Migration Watch UK: News

Convicted Foreign Criminals and the Right to Family Life

The paper which appears below under the title “Convicted foreign criminals and the right to family life (2)” was completed on 13 February 2013.  It is appropriate to precede it with further comments following the Home Secretary’s article on the subject which appeared in The Mail on Sunday on 17 February.  The Home Secretary accuses the judges of disregarding the will of Parliament in failing to implement the provisions of HC 194 (see below for an explanation of HC 194) when considering appeals against deportation by convicted foreign criminals.  Her anger appears to have been provoked by three recent decisions of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), the most recent of which is discussed below. One of her complaints is that “some judges seem to believe that they can ignore Parliament’s wishes if they think that the procedures for parliamentary scrutiny have been weak”.  This appears to be a reference to another case Izuazu [2013] UKUT 45. The way Immigration Rules are made is explained in legal briefing paper 8.63.  Under the provisions of section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 they are subject to approval by both Houses of Parliament by the negative resolution procedure.  The Rules contained in HC 194 went through this procedure in June 2012 and were debated at some length by the House of Commons.  However, the Tribunal in Izuazu made a disparaging and unjustifiable reference to this procedure by saying that it “provided a weak form of Parliamentary scrutiny” (paragraph 49).

See the full Briefing Paper No 8.69

Bill of Rights – Commission’s Report

21 December, 2012

The Commission set up in 2011 to report on the possibility of a UK Bill of Rights published its report yesterday, 18 December. It has not attracted much attention from the media. The report itself runs to 282 pages, which I do not claim to have read in full. I was aware that its terms of reference rather oddly precluded the Commission from considering the possibility of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) but had not previously appreciated that this prohibition was an addition to the terms of reference on which Nick Clegg had insisted.

It is interesting that the report notes that only a quarter or so of those who put in submissions to the Commission were in favour of a UK Bill of Rights. Nevertheless the majority of the members of the Commission, seven out of nine, conclude that there is a strong argument in favour of such a Bill on the basis that it would incorporate and build on the UK’s obligations under the ECHR. Two members wrote their own dissenting conclusions on the main ground that the majority had failed to identify any shortcomings in the Human Rights Act or its application by the courts - a ground which anyone concerned in recent years with the application of the ECHR in numerous major court decisions on asylum and immigration cases must surely find astonishing. They appear also to hint at suspicions that consideration of a UK Bill of Rights may be a way of setting about the process of withdrawing from the ECHR.

To read the full Briefing Paper No 8.68 please click here

60,000 Bogus Students Could Have Entered the UK Last Year - Government “have bottled out on bogus students"

As many as 60,000 bogus students could have entered the UK in 2011 alone.

This is the conclusion of a study by Migration Watch, based on the findings of a Home Office pilot scheme which were published last week.  Under the pilot scheme applicants for student visas were interviewed to determine whether they were genuine. This involved two tests – whether they were genuine as students and whether they intended to return home after their studies. The Home Office found that the highest percentage of bogus students came from Burma, where 62% would have been refused a visa on doubts about their credibility. In Bangladesh, India and Nigeria, 59% of students were considered as likely to be bogus. When these proportions were applied to the number of applicants from each country in the pilot, it emerged that the total came to 63,000 potentially bogus students in just one year.

Of those who were potential refusals on credibility grounds, 61% were applying for privately funded colleges, 17% for a publicly funded college and 14% for a university.

Following this pilot, the Home Office has introduced plans to interview 10,000 students a year and has set out the criteria on which they will be judged. But it is now clear that the government has lost its nerve and has dropped the second test (intention to return) from the student interview scheme which comes into force as the end of July.

The Australian authorities – often quoted by the university lobby as a good example of student immigration control – have this very test.   Their recent major review considered it to be “The first item of business in assessing a student visa application.”

As for the scale of interviews, 10-14,000 a year have been mentioned but this is only about 10% of the number of applicants from the countries of immigration concern.

Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK said, “We now have clear evidence of abuse on a major scale. Bogus students come here to work illegally and thus take jobs from British workers. If it is clear from the circumstances that a student is unlikely to go home, the visa should not be granted in the first place. After all, many of the advantages claimed for foreign students depend on their going home after their studies.

“These half measures simply will not do. The government have bottled out on bogus students.  If they are serious about immigration they must face down the self interested demands of the Higher Education sector and pursue the public interest.”

Referring to the letter to the Sunday Times signed by 37 business leaders calling for students to be taken out of net migration, Sir Andrew Green said:

“It is, in fact, impossible to take students out of net migration because, unlike the US and Australia, we still have no exit checks so nobody knows how many who came as students have actually left the UK. It seems that business leaders are clueless about immigration policy and will sign whatever is put in front of them.”

Notes to Editors:

Genuine Temporary Entrant Requirement to Australia, URL: http://www.immi.gov.au/students/_pdf/2011-genuine-temporary-entrant.pdf

Home Office Analysis of Pilot Scheme on Student Credibility, URL: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/immigration-asylum-research/occ104?view=Binary

Before entry Student Visa Grants by Country, 2011, URL: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/immigration-asylum-research/immigration-tabs-q1-2012/before-entry-q1-2012-tabs?view=Binary

House of Commons Debate and Motion on the Application of Article 8 of the ECHR

 Summary of the debate held in the Commons chamber on 19th June (Hansard Reference: 19 June 2012 : Column 760).

Theresa May and Damian Green's speeches are shown in full.

 

The European Convention on Human Rights: Recent Developments

A recent report by Civitas, otherwise the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, under the title of “Strasbourg in the Dock: Prisoner voting, human rights and the case for democracy” has trenchantly analysed some of the current problems with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and in particular with the functioning of the Court of Human Rights (CHR) in Strasbourg. It carries much the same message as the other recent report on the subject, “Bringing Rights back home” by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky”, which was published in February. That report drew attention to the shortcomings of the CHR, the fact that each of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, including such tiddlers as San Marino and Liechtenstein, has the right to appoint one of the judges and many of those so appointed have little or no judicial experience or experience as practising lawyers. The same point is made by the Civitas report, which says that currently only 23 of the 47 judges have prior judicial experience.

To read the full document go to Briefing Paper No 8.54.

Legislative Developments

In September 2008 Briefing Paper 8.28, summarising the contents of the Draft (Partial) Immigration and Citizenship Bill, gave an account of the Bill’s contents and of the views on it which we submitted to the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons……

… There is now before Parliament a Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, which received its first reading in the House of Lords on 14 January and will have its second reading in that House on 11 February. The main purpose of the Bill is to give legal effect to the merger of immigration and customs functions in the UK Border Agency. It contains also certain new provisions on the acquisition of citizenship by naturalisation and on immigration. It does not cause Migration Watch any great concern, but it will bring to 11 the number of Acts of Parliament since 1971 and make ever more pressing the need for consolidation.

Read the full text of this Briefing Paper 8.33

Immigration: BBC Radio 4: Beyond Westminster

Radio 4's Beyond Westminster (1100 hrs – 1130 hrs Saturday, 10 January 2009) discussed whether the record levels of immigrants are something to be celebrated or deplored and how far things will be changed by the looming recession

The BBC's Andrew Rawnsley first questioned Migrationwatch's Chairman, Sir Andrew Green, about why his organisation is alarmed at the projections for a British population of 70 million by 2031. He then spoke to Tim Finch of the left-of centre think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research about IPPR's views on the Government's immigration policy. Finally, he talked to Simon Darby, Deputy Leader of the British National Party who explained why the BNP wants immigration stopped.

Mr Rawnsley then explored the arguments with three politicians: Phil Woolas, (Lab) Immigration Minister, Damien Green (Cons) Shadow Minister for Immigration and Chris Huhne, LibDem's chief spokesman on Home Affairs.

It is possible to Listen Again to the programme.

Migrationwatch invited to put forward policy suggestions

Following the evidence which we gave to the Economic Committee of the House of Lords, Migrationwatch were invited by a Cross Party Group of Parliamentarians to put forward suggestions as to how immigration issues should be tackled in a way that took account and also tackles the need to preserve the competitiveness of the economy but also tackled the numbers.

In response, they prepared a policy document which, for the first time brings together in one place the case against the very large scale immigration which has been allowed to develop. The Cross Party Group, which was announced today, accepted the broad lines of the document and will pursue its recommendations.

European Convention on Human Rights: Recent case law

Harry Mitchell, QC, summarises in Briefing Paper 8.27 three recent cases which are of interest. In all three questions concerning the European Convention on Human Rights are prominent. The third case, summarised in paragraphs 10 to 17, is of particular concern. It is a decision of the European Court of Human Rights which may well have the effect, if the Home Office feels obliged to follow it, of making it more or less impossible to deport failed asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka.

Recent case law on asylum and immigration

The government has recently suffered a number of setbacks in asylum and immigration cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

Two cases are summarised in Migrationwatch Briefing Paper 8.25: The Libyan case and the Abu Qatada case.