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Having a better immigration system also means returning immigrants

You know government policy is in trouble when on the same day it is attacked by both a High Court judge and its own independent inspector.

That is what happened yesterday to the Home Office over important aspects of their returns policy – with the High Court ruling the fast track deportation process ‘unlawful’ and the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency criticising the use of dawn raids and the treatment of families.

But it is just too easy for people who want a more sympathetic approach towards migrants to greet these developments as victories against those ‘nasty’ people in the Home Office.

Of course it is important to use campaigns and legal challenges to stop the inequities and injustices that scar our immigration system. But the cause of migrants’ rights is not going to be advanced just by frustrating the system. The system has to be changed.

There is no point – as often happens in reports by academic and NGOs – coming up with visions for a perfect immigration system that delivers absolutely everything else, but which misses out a crucial element: return. It’s a dirty word in some parts of the migration world but it needs to be confronted, so I will say it again: return.

Any alternative system lacks all credibility if it does not include better and faster ways of returning migrants who are judged, after a fair hearing, to have no right to remain in the UK.

Quite simply, the electorate demands that this happens – and the politicians and therefore the policy makers have to take that into account. They do not have the luxury of just ignoring mainstream opinion, as ‘No Borders’ groups and their ilk are happy to do.

Moreover, the ability to return people who have entered illegally, violated their visas or been refused asylum is not just popular, it is right. There need to be safeguards so that people can challenge decisions of course, but in the end rules are the rules – and they should be applied and supported. Although a campaigner for migrants rights myself I have always found it difficult to deal with some in the migration sector who seem to glory in seeing immigration rules widely ignored or flouted.

Fortunately there are some positive signs that the government and the migration sector are moving towards a more cooperative spirit around the sensitive issue of return – and related issues. The Still Human, Still Here coalition has been involved in long discussions with UKBA around the issue of asylum seeker destitution.

More recently, a group of NGOs involved in the Outcry Campaign have been working with officials to come up with compromise solutions to end the practice of detaining children while ensuring that the government retains instruments to effect or facilitate family return.

This is the way forward. The bitter battles over immigration of the last decade have been great for the lawyers, but done little in the long run to protect migrants or deliver a better immigration system. It is through discussion and negotiation that progress will really be made.

Tim Finch is Head of Migration, Equalities and Citizenship at ippr.

Links

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/07/28/having-a-better-immigration-system-also-means-returning-immigrants/