3 days ago
Our immigration rules are collapsing under legal activism and political cowardice
Is it too much to ask for 24 hours without a fresh immigration scandal? After the Afghan refugee leak, you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd hit peak dysfunction. Yet, like a bad horror movie franchise that doesn't know when to end, it has already lurched back with something even more grotesque.
As if the Government deliberately keeping us in the dark about the scheme weren't enough – and that the refugees weren't vetted – it has been revealed that once the scheme was launched, ministers almost immediately lost control of who would arrive.
Initially, the Defence Secretary wanted to restrict the criteria for 'family' to spouses and children; yet the UK Courts, predictably extending the European Convention on Human Rights so thin the leather could scare hold, repeatedly expanded the eligibility criteria.
And then High Court judge Mrs Justice Yip has provided a ruling that, if the principle is extended to asylum claimants outside the scheme, could see a much larger number of people arrive to Britain every year than previously expected.
In a case brought against the Foreign Office by an Afghan national already residing in the UK, she ruled that family members did not need to have a blood or legal relationship to the applicant, stating that; 'the word 'family' may mean different things to different people and in different contexts. There may be cultural considerations … there is no requirement for a blood or legal connection.'
If 'family' means different things to different people, then some took it as a free-for-all; the average arrival brought eight relatives with them under the scheme, with one accompanied by a staggering 22 family members.
Mrs Yip is just the latest in a line of judges who've developed a nasty habit of massively expanding immigration criteria through the courts against the express limitations placed by Ministers.
Earlier this year Judge Hugo Norton-Taylor allowed a Palestinian family of six to settle in the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme – despite them not qualifying – by invoking their Article 8 right to family life, overriding both the scheme's limits and Parliament's clear intent.
It is increasingly questionable whether we can actually call Britain's immigration system a system at all. The system implies a sense of control, or order; what is actually happening is that Britain's immigration rules are collapsing under a trifecta of legal activism, bureaucratic complicity and political cowardice.
Whether or not you agree or not with the need for it, the Afghan scheme was always going to be targeted. But even an attempt to design a limited scheme is seen as nothing more than another opportunity to challenge the right of politicians to set limits in the first place, and create an unbounded migration route; thus migrants have a right to a 'family life' enshrined in law, but the word 'family' no longer has a fixed meaning.
When one man can bring twenty-two others on the basis of a personal definition, what we have is not a loophole but an invitation.
