The Legal route to migration

Everyday more people are fleeing violence and poverty and seeking asylum in Europe. The EU member states are at loggerheads over refugee quotas, the authorities are often overburdened. Parts of the population are opposed to taking in asylum seekers altogether while a greater majority fear the impact on welfare state and governments inability to control borders. Politicians in service to their electorates demonstrate their tough stand on illegal migration by using inflammatory language, refuse to cooperate or address emergencies.

Government neglect of the crisis is justified by the policy of removing pull factors for more migrants. Apart from the morally questionable stand on the spectrum of neglecting vulnerable asylum seekers to deliberately endanger human lives the current policy is not adequate to deal with the issue of migration.  This tired policy was first tried in 2013 and continued to 2014 where migrants on unseaworthy vessels in international waters were not rescued in order to deter migrants from the journey. This policy resulted in thousands of life losses and finally compelled politician to launch naval rescue missions in 2015.

The difficulty of the journey nor the fences and barbwires will deter migrants from attempting to gamble the treacherous journey as long as the chance of having a dream life exist in Europe. Most asylum seekers are escaping poverty and violence and have a valid claim to asylum.  For instance most Afghans who sought asylum in 2014 were granted leave but the current policy will only grant them humanitarian protection and refugee status if they are on European soil thus encouraging the treacherous journey. Since they are granted asylum anyway it would save many lives and remove rings of human traffickers if developed countries assessed and granted visa in migrant home country.

There need to be legal ways for people to travel to Europe and live here while not being a burden on the public purse under work and business visa schemes. Refugees are very expensive and a study in Denmark showed three in four refugees are unemployed ten years after their arrival. Work schemes will empower people by granting them the status of a productive member of the society and boost their confidence. Such schemes currently exist for instance I myself arrived in the UK on an entrepreneur visa but the visa imposes too many unjust restrictions on the applicant from the kind of work they should be doing to descriptive guidelines on conduct of business and a hefty £30,000 visa related fees on a small family.  

Britain is ahead of other European countries in terms of attracting foreign talent yet the system is dysfunctional and one can only imagine what it is like for other European countries. It only takes a brief review of immigration law website to see that there is a constant relentless stream of judicial decisions showing the vast numbers of errors which occur by decision makers.  Transitional provisions regarding immigration rules ignored, policies not taken into account, ambiguous rules inconsistently applied, children or dependants not considered properly, judicial precedents ignored.

Against this background the Home Office, the state department in charge of immigration, continue to tighten the rules without due attention to how that relate to other policies. For instance the Home Office has removed the right of appeal for all business and work visa and applicants are faced with the Home Office reviewing its own decisions rather than have a tribunal undertake this task. This is intended to provide a fast track to remove individuals from the country if their visa extension application fails. Ironically it is likely that an individual could probably make a human rights claim, which will then provide an appeal anyway. Out of all that could be said about these changes the least sustainable position is that they will make it simpler to remove individuals from the UK. Even worse there is a flow of decisions about certain core concepts, such as article 8 of the ECHR and the rights of children, which suggest even the senior judiciary cannot quite decide what the rules mean and how they should be applied. If you have a life here of some substance and then a series of unfair Home Office decisions, its not hard to see how you could argue that eventual removal will breach your fundamental rights.

Some people like myself come from active war zones and will be unwilling to avail them for removal and will have a valid claim of stay argued on the human rights grounds.

The legal route to migration is a sham and the authorities are unable to reconcile the nationalist fervor they cultivate to rally support among the population for the political class with the realities of the world and their foreign policy. As a result they keep producing these farcical rules and immigration laws that is choking legal immigration and fuelling the refugee crisis and human trafficking.

Why is Afghanistan unstable?

In his recent Newyorker article Barnett Rubin discusses Why Afghanistan still unstable? and argues that stabilising it was not the goal of U.S. policy: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-have-we-been-doing-in-afghanistan?intcid=mod-latest

I have thought of a good method of approaching this, imagine a couple of scenarios: 

Scenario A. 

1. create professional army, starting off with the remnants of DPA armed forces.
2. Economic development 

3. Integrate Afghanistan into international political and economic system. 

4. Foster national leadership. 

5. collect weapons.

Scenario B

1. Arm and fund militia with history of human rights abuse and atrocities to fight dissent by labelling it the Taliban. it was only this year that the US recognised Taliban as a political group and conceded to a political instead of military solution. 

2. AID, AID and AID which only delivers assistance to very few and leaves out the majority to fend for themselves. Treating the symptom of poverty while ignoring the fragile state which is the real cause.

3. No significant trade treaty and no long term strategic partnership; relationship at its low of all time with neighbours. 

4. Warlords, drug lords and criminals were promoted by giving them a share in ruling the country. 

you guessed it right, it was the second that unfolded. 

sure the lack of Afghan leadership had its devastating impact and of course the dysfunctions of Afghan culture rendered it unable to take advantage of international presence and certainly the lack of Afghan human capital and skills was not conducive to the occasional efforts of US at state building. but if you are studying the role of the US as the most significant player in Afghanistan then you need to look at its policies, conduct and practices. This is escaping people today and it is significant because we need to recognise the responsibility of the US in what is happening in Afghanistan today. we also need to understand the underpinning reasons for the choices organisations and politicians make and the assumptions they had made.  

Cracking down on migrants

David Cameron unveiled new restrictions on non-EU migration coming to the UK last week. It includes restricting work visas to skill shortages and specialists’ jobs, higher visa fees and increased salary threshold for the visa to be granted.

As a tier 1 visa holder I don’t believe these measures address the real problem. The current system restricts civil liberties; under the visa mandate professional, social and family life of migrants are regulated in a utilitarian manner. The system determines what the skilled migrant should be doing, when and how the business should be managed; the Home Office and the Police monitor professional and personal life respectively.

The system envisions only an economic role for skilled migrants, which is incidentally also viewed as criteria for civic participation and a desirable virtue for natives. but despite meeting the definition of community invested citizenry, skilled migrants are not considered part of the society as such limiting their civic rights including political and economic rights. 

Changing the immigration system for new migrants does not address the current situation. People who are invested in the UK need to be integrated into the society. The current system imposes an identity on migrants defining them in terms other than members of the community. The immigration system is creating and feeding stereotypes; in the long term such policies serve xenophobia and racism.

Franchise for the EU referendum

Britain needs a debate about giving none EU residents the right to vote as legislation about EU referendum is discussed. It follows the simple principle of fairness granting all considering UK their home the right to determine its future. I pay taxes, run businesses and engage in recreational and cultural activities in the UK, which are the criterion for civic participation.

I immigrated from Afghanistan as work came by hard in the face of rampant violence under the Tier One visa; we have few rights for instance we have no recourse to benefits or child welfare; while mandated to pay £25,000 in visa related fees, run a business regulated to suit UK economic priorities and create jobs for British citizens.  We live under constant fear of removal from the UK with no other place to go and without right of appeal.

It’s understandable that the government is trying to stop immigrants from abusing the social welfare by placing limits on civic rights. It’s illogical to include political rights in that bundle; political rights are not prone to such abuse as benefits and won’t serve as pull factor for economic migrants.

We need a gradual system of inclusion and integration that help newcomer feel at home based on a system of human rights. The British society should be fair to all who consider themselves a member of the society; we should not allow the wish to curb benefit fraud to fuel xenophobia.