Deportation: the priority above all other considerations
In November last year I visited a number of detention centres in the UK and one of those contained a girl named Meltem Avcil. Born in Turkey and having moved to Germany with her mother for some years, she arrived in the UK when she was nine years old. Aged 13 and unaware she was illegally resident in the UK, she was taken out of school, where she was a model pupil, and held in a detention centre facing return to Turkey, a country with which she no longer had any direct ties. Scared at the prospect of deportation, she spent her fourteenth birthday in hospital, suffering from depression.
Sadly this is not an unusual situation. I recently heard from an American woman in her forties who had been resident in the UK since she was a child and believed she was a UK citizen. On applying for a passport she was suddenly faced with the possibility of deportation.
The keenness of the UK government to deport people (often at the taxpayers’ expense) means that these decisions to deport can be made irrespective of an individual’s personal situation. If someone has been contributing to UK society over many years, or is a child with no links to their place of birth, then it raises the question of whether there is any benefit to the UK to deport them.
The unfortunate situation is that many young people could become legal citizens, but often they don’t realise that they are staying irregularly, nor do they know their rights. Schools could play a part in helping this situation by encouraging young people to check their immigration status.
Dividing families and overriding human rights
Current policies are also forcing families to split up. Some UK citizens face the prospect of indefinite separation from their chosen partner because they are not a European Union citizen and are in an irregular situation. The Home Office position is that if people wish to be with their partner then they must return to their country of origin with them, even if that’s Iran. But the right to marry and have a family is protected in Article 12 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Separating couples is also in contravention of the right to respect for private and family life. The government has the power to grant discretionary leave to remain if it so wishes, but too often denies this to couples who are in a genuine and subsisting relationship.
Denying access to primary healthcare
At the Green Party’s spring conference last month, Moyra Rushby from the Refugee Health Network joined us for the migrant workers fringe meeting. Working on a daily basis with vulnerable migrants she witnesses first hand the detrimental impact of the Government’s policies regarding healthcare.
In 2004, the government changed the rules regarding entitlement to NHS care so that all patients seeking hospital treatment must prove they are legally resident in the UK, otherwise they must pay for treatment. This happened overnight, with no parliamentary debate.
Now the rules are to be changed again to stop non-residents accessing primary care. The Government was expected to announce its decision in October 2007, but we are still waiting.
What is clear is that this is a Home Office initiative, not a proposal from the Department of Health. In fact health care professionals are against it.
These developments mean that many migrants no longer visit GP surgeries and instead use accident and emergency wards as their primary care service. This situation doesn’t make financial sense for taxpayers: it costs £30 to see a GP, but £110 to receive a patient in A and E.
The Home Office doesn’t know how many non-residents are accessing NHS services, but the indications are that the numbers are very small. While the Government says that this policy will force people to return home, this is not happening. If your home country was Iraq would this make you leave or would you just avoid healthcare?
In conclusion...
The Government’s attitude towards migrants is becoming tougher, despite some of the policies having clearly questionable benefits for the UK and certain damaging impacts on individuals and families. The current policies risk creating further divisions in our society by forcing people into destitution and deep into communities out of the mainstream where they are vulnerable to exploitation and destitution. We must not lose sight of the fact that we must, above all, treat people as human beings not economic units.
