guess it could be argued that the exorbitant fees Mr Nelson will be forced to pay, along with others like him, funds the Home Office’s other work. But why should Mr Nelson’s money be squandered on subsidising British hoteliers (the asylum backlog) or foreign despots (the Rwanda scheme)?
Other examples
Here’s another example. It will seem kind of trivial unless you are directly affected, in which case it’s a bit of a nightmare. The process for securing an immigration application fee waiver for British Nationals (Overseas) from Hong Kong has been made considerably harder. It is a process change that does not adjust basic eligibility. If you have no money you will still qualify for a fee waiver, it’s just you have to jump through more hoops and it will take a lot longer. Presumably, the reason for this is that someone at the Home Office decided that too many BN(O)s were not paying the immigration fee. Perhaps this was considered unfair on those who do pay the fee or perhaps it was about protecting Home Office finances, which are now heavily reliant on income from immigration fees.
Both might seem like reasonable, rational responses, although not ones with which everyone would agree.
So let’s think through the real world outcomes. One is that BN(O)s from Hong Kong will claim asylum instead. Another is that they will become illegally resident because they cannot pay the fee. Another is that they will leave the UK and return to Hong Kong.
These are all pretty terrible outcomes. No-one wants more asylum claims. No-one wants more unauthorised residents. No-one thinks it is clever to set up a scheme to welcome people from Hong Kong, disrupt their lives, pump them for cash and then force them out again and expose them to risk of retaliation from the Hong Kong authorities.
Why was the decision made and implemented, even though the real-world outcomes are not ones sought by the Home Office?
In the asylum system, forcing loads of asylum claims to be treated as withdrawn does not of itself magically transfer the person concerned out of the country. They are still here. It’s an illusion whose purpose is to massage the statistics to meet a target. It actually creates more work for the Home Office further down the line.
Refusing loads of claims with bad quality decisions generates loads of appeals, which take ages to resolve and during which the asylum seeker must be supported by the Home Office. Unsuccessful asylum claims also create headaches for the Home Office that successful asylum claims do not. A recognised refugee can work and otherwise becomes the responsibility of local government. A failed asylum seeker should supposedly be detained and removed from the country, both of which very difficult and expensive to accomplish.
On our last monthly podcast, Sonia raised another example: Zambrano carers. An obscure bit of EU law meant that a British citizen child should not be forced to leave their own country because of removal of their non-British parent. This might arise where a British citizen had a relationship with a person with no permission to be here and then the person with no permission ended up the sole suitable carer for the child. In the vast majority of cases we’re talking about a mother and child. The Home Office has made life for these women and children insanely difficult and done everything possible to stop them getting legal status. Why? To force a British child out of their own country? To create yet another unauthorised resident? To set up a detention and removal situation? Detention and removal is vanishing rare in these cases, as is voluntary departure. All that is likely to happen is that the mother ends up illegally resident, with bad consequences for her, her child and British society.
All the time, it seems, the Home Office as an institution seems to forget this. Where there is a failure on controlling entry, as with asylum arrivals, the person concerned still needs to be either integrated or removed. Where a person is already here and breaks a rule of some kind, either minor or major, they still need to be integrated or removed.
Making decisions that cast people out of lawful immigration pathways into illegal residence achieves neither integration nor removal. The number of enforced removals and voluntary departures is very low.
Similarly, extorting very high immigration fees from people already in the UK, prolonging their temporary status and making their lives generally miserable with horrible bureaucracy achieves neither integration nor removal.
Do harsh in-country rules assist with control of entry?
My own personal view is that I’m generally not that bothered about the rules on entry. There are two exceptions to that I should address before I come back to the point I want to make.
The first is that I strongly believe that family rules should be respectful and enabling of family life and therefore ‘generous’ in that sense. This is because the British or settled family members are already generally in the UK and harsh rules very strongly adversely affect them and have wider society-harming effects. Where the British or settled family member is abroad, I also strongly believe they should not be prevented from returning to their own country by harsh family rules which would require them to separate from their family to do so.
When it comes to students, workers and others I’m more relaxed. They aren’t harmed by rules preventing their entry to the UK. We might be harmed. I’m liberal on immigration and I’m fine with lots of students and workers coming here, and I think we’re generally better off if they do. But I’ve got no moral objection to rules preventing their coming here in the first place. I do strongly object to them being treated badly or unfairly if they are allowed to enter.
The other exception is refugees. I strongly believe that we have a duty to share with other countries the burden of hosting refugees. It’s not as much of a burden as some make out but it does require us to put resources into processing their cases and helping them integrate and there is a political cost to it given refugees are so unpopular.
Returning to the main point, one possible justification for tough rules within the country is that these are needed to prevent people entering on one basis and then remaining on another. For example, a family member might decide to come as a visitor and then apply to remain as a spouse or partner. If the spouse or parter application within the country does not impose the same rules as the application to enter on that basis, there is an easy way to dodge the normal requirements.
The reality is that once a person is within the UK, it is very hard to remove them. Imposing harsh rules on them prevents them staying lawfully in the short term but it does not prevent them staying.
A compromise solution is to impose the same rules on entry on route-switching applications but once a person is on a given route and stays there, to be more generous towards them. By all means keep people out in the first place if you must. But once they are here, treat them properly and recognise the reality of the situation.
Let’s think about skilled workers. Having difficult rules for entry is acceptable morally and practically, although there might be economic consequences to that. But once they are here, it serves no real purpose to refuse their applications to stay. Doing so denies them legal status but does not cause them to leave. It makes more work for the Home Office and it looks like — and is — a failure of control. It would be more sensible to have rules which facilitate their stay and help them settle in and integrate.
Why does the Home Office behave this way?
Part of the answer is politics. Caught in a vicious cycle of failure, the Home Office repeatedly makes the situation worse through its own actions.
At the start of this piece I outlined three core functions for an immigration department: (1) controlling entry then (2) integrating or (3) removing. A politician might say there is an overarching purpose, which is to maintain public confidence in effective immigration control.
It is true that this is very important. Some cynical politicians might actually say this is the only purpose of the immigration department: if the public has confidence in the maintenance of effective immigration control then it doesn’t matter what is really going on.
But the public aren’t stupid. You cannot really maintain public confidence in effective immigration control while at the same time failing at the core three functions. It is through performing core functions competently that confidence is built and maintained.
Over and over again we see the Home Office adopt shortcuts which are clearly intended to make the public think that immigration control is being effectively maintained. These shortcuts may or may not be disingenuous. The politicians who advocate or sign off on these shortcuts might genuinely think to themselves “this is effective immigration control”. They might pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Or they may be seeking to mask or distract from fundamental failures. Or both. Who knows what goes on in the minds of the likes of Chris Philp or Suella Braverman.
As is often the case with shortcuts, they actually make the journey to one’s destination longer and more onerous. With immigration control, shortcuts have actually undermined public confidence in immigration control.
It is not hard to see how and why it happens.
Firstly, politicians usually serve — and expect to serve — short stints at the Home Office. The department’s dysfunction is well-known. The politician is appointed and tasked with re-establishing public confidence in the effective maintenance of immigration control. Their career will suffer if they fail. They don’t have long. They know that many authoritarian-minded members of the public associate tough treatment of migrants with “control.” The politician in question probably thinks the same. But tough treatment is not, in fact, the same as control. As we’ve seen, quite often tough treatment is actually the opposite of control and makes real control even harder than it already was.
Secondly, the institution of the Home Office is complicit. As an outsider it is hard to know what really goes on inside government. I do not really know what the dynamic is between civil servants and their ministers. But after nearly 25 years of working in immigration and asylum law, attending and almost as long writing about it all, I have been left with the strong impression that the Home Office as an institution has a mindset and a moral code, both of which contribute to its dysfunction as a department.
One of the key tenets of the Home Office moral code is that those who do not meet or who break the ‘normal’ rules must be treated less favourably than those who do. This is not about outcomes. It’s about what is right and wrong.
For example, if you do not meet the minimum income requirement, you need to be treated less favourably than those who do. Otherwise, what’s the point in having the minimum income requirement in the first place? And why should anyone go to the effort of meeting it? The thinking is that there must be a penalty. Otherwise there is no incentive to comply.
There is a kind of logic to this. And the reasoning will, I think, understandably appeal to many. But the reality is it makes the Home Office’s job harder, meaning that the Home Office wastes time and resources imposing penalties that lead to no substantively different ultimate outcome.
The Home Office has limited resources. It needs to use them wisely and effectively. Rather than using those resources to impose penalties on nonconformists it would make more sense to have a broader church. Given that many of these seemingly ‘tough’ rules actually have little or no positive impact on control, integration or departure, the rules should be changed.