Scottish Refugee Council has long awaited the arrival of the new Immigration Bill. Now it’s here, and it’s looking pretty grim
Blog by Nina Murray, Women’s Policy Development Officer
Tuning into BBC’s Today Programme Thursday morning sipping the first of what will likely be many coffees today, I was greeted by the announcement of Westminster’s long-anticipated (and somewhat dreaded) Immigration Bill. Switching on my computer and the Twittersphere was alive with early-morning dismay and condemnation at the host of measures being trailed in the media apparently affecting people’s access to healthcare, housing, family life, bank accounts and driving licences, among others. As we and many other organisations with years of experience working with refugees and migrants in the UK pointed out in our responses to the Home Office consultations on the Bill, there are so many things wrong with it that it’s hard to know where to start critiquing.
Where’s the evidence?
Firstly – and quite importantly you would think – the Government has produced no evidence to justify the time, effort, cost and human impact of this Bill and its apparently far-backward-reaching measures. No evidence has been tabled – note the Home Secretary’s nimble sidestepping in her Radio 4 interview of this fundamental flaw – to back up claims that ‘health tourism’ or the general scrounging by so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ of public services is a significant problem. No figures for how much ‘illegal immigrants cost the tax-payer’ have been produced and no thorough cost-benefit analysis has been made available to back up the measures being discussed this morning.
‘Contributing’ to healthcare
The emptiness of the political statements being put out to justify the Bill is easily illustrated by one of its fundamental tenets: That migrants should ‘contribute’ to their use of public services such as the NHS. The National Health Service is funded by general taxation, in other words, everyone going shopping, paying student fees, renting accommodation, paying (substantial) visa fees, is already ‘contributing’; never mind the indirect contribution of thousands of migrant carers and volunteers giving so much to our communities, irrespective of their immigration status.
Could they care less?
It appears from the statements this morning that scant attention has been paid to the concerns of those of us working on the ground. Human rights organisations, housing associations and medical charities, GPs, legal representatives and professional bodies have all expressed serious concerns about the potential human impact, never mind the vast expense and administrative bureaucracy that would be created by restricting access to vital public services to certain people. Those of us with concerns about the Bill produced figures and arguments grounded in our many years of experience working on the frontline and then the Government produces little more than vacuous rhetoric. Why bother with a consultation when the views of the people to be affected and the organisations representing them are pushed aside?
Buying the hostile rhetoric
The media coverage this morning from The Guardian to the BBC and The Telegraph (not even to mention the Daily Mail), is dominated by highly politicised phrases: ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘health tourism’, ‘foreign criminals’ and ‘entitlement to public services’. They gulp up the Government’s hostile rhetoric without blinking.
But organisations like ours, working to ensure men, women and children are treated fairly and with dignity, know that the lived reality of people cannot easily be fitted into these populist categories. Because this is about individuals – people just like you or me, with rights, with dreams, with hopes and, above all, with a huge amount to contribute to our communities and our society. For politicians and the media it is easy to divide and rule, to simplify and polarise people into categories: good vs. bad, contributor vs. scrounger, illegal vs. legal, but the reality for people who have come to the UK either by choice or fleeing for safety, the reality for all of us who will be affected by this new law, cannot be reduced to a label.
What about Scotland?
The key question for us over coming days as the devil of the detail in the new Immigration Bill is made public, is what the impact will be for people in Scotland. Decision-making in many of the social policy areas impacted on by the Westminster Bill is devolved to Holyrood. How, with its human rights based approach to access to healthcare, with its approach to public service provision grounded in principles of early intervention, prevention and reduction of inequality, will the Scottish Government respond?
