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Theresa May’s poisonous immigration legacy


The UK’s National Audit Office is investigating the government’s sanctions against tens of thousands of foreign students it accused of cheating to pass English language tests, even though many of them were fluent English speakers.

Some MPs have claimed the English-testing affair could be even “bigger than Windrush”, a scandal the NAO reported on last year. The affair, named after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought immigrants from the Caribbean to England in 1948, saw officials detaining or deporting longstanding Caribbean immigrants who had every right to live in the UK.

The government is also discussing raising the fees that EU students pay to attend British universities. While there is an argument that, after Brexit, EU students should not be treated more favourably than those from India, China or anywhere else, this proposal has revived criticism from universities that the government does not understand the value of foreign students to the UK economy or the eagerness of competing countries such as Australia, Canada or the Netherlands to win that business for themselves.

Behind all these controversies lies one name: Theresa May. As the NAO noted in its Windrush report in 2010, the year Mrs May became home secretary, her department instituted a policy known as the “hostile environment”, designed to make life for illegal immigrants so unpleasant that they would hesitate to come to the UK and, if they had already arrived, would decide to go home.

The hostile environment policy turned employers and landlords into immigration officers. Banks were told to verify account holders against immigration databases. Companies and landlords were required to check the immigration status of prospective employees and tenants — with the threat of financial penalties if they employed or housed illegal immigrants and criminal prosecution if they did so knowingly or repeatedly.

All countries have immigration laws and those who arrive and stay in contravention of them should face legal sanction, including, where appropriate, removal. The trouble with the hostile environment policy, and its allied aim of bringing net annual migration down to 100,000 from its 2018 level of 283,000, is that it appeared to treat every immigrant as an illegal unless they could prove otherwise — and then often rejected their proof even when it was overwhelming.

The English-tests affair is a classic example. There was cheating in the Test of English for International Communication examinations taken by foreign students, as revealed in a 2014 BBC Panorama programme.

The government instructed Educational Testing Service, the US company that administered the exams, to re-examine nearly 60,000 tests. Using voice recognition software, ETS said it found thousands of cases of students sending in proxies to take the tests. The government revoked the visas of more than 35,000 alleged cheats. Many say they have been wrongly accused and videos show some of them speaking good English.

Mrs May’s approach to foreign students generally resulted in her overruling many in her own cabinet who wanted her to take students out of the net immigration figures. Universities said their inclusion was resulting in UK consulates refusing visas to legitimate students in an attempt to hit the 100,000 target.

The injustice to wrongly pursued immigrants and students should be the biggest concern as it damages individuals and families. But there is damage to business too.

As prime minister, Mrs May has proposed limiting immigration to those earning more than £30,000 a year. This has worried employers in fields from agriculture to healthcare. Josh Hardie, deputy director-general of the CBI employers’ group, said: “All skill levels matter to the UK economy.”

Mrs May will not be around much longer. She has told her party that she will not contest the next general election, which is due in 2022, but few expect her to last until then.

Will her immigration legacy outlast her? It depends on who succeeds her, whether Brexit happens and what form it takes. The UK’s EU residents, who have been promised that they will have a right to stay after Brexit, cannot take much comfort from what has happened to others.

Institutional behaviour does not shift quickly. Once officials have been schooled to behave in a certain away, it takes time for them to change, even if the political will for a change exists, which it may not. The hostile environment policy has left a tawdry legacy and, as the immigration figures show, it did not even achieve its own objectives.

michael.skapinker@ft.com
Twitter: @Skapinker





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