As long term readers know, I often assist with refugee and immigration cases, including representing at immigration courts, and we have occasionally over the years housed refugee families in our home for a while.
I have nowadays to add for the avoidance of trolling, no I do not get paid for any of this, by anyone.
Yesterday I was introduced to a case unlike any other I have seen.
A student arrived in the UK, with a new, valid and genuine student multiple visa in his passport. His course fees are paid and he had money to support himself.
On first arrival at the UK airport immigration desk he was told his visa was cancelled. There was no interview and no questions were asked, he was just told the computer said it had been cancelled.
He was taken aside to a holding cell, and there told they would not say why his student visa was cancelled, as it was confidential.
He was not given any paperwork. The visa was not physically cancelled in his passport – it still has not been. That is itself very strange, if it had been cancelled it should have been stamped as such at the airport.
If the student visa had been refused rather than granted, he would by law have been required to be issued with a “decision letter” giving the grounds for refusal. That letter would also by law explain his rights of appeal.
Now a visa does not give an automatic right of entry to the UK. The immigration service at the border have the right to interview the entrant and refuse entry if they are not satisfied. This might most frequently be because the person has no evidence of funds to support themselves.
It is however very unusual indeed for a person with a valid visa to be turned back.
If it happens, it should be following interview and based on evidence and would still require a letter to be issued.
None of that happened. The border staff did not claim they were making the decision, it had been made mysteriously elsewhere, explicitly with no explanation, and existed within their computer.
The student was told they would simply be deported immediately back. They therefore entered a claim of political asylum – something they had no intention whatsoever of doing when they boarded the plane with their student visa. Their grounds included that they had borrowed the money for their course fees, travel and maintenance, from people who would now kill them if they returned with no means to repay.
I find this case utterly baffling. It seems to have been handled in a manner designed to circumvent all the rights of the student and all the legal requirement for a paper trail.
If the visa had been cancelled before travel, why was the student not informed of the cancellation in their home town and a new decision letter issued, and why was the airline not informed at pre-clearance?
We now have the situation that the student is stuck here in asylum seeker limbo, not allowed to attend the course they have paid for and not allowed to work. How does this help anybody?
I have written before of the privatisation and deprofessionalisation of UK Immigration Services. What we seem to have here is the empowerment of entirely arbitrary racism. There seems a complete contempt by the “UK Border Force” for the laws they are supposed to be enforcing.
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How on earth do you know the reason for his refusal of entry was racist ? Wouldn’t you have to know the race of the person who made the decision ?
It is in pursuit of the general “hostile environment” policy set by the government, which is racist in both intent and application.
This probably has nothing to do with racism. It’s just part of the trend that the State is no longer subject to the rule of law.
It used to be that, before destroying somebody’s life, the State had to make a case to a court of law. Separation of powers and all that (Parliament makes laws, an independent judiciary applies them).
Of course it was always a bit of a sham; the “independent” judge can often be selected or persuaded to do what the State wants (see Julian Assange proceedings). But lately, the State doesn’t even take the trouble to pretend that the rule of law applies in this country. Check out the Graham Phillips case, for example. Now, you may think that Graham Phillips is a horrible person so it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. Even if there were proof that Graham Phillips committed several serious crimes, there’s a procedure to follow: charge him, hold a trial, allow him to challenge the evidence, answer his accusers, and present his case. Then convict him, punish him, jail him, take his assets, whatever. But by a legal fiction – “sanctions” – which mean his bank account is frozen so that he can’t pay his mortgage (his house therefore gets seized), nobody can pay money to him (so how does he support himself?), etc, a much more severe punishment can be inflicted on him without any of the inconvenience of a trial.
I don’t think anyone can seriously believe that centralised banks (plus all the middlemen) are an essential and innate feature of democracy.
Which is why Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Umbrel etc. are so important.
Why those, Fanboy? What’s wrong with real commodity money? Bitcoin is a worthless computer simulation of it. Granted, there’s an extraordinary popular delusion around it that would interest a latter-day Charles Mackay, but ultimately it’s a scam.
Disclaimer: IANAE and this is absolutely not financial advice – do your own research and don’t rely in any way on anything I’ve written for financial decisions.
Bitcoin is fiat in the same way that any other currency is fiat, except that it is derived from a mathematical proof – that anyone can read – for units of computing power used to solve increasingly difficult mathematical problems. I.e. it’s not arbitrary and can be universally agreed upon.
Bitcoin isn’t a security (as defined by the SEC) since it is decentralised and doesn’t have any single person or board of directors in control. Lightning Network and the ability to self-host your own nodes take out the middle men that you find between, for example, credit card service providers and reduce the ability of gatekeepers to deny you access to your own funds (see PayPal, Blackrock etc.)
It also enables you to convert to any other global currency whilst cutting out the middle men charges you would incur with other, traditional fiat currencies.
Nota bene: sh*tcoins (other cryptocurrencies), especially those premined by a board of directors with majority control of that coin network, are absolutely scams and the SEC has effectively ruled that they are securities.
Fiat money is where a central authority assigns value to a currency that is otherwise intrinsically worthless; commodity money is not that – its value is intrinsic to the currency (eg gold). The value of any commodity is determined by the market for that commodity not a central authority. To say “any other currency is fiat” is to equivocate about how value is assigned.
So, while you rightly say Bitcoin is decentralised, I cannot agree with you that it is fiat. It is simply a computer simulation of commodity money. Its developers know this, so they used terms like “mining” for bitcoin by analogy to mining for gold.
But, being a computer simulation, not a real commodity, its “commodity” has zero intrinsic value. That’s not to say it doesn’t have value, just no intrinsic value. This is fatal for commodity money, but in the meantime there is money to be made just as people made money from tulip bulbs and South Sea shares. Such “greater fool” scams can be surprisingly long-lived.
I had a Filipina Icelandic girlfriend who has Icelandic citizenship. Whenever her flight from Iceland disembarked, she was always the last to come through into the international arrivals area at Glasgow Airport. Except for one occasion when she came through with the rest of the passengers.
“How did you get through so quickly this time?” I asked. With a look of sheer delight she said: “There were other brown people on the flight this time, so they picked on them, instead of me”.
For the furiously hard of thinking / racists:
It’s rather curious that you have chosen to fill up the comments section on a blog famously pro-Scottish Independence (i.e. one which seeks escape from beneath the jackboot of English exceptionalism and exploitation, as many former colonies have already sought) with comments in support of a demonstrably racist State. By the way, denying that this could possibly have had anything to do with racism is complicit in maintaining such racism.
It seems that you have deliberately ignored what Mr. Murray has spelled out to you in very clear terms (validity of visa etc.). And even when you acknowledge that, you try to imply that deliberate failure to apply any steps of the obligatory legal process might be ok depending upon which land mass the victim was born. That in itself is racist.
But so many of you seem to not know what racism is.
And those of you saying “oh so Mr. Murray is accusing every single employee of UK Border Force of being racist” no doubt believe that when an official inquiry determines the MET to be “institutionally racist” that that inquiry is doing the same for every employee of the MET?
Mr. Murray has reported the essential facts as far as he knows them regarding this lamentable episode and the central point is about (a) UK Border Force employee(s) deliberately choosing to not abide by their legal obligations towards the victim.
So a reasonable person would ask “why did the UK Border Force employee(s) not fulfil their legal responsibilities towards the victim”, not “oh what other land mass was the victim born on”.
Clearly, as with every other branch of State, the Tories are “running” the UK Border Force like the vulture capitalists they are. So, obviously, fewer experienced and motivated staff are going to have a negative impact. But if you know that you don’t face any realistic prospect of advancement, pay rise etc. then you don’t care that at your monthly review your processing times are longer than senior management wants because you and senior management both know that your colleagues’ are as well so to fire you for it would be grounds for discrimination / constructive dismissal.
Ergo, if you as the employee decide to not even begin the basic steps of carrying out your legal responsibilities (even if you know that it’s unlikely they will all be met within a timeframe of a few hours / days because your colleagues are also under such pressure) then you should expect to be punished for doing so. I.e. you shouldn’t do so in the first place because fear of such a punishment should be sufficient disincentive.
Which means that it is extremely likely that the behaviour by UK Border Force employee(s) evidenced here has either been carried out under orders from senior management, or that senior management has encouraged such a culture that the employee(s) know that it’s highly unlikely they would be punished for such behaviour.
What, therefore, would this culture be? The kindest one could be about it is that “we’re too stressed, understaffed and overworked that we don’t value spending time carrying out our legal obligations to this victim”.
Why don’t they feel that the victim is worth their time to the extent that they will act unlawfully? You can be fairly sure that thought wouldn’t have begun to enter their head if the victim’s passport said they were born in Surrey, with an address in a middle / upper class side of town, white skin and the surname “Johnson”.
If you know that at work – a role with potentially vital implications for national security – you could break the law and get away with it, either because your superiors actively encouraged you to do so or because they simply don’t care, what is it about this victim that would make you so flagrantly violate your obligations to them in a way you wouldn’t ever think about doing to a compatriot? Couldn’t possibly be the fact that the victim isn’t a compatriot, could it?
So, you’re a racist who doesn’t give two hoots that (a) UK Border Force employee(s) didn’t carry out their legal obligations to a victim whose accident of birth occurred on another land mass.
But don’t you worry about what other illegal activities UK Border Force might permit?
In a corporate structure, culture is usually set by those at the top. The top of UK Border Force is the Home Office and the top of the Home Office is infamously racist.
If the law requires a visa refusal to be accompanied by a letter stating grounds and how to appeal, then permitting black-box revocation at the point of entry without that information would seem to be a loophole that should be closed. However, when Craig writes, “If it happens, it should be following interview and based on evidence and would still require a letter to be issued.”, that implies the right to such information does exist, in which case I hope he can help the would-be scholar get the benefit of any procedures to which he/they is entitled.
This seems to be the point Craig is primarily making in the comments, but it looks a little disingenuous under “Lunatic Racists” in the headline – unsubstantiated by any specifics in the post – which naturally got commenters responding to broader issues.
As for the asylum claim, from the UK authorities’ perspective, I don’t see a relevant nexus between the alleged debt to scary people and the ostensible study program. Unless having gotten entangled with local crooks, and genuinely fearing harm therefrom – for whatever reason – is grounds for asylum (is it?), the claim seems problematic.
Craig,
It’s a well told and shocking story – and its ‘a story of our times’ – a term you used in a prior article (Donzinger)
2 points to make
there is some difference of opinion in this exchange of what constitutes racism
It’s the same thing as any ‘ism’
it is negative treatment of human(s) motivated by a prejudice against some factor innate to the human(s) have that they CANNOT CHANGE
Excuse the Bold, but its important to be clear on what IS and what is something else – but Boulangerie preferences is not a good basis for accusations of an -ism’
Point 2
In my work I come across frequent examples of people who have a professional obligation to carry out a task but do not want to
They will have to perform the task unless they can find a reason not to
So I came up with an algorithm for : Find A Reason Not To
F.A.R.N.T.
Craig, do His Majesty’s Immigration Officers “FARNT” ?
Keep well clear of those who FARNT
Meanwhile millions with no right to be here are sucking on the public teat.
Did you immaculately conceive and then give birth to the land that human beings arbitrarily and only relatively recently decided to name the United Kingdom?
Aden;
Tories, you mean?
Unlike many legal immigrants, the million or so people with no right to be in the UK are barely costing the public purse a penny, Aden. They’re doing things like working ten hours a day in ‘dark kitchens’ for five or six quid an hour (if they’re lucky), sleeping in ‘sheds-with-beds’ (if they’re lucky), and generally keeping a low profile. If all of them suddenly decided to go back to their countries of origin, people in London (and a few other big cities) would literally begin to starve.
It’s amazing how the furiously hard of thinking don’t realise things like this.
They’ve been so thoroughly gaslit that their logic circuits have been suffocated.
So did anyone watch the excellent lecture on the exponential function? It really does underline the insanity of everything having to grow all the time. It is totally unsustainable. ‘Oh no! GDP is not growing’… so what, let it decrease, along with the population as well, and our consumption of natural resources… Why is this a bad thing? I am not having a go at CM here, everyone does it, it is just assumed we must always ‘grow’… it is crazy really.
As to immigration I was not really commenting on it as I am an immigrant myself in another country. Which is why I was a little annoyed to have words put in mouth on the subject (immigrants are dodgy) and straight off the bat as well. For the record I don’t believe the decision to deny entry was motivated by racism nor lunacy and nor do I believe the loanshark / murder story. I am not sure how stating either of those things amounts to thinking ‘immigrants are dodgy’. I was a bit taken aback (and still am) by that reply. I did leave it alone at that point but subsequent comments pissed me off and in turn I was a bit abrupt in a comment that was deleted. For that I apologize, it was a heat of the moment comment.
Generally I have a rule never to engage in any subject relating to immigration. IMHO it is impossible now and has been for many years as the comments here amply demonstrate. I really did not expect to get sucked into this nonsense yesterday.
I also don’t think CM should shut the blog down. That was in response to another deleted comment. I may not always agree with his writings but I value them all the same.
Peace to all.
Believing that we necessarily need to reduce the population is a fallacy – have a read of David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet” and George Monbiot’s “Regenesis”.
Also, given the behaviour of the richest 1%, how likely do people really believe it would be that, after a mass culling (which, “naturally”, wouldn’t affect the richest) those richest wouldn’t continue their current behaviour?
‘ The student was told they would simply be deported immediately back. They therefore entered a claim of political asylum – something they had no intention whatsoever of doing when they boarded the plane with their student visa. Their grounds included that they had borrowed the money for their course fees, travel and maintenance, from people who would now kill them if they returned with no means to repay.’
It seems pretty obvious that the student claimed asylum to avoid immediate deportation.
From the moment that the claim is made, no matter what the grounds are, or how dubious they may look, the applicant is entitled to remain in the UK while the claim is investigated, which currently takes several months and sometimes well over a year. In the meantime, the applicant won’t be detained, though the Home Office will want to make sure that they will be available to co-operate with the investigation. If they have somewhere to stay and some means of supporting themselves, or someone to provide that, they’re free to go and get on with it. If not, the Home Office will find accommodation for them and take them to it, and provide them with a basic subsistence allowance until the claim is decided.
Of course, this student wouldn’t need any of that – but they don’t want asylum, they just want to avoid being put on the plane for the few hours it will take for any competent lawyer to get it sorted out. Saying that, I’m assuming they’re not a malevolent criminal or foreign agent, because if they were, they’d presumably never have reached the immigration desk, though I’ll accept Craig’s expert view as to whether I’m being melodramatically paranoid about that ..
“Saying that, I’m assuming they’re not a malevolent criminal or foreign agent, because if they were, they’d…”
…probably have paid XMn Roubles to get a golden visa, or be currently working in the Cabinet Office / have worked as a former PM and be currently running the lecture circuit laundromat?
since its the latest example re: refugees in Germany –
RU deserter fled to Berlin a year ago after being called up to the RU Army.
Berlin regional administration now intends to deport him. The refugee is in the hiding with the local church since.
We´ll see how this ends.
(paywalled)
“A young Russian refuses to kill Ukrainians – but Berlin wants to deport him
The 26-year-old Nikita R. has fled to Germany and is being hidden by the
church in Neuenhagen. The church is now being pressured by Berlin’s Interior Administration.”
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/nikita-r-will-keine-ukrainer-toeten-doch-berlin-will-ihn-abschieben-li.383983