The passing of the immigration bill and the continued evasion on the dropping of the NHS surcharge for non-British nationals working in essential jobs reveal two things about this government (Points-based UK immigration bill passes initial Commons stage, 18 May).
First is its inability to recognise that this pandemic has changed our view of low-paid workers, both within and outside the NHS. And this is how we repay these workers? By penalising them and discriminating against them? They have truly done essential work – keeping us fed, cared for and, well, alive. If there are further pandemics, who will be here to do these jobs? Will Priti Patel pick up a mop? Will Boris Johnson empty a bedpan? Or Michael Gove drive a bus? Now that really would be the stuff of nightmares.
Second, it makes a mockery of Boris and his cohort clapping the NHS and care workers every Thursday. Clap now and forget later appears to be the watchword. The hypocrisy is as breathtaking as the government incompetency. For the record, I have never felt more ashamed to be British.
Julie Coaton
Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire
• The immigration bill had its second reading in the Commons this week. Back in 2018, I was the first Tory candidate who made a public stance and stepped down because of Brexit. It was clear to me that Brexit means only one thing: a curtailment of our freedoms. The immigration bill confirms our fears that it presents Great Britain as a country that is ruled by self-righteousness, and that, to a large extent, people enjoy looking down on others. This even for the price of the curtailment of their own freedoms.
A reasoned person would assume that we have learned in the Covid-19 crisis how much we depend on key workers and that we would appreciate them. Many of them are EU citizens. The bill says the opposite. In post-Brexit Britain, those key workers are seen as unskilled and as not worth having the right to live in Britain. I am deeply saddened. Let us all continue to fight for freedom and respect for everyone, here in London and all over the UK – the country that people across the world have long seen as the light of freedom, kindness and togetherness.
Marx de Morais
London
• There is something deeply wrong and unsettling about the government’s immigration bill returning to the Commons.
The bill implicitly suggests “low-skilled” workers – who earn below an arbitrary threshold – are unwanted, unnecessary and therefore somehow lesser. This view would always be reprehensible, but to seek to actualise this divisive law is particularly sinister. Care workers fall under the “unskilled” category; that the government wants far fewer foreign-born care workers to migrate here underlines just how rotten the administration is. It is unaware of the plight of care workers? Is it oblivious to how much good they provide? The current crisis has shown just how key “unskilled” workers are, yet the government still hasn’t got the message. It beggars belief.
Sebastian Monblat
Sutton, London
• Priti Patel has defended the immigration bill, which treats some NHS staff and social workers as low or unskilled workers. Her defence was that this was in line with the public’s priorities of wishing to control immigration. Really?
Has she missed the 8pm applause for NHS and social care workers, and other crucial low-income workers who have kept society safer? I presume the home secretary has been self-isolating from reality.
Maurizio Moore
Writtle, Essex
