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Living on the
Edge Page 22 Aysha fled from her native Uganda
after being raped and tortured at the hands of security forces in her
homeland. The Home Office is intent on deporting her back because her
“credibility” is in doubt. To make ends meet she’s doing jobs that
ordinary Britons just won’t do. Tauhid
Pasha explores the murky world of Britain’s
irregular migrants – many of whom are Muslims.
Britain’s immigration statistics show that the overwhelming majority of those who are facing deportation after unsuccessfully claiming asylum come from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan. Official figures for the total number of migrants without any legal right to remain are not available. However, according to the Home Office’s own 2005 estimate, there may be up to 570 000 irregular migrants in the UK. This population is varied in character, consisting of overstayers, failed asylum seekers and victims of trafficking. To deal with this growing issue, the government is ushering in a new era of immigration controls, characterised by surveillance of the immigrant population. New civil penalties for employers who employ irregular workers will entail more workplace surveillance and apprehension of people who are in the UK in an irregular capacity. More spot checks for irregular migrants outside the workplace are also taking place, such as immigration department operations at tube stations in London last year. And with the expected introduction of identity cards, these may just increase. What do the new measures mean for these migrants, and what are the implications for the rest of us? At the current rate of deportation, the Home Office minister himself admitted in July this year that it could take 25 years to remove the entire irregular migrant population. In the meantime, they continue to do the jobs no one else wants, will be increasingly excluded from accessing basic services such as healthcare, and will have no recourse to legal protection from abuses in the workplace or at the hands of traffickers. Britain will continue to fret over these ‘illegal immigrants’, and some unscrupulous segments of the media will brand them as threats to national security, but at the same time they will continue to fuel Britain’s economy. The effects for the wider British Muslim population of increasing immigration surveillance cannot be underestimated. Research on the use of ID cards in Europe suggests that black and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately targeted on the basis of race for identity checks. Increasing workplace surveillance will inevitably target black and Asian businesses, and heightened removal tactics will mean immigration raids on our houses and meeting places. Memories of the high profile Tipton mosque raid in 2002 came to mind when the authorities recently targeted a mosque in the West Midlands that was giving sanctuary to a young Afghan family facing deportation. My organisation, JCWI, has put forward some answers that the government could do better than ignore. A harsh removal and deportation regime comes at a high price, both financially and in terms of social cohesion. The cost of deporting the entire irregular migrant population is estimated at £4.7 billion, yet the potential gains from increased tax revenues of regularising them may be £1 billion per annum. For Aysha, Suleman and countless others, a regularisation scheme would immediately allow them to raise their heads above the parapet and become full members of our community and British society. A more realistic immigration policy that fully acknowledges the contribution that migrants make to the UK by opening up legal routes for migration rather than concentrating on immigration enforcement is also needed. The government is currently implementing its new Point Based Scheme which sets out the criteria for people coming to work in the UK. In response to arguments to widen the new Points Based Scheme to allow migrants from the developing world to come to the UK to work, it has until now, relied upon arguments that nationals from the new Eastern European countries of the European Union (EU), such as Poland, are filling labour shortages in the low-skilled sector. There is already a perception amongst Britain’s ethnic communities that immigration policy is biased in favour of white Eastern Europeans. However, once the borders of countries like Germany, Spain and Italy also open up to these new EU nationals, the UK will no longer be able to reap the benefits of their labour alone. Rather than imposing restrictions against new members of the EU, we should be campaigning for a more equitable Points Based System that recognises the benefits that non-EU migrants from poorer countries bring to the UK. The government is receptive to the calls of business in implementing its work migration policies, and some lobbying by powerful Muslim business people would not be amiss. At the same time, the rest of us should engage in lobbying against immigration control tools such as ID cards which will have a discriminatory effect on the wider Muslim community and add our voices to the ever-growing calls for a regularisation scheme for those living on the edge of our society. Tauhid Pasha is Legal, Policy and Information Director for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. |