UK’S POLICY AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS PEOPLE OF COLOR

Sat 11 February 2023:

According to a UK government assessment, the policy to deter illegal immigration had a “disproportionate impact” on people of color. Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron implemented the hostile environment measures.

These policies were later renamed “compliant environment” policies. The impact assessment of these policies began with a study of the potential risks of the legislation.

The report was published on Thursday (February 9). It was observed that Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians and Bangladeshis were most likely to be affected by the policies. On the other hand, Albanians and Brazilians, among the top five nationalities to be found residing illegally in the UK, were least likely to be impacted.

“We note that of the top five nationalities impacted most are identifiable as being from/of brown or black heritage and all five are visibly not white,” the document says as reported by The Guardian.

“The internal data suggests some of the compliant environment measures may disproportionately impact on people of colour.”

Through this report, the government has studied the reasons why these policies caused the ‘windrush scandal’ in which thousands of legal residents in the UK found that they were no longer able to find employment, open bank account or avail medical facilities from the National Health Service (NHS).

These policies were devised by Theresa May when she was the home secretary.

“The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration,” she had said at the time.

Mary Atkinson, Campaigns and Networks Manager at JCWI, a migrants’ rights charity, said: “This report lays out in the cold, clinical language of the Home Office what communities of colour have been saying for over a decade: this government’s hostile environment is racist. For the Home Office to admit that its policies have a disproportionate impact on people of colour, particularly on black and east Asian communities, is a watershed moment. This government cannot begin to right the wrongs of Windrush while every single policy that caused discrimination against Windrush victims remains in place.”

The review of the policies looked primarily at the impact they had between the introduction of the Immigration Act 2014 and 2018 when some policies were paused or amended in the wake of the Windrush scandal, as it became clear that thousands of people had been wrongly caught out by hostile environment measures.

During that period the Home Office shared 448,800 individuals’ records with other government departments, and as a result 63,786 individuals were affected by compliant environment policies; the most common actions were having a UK driving licence revoked or a letter being sent to their employer advising them that they may not have the right to work in the UK.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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