Beyond some questionable political messaging, it is difficult to understand the government’s rationale for making it virtually impossible for perfectly genuine refugees to gain British citizenship.
Not slower and more difficult, as the Conservatives recently proposed – but not possible in most circumstances, or at least unless officials and ministers are prepared to ignore the guidance.
It is bad policy, on legal and moral grounds – and it is not in the national interest of making the United Kingdom a truly united kingdom.
One problem is the notion that migrants who arrive in the UK can be – in that ugly and specific term – “illegals”. It has been ruled – with no parliamentary vote – that they should never be allowed to call the country they have made their home “home”.
Yet there is no such thing as an “illegal migrant”, even if parliament has passed a law to try to say so. For as long as the UK remains a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), backed in domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, there is an unrestricted right to claim asylum – irrespective of how anyone arrived.
They do not have any automatic right to be given asylum, as is sometimes imagined – and they may be deported – but the right to seek asylum is unconditional.
It does not matter, in other words, that their “dangerous journey includes, but is not limited to, travelling by small boat or concealed in a vehicle or other conveyance”, in the words of the new guidance. The UK has freely placed itself under the treaty obligations of the ECHR. A circular issued by Yvette Cooper does not abrogate those duties.
A moment’s consideration of what goes through the mind of a refugee – or of a bogus refugee who is an economic migrant – crossing the channel in a small boat also makes a mockery of the new rules.
Someone desperately fleeing violence or just looking to earn some money in the UK will not have the distant prospect of gaining British citizenship and voting in a general election foremost in their minds. Managing to stay safe in the UK and being granted the ability to work is sufficient motivation. The blue British passport, as such, is not a great incentive to try to enter the country; and making it impossible to ever obtain the document is not much of a deterrent if there’s a realistic possibility of being granted indefinite leave to remain. Other forms of ID are available.
The paradox – and a morally indefensible one – arrives much later. When an immigrant has settled, made a living, put down roots in a community, and started a family – with their children being UK citizens by birthright – and many years of blameless residence is disqualified from that final act of integration by an arbitrary rule, how should we seek to justify their expulsion?
If, as politicians such as Kemi Badenoch claim, people should regard Britain as their home and not merely a hotel or “dormitory”, then they should surely be encouraged to seek British citizenship. Otherwise, they would be permanently “second class” and humiliated; effectively told they do not really belong in the UK. It is utterly counterproductive and offends the British sense of fair play.
A slightly more genuine issue is raised by the recent ruling by a judge that a Palestinian who came to the UK in 2007 – and is now a British citizen – could use the Ukrainian settlement scheme in order to claim asylum for six members of his family in Gaza. Perhaps citizenship makes it more likely that someone can bring family members to the UK, but that “loophole”, as the prime minister calls it, can be addressed without ending the entire process. It is entirely egregious to prevent someone who genuinely wants to be British, has already made a contribution to society, and is otherwise eligible, from taking that last final step and swearing allegiance in a town hall to “be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law”.
What Ms Badenoch scornfully derides as “the conveyor belt to citizenship” – as if it were just used by criminals for nefarious purposes – is, in fact, a rather wonderful and inspirational thing.
There are so many outstanding citizens and their descendants who arrived in the UK as refugees – or, for that matter, economic migrants – by means of a visa or more irregular methods that to question the eventual and conditional right to citizenship is absurd.
Multicultural Britain has been built by diversity over many centuries – and all have earned their right to be granted the privilege of British citizenship. That prize is a powerful incentive to make Britain one’s home and to honour its values – including tolerance. It is ironic, to put it mildly, that Ms Cooper and her Tory counterparts seem so determined to make citizenship status a way to divide us.
