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Migration

The pandemic reveals the need for change in UK migration policy

COVID-19 has changed, and will continue to change, migration policy. As we move towards the end of the Brexit transition period and away from the height of the pandemic, the Government should adapt policy to provide stronger social rights for those migrants who have contributed so much to COVID-19 efforts, or else they risk losing them.

The way politics responds to both the COVID-19 pandemic and migration appears to be two sides of the same coin. Both matters transcend borders and are associated with policy responses which call for the tightening of borders. How will the future landscape for new and existing migrants in the UK change?

In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, this landscape will drastically change. Beyond this, there is potential for the UK government to create an appreciative environment for those migrant workers that the UK and countries across the EU have relied on for the past few months.

Is migration an area of concern for the UK public?

Since the pandemic began, immigration has seemingly slipped from Britain’s policy agenda. Whilst it might feel like an era ago, it has only been a few months since Brexit was at the forefront of British politics, which itself was built on a foundation of hostile migration policies. It is important, therefore, to see how migration has shifted in the list of top issues facing Britain.

According to public surveys by Ipsos MORI in February and April 2020, “immigration/immigrants” was no longer a top 10 issue for the UK public. Just 5% mention this as a key issue, the lowest score for “immigration/immigrants” recorded since December 1999. The change in perception towards this issue is particularly stark when compared to views just before the EU referendum in early 2016, when over half (56%) of those surveyed stated that “immigration/immigrants” is a concern (the highest proportion recorded for this issue).

The beating heart of the country

During the pandemic, the efforts of migrants working in essential industries have been singled out. Notably, Boris Johnson publicly thanked two nurses: “Jenny from New Zealand” and “Luis from Portugal”, who were by his side for 48 hours when he was in a critical condition due to COVID-19. It is even more interesting that he stated an unnecessary piece of information when describing someone’s merits: their respective countries of origin. He described their roles in the NHS and referred to them as being part of the “beating heart of this country” and “the best of this country”.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock also paid tribute to NHS workers “from all over the world” who “came to this country to make a difference”. Indeed, according to a report published by Parliament in July 2019, 13.1% of the NHS workforce are not British, or around 153,000 staff. Losing such a sizable proportion of the NHS workforce would undoubtedly cause the NHS to suffer.

This immigrant-positive rhetoric is a far cry from the Conservative government’s previous announcement of the ‘hostile environment’. Many people from migrant backgrounds may be curious whether and how this will change in the aftermath of the pandemic. Will they still be welcomed in these sectors or is ‘clap for carers’ only temporary? It is questionable whether this rhetoric will manifest into concrete policy changes after the pandemic.

The aftermath of the pandemic

For the UK Government the topic of migration should become a renewed area of focus, but for different reasons to those prior to the pandemic. The pandemic has revealed the very visible contribution of migrant workers, yet many could face the double blow of being classed as ‘low-skilled’ and earning below the minimum salary requirement to work and settle in the UK. These include supermarket workers, caregivers, people working on farms, and those keeping the country moving by driving buses.

Indeed, there was a notorious call for people to fill a shortage of workers on British farms in April 2020. After a call for British workers failed to attract people to the role, the Government was forced to bring in seasonal workers from Eastern Europe using chartered flights. It seems, contrary to previous anti-immigration rhetoric, that there is a deep-rooted need for migrant workers.

Migration policies must change to provide stronger social rights for migrants. They are COVID-19’s unsung heroes, making the ultimate sacrifice to the pandemic and essential services recently. These policies should shift away from attracting solely skilled workers if the UK wants to keep our essential workers after the crisis. This is particularly crucial towards the end of the Brexit transition period when immigration may return to the agenda. If policies stay stagnant or move along their hostile trajectory, the Government risks losing those they have been relying on, something that may be hard for them to admit.

Preeti Pasricha is co-Head of Agora’s Democracy & Governance Programme.

Governments must recognise that aid and investment are about more than just development

COVID-19 will stretch the world further apart. The developed world should proactively invest in the developing world to avoid further humanitarian disasters and seismic migration across the world.

COVID-19 knows no borders, but that does not mean its damage will be distributed equally. Rich countries can sustain debts because their borrowing debts are low and their bonds are seen as ‘safe haven’ assets by investors. Furthermore, countries that control their own currency, such as the UK and US, have a significant advantage as rich investors from developing countries will want to invest in ‘stable’ currencies should COVID-19 significantly shrink their own. This may cause the exchange rate of developing countries to plummet, meaning that debt becomes much harder to hold. This precarious economic situation will be exacerbated in three main ways.

Firstly, many developing countries rely heavily on the service sector of their respective economies, which has been stalled due to lack of consumer demand from social distancing measures. Developed countries tend to have comparatively smaller service sectors and have benefited from bailout schemes which have softened the blow for workers, but this comparative luxury is not afforded to many. Social distancing is not an option for many in the developing world.

Secondly, international humanitarian aid has dropped dramatically as a result of the crisis. NGO’s have not escaped the financial hardship that COVID-19 has caused with more than 40% of British international development NGOs saying they will collapse within six months if they receive no new financial support. Furthermore, the aid that remains cannot reach its intended recipients in many cases because of international travel bans and lack of available transportation. Countries such as Lesotho and South Sudan rely on international aid for infrastructure projects, which are now more dangerous to complete but increasingly necessary to control the spread of coronavirus.

Thirdly, due to the economic shutdown in developed countries, remittances have dropped significantly. Many migrants who moved away from their families in order to provide for them work in the service sector in the UK and other developed countries. With the service sector on hold to prevent the spread of COVID-19, so has the money going back to the developing world. The World Bank is predicting global remittances will drop by some 20% because of the impact of coronavirus, to $445bn in 2020 which Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank, has described this decline as ‘unprecedented in history’.

Lebanon, whose economy is emblematic of all three issues outlined above, defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history last month after its currency collapsed, causing riots in Beirut. This was not because of COVID-19, but this economic and political instability is likely to be replicated in many other countries around the world. This may soon take hold in Nigeria, which has a population of almost 200m, where the Air Force have been deployed to tackle an insurgency in the North East of the country. Violence will exacerbate the spread of the virus, causing further economic and political instability.

The 2015 migrant crisis was handled poorly by European countries, with the sole exception of Angela Merkel’s Germany who, by allowing a million refugees to enter the country, recognised both the scale of the crisis and the political consequences of inaction. Europe can see another crisis looming and should take economic action now to prevent it. Its governments need to recognise not only that the virus will continue to spread if it is not suppressed everywhere, but also that the effects of possible economic and political instability will not be contained in the developing world (as the Arab Spring showed in 2011). There is both a moral obligation and a political necessity to invest in the developing world.

The World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund have taken the first steps in this direction, with a $200bn package to regional development banks, and are encouraging creditors to suspend debt repayments until 2021 in order to provide much needed support to the poorest countries. The next decade will require national governments to rethink the integration between their international development, defence, and immigration policies, by prioritising investment and infrastructure over sanctions and military intervention. For example, investments in green energy startups and sustainable transportation will boost employment and help tackle the climate emergency. International cooperation on stabilising emerging economies through investment will require spending, but the expense will pale in comparison to the bill of inaction. The time to act is now.

Tom Whitting is Co-Coordinator for the Open Think Tank Network.

Avoiding a ‘hard’ Irish border may have created opportunities for human traffickers

A Brexit agreement based on ‘future technological arrangements’ will pose problems for Irish border officials and provide a potential haven for smugglers and traffickers.

Due to the island of Ireland’s unique political and geographical importance, it has always been a hotspot for both smugglers and traffickers. Along the roads connecting Northern Ireland with the Republic, smuggling and trafficking was common from the Irish War of Independence up until the start of the troubles in 1969. With the Good Friday Agreement and the official end of The Troubles, the European Union built numerous border crossings to promote trade cooperation between the nations and closed 40% of police stations near the border.

These changes have come back to the fore through Brexit negotiations, with the UK and EU determined to avoid a ‘hard’ border given the recent conflict. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to address this through technology with his new deal. So far the details are vague, with motion sensors, scanners, infra-red, and surveillance cameras all being talked about that as possible solutions. There already appears to be a number of problems with this proposal, however.

These problems not only speak to a border that may be ineffective but also one that could create opportunities for goods smugglers and human traffickers. The most recent Annual Trafficking in Persons report from the US State Department downgraded Ireland to a tier two country, meaning it is no longer deemed to be meeting the minimum standards required in the fight against human trafficking.

The Withdrawal Agreement looks set to exacerbate this in three ways: failing to account for the complexity of the ‘technology fix’, changes to taxing regulation, and failing to address problems with the UK’s sex industry.

First, maintaining an open international border with technology is a much more difficult feat than is often accounted for. Norway and Sweden – two of the most technologically advanced countries in Europe – have been attempting this very exercise for many years and have yet to reach an answer that does not require physical customs checks at the border itself. These solutions are a multi-decade project.

Given the physical geography and historical context of the Irish border, the interim period between an open border, manned by technology alone, represents a unique opportunity for both goods smugglers and human traffickers. In fact, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) predicts that border staff will be asked to process a further 220 million customs declarations and that authorities “are likely to become overwhelmed” at the border; which could lead to an easier path for both traffickers and smugglers to enter the EU.

Second, the fact that goods would be taxed upon reaching Northern Ireland from Great Britain may provide an enticing market for smugglers. Smugglers are able to undercut the market in two ways, namely on speed and price. Although the tax will be refunded for goods which leave Northern Ireland to enter into the Republic, the initial heightened fees for buyers within Northern Ireland will affect trade. This, combined with the likely logistical problems at the interim border, may lead traders to use to alternative avenues to move their goods in and out of the EU. Illegal markets thrive in times of economic uncertainty; the incentives will be there for business, especially those handling perishable goods, to bypass regulation to ensure their food gets in on time.

Third, the current situation has been exacerbated by the growth of the UK sex industry, which has benefitted in recent years as a result of both job insecurity and the failure of universal credit to provide families with safety and security. This growth has attracted sex traffickers from around the EU to move people into Britain as the UK industry becomes increasingly lucrative. This growth is in line with research conducted by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime published earlier this year which found that the number of reported sex trafficked victims in Northern Ireland had risen from 98 in 2014 to 179 in 2016. Johnson’s failure to address this in his deal his likely to make matters worse.

The logistical issues cannot be solved before the 31 October and the transition period is set to be equally turbulent on the border. The technological solutions are not in place, and there is no evidence from other parts of the world to suggest that it is even possible to implement such checks. If the Government cannot find these solutions soon, Johnson’s deal may have major economic and humanitarian knock-on effects for decades to come.

Tom Whitting works as a researcher for the PIOT Foundation for the Human Rights of Migrant Workers.

Modern slavery and the UK immigration system

The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are 40 million men, women and children globally who are victim to modern slavery on any given day. Today, the issue of modern slavery is commanding increasing levels of international attention, with the UK government positioning itself as a ‘global leader’ in the fight for its eradication. However, while the UK government characterises modern slavery as caused by exploitative criminal groups, the issue ultimately has deeper structural roots.

Britain’s prioritisation of modern slavery

‘Modern slavery’ is a fairly new term within British political discourse. Having evolved from the older term of ‘human trafficking’, it was first given substance by the 2014 Modern Slavery Strategy and is defined as encompassing “slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking”. The Home Office estimates that there are between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK, and government expenditure on this issue has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2017/18 an estimated £39 million was spent, and this figure is projected to rise to a high of £61 million in 2018/19.

The UK government characterises modern slavery through the lens of organised crime, and places the blame firmly upon the organised criminal networks that exploit vulnerable victims for their own financial gain. The acts of these criminal networks are defined in the Government’s 2014 report with the moralistic language of manipulation and abuse: “traffickers and slave drivers coerce, deceive and force individuals against their will into a life of abuse, servitude and inhumane treatment”. This conceptualisation of the issue – and the powerful language used to describe it – directs the state into a particular form of response, one which mobilises the weight of the criminal justice system and the British enforcement apparatus, including the National Crime Agency (NCA), the police and the Home Office. A key piece of legislation in this battle was the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, which Prime Minister Theresa May claimed created “tough new penalties to put slave masters behind bars where they belong”.

Addressing structural drivers

Whilst understandable, this characterisation is problematic as it diverts attention from a more pressing reality, namely that the exploitation that defines modern slavery is itself embedded into the structure of the UK’s restrictive immigration regime. At its core, modern slavery is defined by exploitation, whether that be physical or psychological, cultural or social. A prerequisite of exploitation is an imbalance of power, and the UK immigration system, including the ‘hostile environment’ strategy pursued by the Home Office, contributes to the emergence of these imbalances.

The UK immigration system is highly restrictive for low-skilled labour, and as such it is difficult for these individuals to obtain legitimate working visas. Low-skilled migrants are hence pushed underground into illegal employment, working in restaurants, on building sites and as cleaners. Their status puts these workers in a precarious position as they are not covered by the legal employment guarantees that ensure a base level of worker protection. In the absence of legal protection, power imbalances can easily transform a case of illegal working into one of modern slavery, when, for example, an employer forces an individual to work with little or no pay or to work when sick, or engages in sustained physical or verbal abuse.

Beyond this, there is a further coercive mechanism that prolongs exploitation, namely that the result of escape from an abusive situation can often lead to removal from the country. The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the body within the Home Office responsible for handling cases of modern slavery. Once a referral is made to this body, an investigation is initiated and a positive or negative decision is reached on whether an individual is a ‘confirmed victim’. Crucially, neither decision entails a permission to stay in the UK, with confirmed victims only being offered a 45 day ‘move-on’ period in which, in the absence of other leave entitlements, they must depart the country. Where the alternative to exploitation is removal from the UK, this creates a structural disincentive for victims of modern slavery to escape their abusive situations.

Reframing the causes

The Government’s discourse characterises modern slavery as an issue of organised crime, the blame for which rests with the criminals who exploit others for their own financial gain. This discourse hides a deeper reality, that the UK’s restrictive immigration regime and the Home Office’s policies create the conditions through which exploitation – and, ultimately, modern slavery – proliferate. It is therefore difficult to resist the conclusion that the responsibility for modern slavery cannot be solely attributed to criminals and the organised crime groups they populate; the Government itself and the policies it enacts also share in moral culpability.

Oliver Goodman is a graduate student in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford.

The privatisation of immigration detention in the UK

The privatisation of immigration detention in the UK symbolises a policy shift from restricting movement due to nationalist concerns to extracting financial value from migrants. Today, seven of the nine Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) in the UK are outsourced to private companies. Mitie, G4S, Serco and GEO receive Government contracts worth £243 million a year. The growing political influence of the immigration ‘security’ lobby has been accompanied by allegations of severe abuse of vulnerable detainees, cost-cutting measures and a nebulous lack of accountability.

Within the framework of the Private Finance Initiative, private companies running immigration detention centres in the UK claim that they are better equipped to deliver specialised services efficiently than the state. There has, however, been no concrete proof that privatisation is better value for money. In contrast, the privatisation of immigration detention means big business. From 2010 to 2014, outsourced contracts between the National Offender Management Service and G4S and Sercor accounted for more than 70% of NOMS’ 2.5 billion budget. Mitie, after taking over Harmondsworth and Colnbrook IRCs near Heathrow Airport in 2014, experienced an increase in annual profits from £333,000 to £2 million as it secured a Home Office (HO) contract worth £180 million over an 8-year period. Although some contracts might not be as profitable, they still provide a steady, state-backed, low-risk income. Private contractors receive on average £92 per detainee daily (£34,000 per detainee annually).

Clearly, the growing hostility of the British immigration system is influenced by the financial interests of private sector companies. Private contractors, moreover, employ 1.2 million people in austerity Britain, which only increases the political capital of the migration ‘security’ lobby. The entanglement of private companies and the public sector have made the big security firms ‘too big to fail’ as outsourcing reinforces the Government’s dependence on private corporations. This trend is increasingly worrying because the corporate endeavour to increase profit margins is accompanied by allegations of extreme violence at detention sites, cost-cutting measures, hardening penal laws and a lack of accountability.

Due to private sector interests, the bottom line of a company now is what counts in immigration detention. The strict management of detention facilities is ensured by recruiting senior staff who worked in prisons or the military before joining the ranks of private contractors like G4S, the world’s biggest security company whose portfolio includes security services in Guantánamo. To reduce running costs in labour-intensive IRCs, the number of junior staff is decreased. Serious staffing issues have been reported at Colnbrook IRC since Mitie took over a contract whose value was reduced by 30% while demanding the same service. Unsurprisingly, Mitie has been accused of aggressive cost-cutting practices.

The HO, nevertheless, continues to shed responsibility and dismiss reports of abuse. In 2008, a dossier of 300 alleged assaults at IRCs was collected by an NGO coalition but did not provoke any response from the HO. When Jimmy Mubenga was killed during his forced removal from the UK in 2010, the G4S guards were acquitted of manslaughter despite their racist messaging. Mitie’s CEO justified a large fire in Campsfield IRC in 2013 by claiming the HO had not instructed the contractor to install water sprinklers. The Global Detention Project details numerous cases of sexual assault and harassment at Yarl’s Wood IRC, which received limited attention when two Serco staff members were suspended in 2015. These reports have critics wondering whether the Government deliberately benefits from blurred lines of accountability to shed responsibility.

Despite high-profile failures of private companies, a serious investigation of privatised immigration detention seems impossible. Private companies delivering public services are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and their Government contracts are protected from public scrutiny by ‘commercial confidentiality’. CorporateWatch questioned the integrity of the ‘self-audit’ system between private firms and the HO in 2014. Since 2013, G4S and Serco have been under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging the Government on electronic monitoring contracts. After paying £109m and announcing a ‘corporate renewal plan’, G4S was however awarded further contracts. The Government also reached a £70.5m settlement with Serco, which has additionally been investigated by the Financial Reporting Council since 2016. Recently, Bail for Immigration Detainees initiated a judicial review to officially brand G4S a “High Risk” supplier to hold the global outsourcing company accountable.

In conclusion, treating immigration detention as a profitable business is clearly dangerous for detainees and undermines accountability. Despite severe failures of private companies, as well as numerous judicial reviews, the lack of accessible information and accountability complicate a genuine investigation of outsourced immigration detention. To improve conditions in the short term, G4S, Serco, mitie and GEO must submit to systematic, public oversight but in the long run the privatisation of immigration detention in the UK must end to enable the fundamental reform of a failing system.

Josefine Brons studies Politics and International Relations at SOAS University of London.

Points of contention in the UK’s detention policy

The UK has the largest immigration detention system in Europe, and the numbers of persons detained in British immigration removal centres (IRCs) continues to increase. This year, events such as the hunger strike of detainees in Yarls Wood IRC in late February have captured public attention because they revealed some of the major points of contention regarding this regime today. More than a simple set of issues, these points uncover a rationale that needs to be reconsidered.

Immigration detention is a government practice where asylum seekers or other migrants are detained on grounds of needing to establish their identities, or to facilitate their claims resolution or their removal. It is administrative procedure rather than a criminal one. Border enforcement officials may detain migrants upon arrival; when being presented to an immigration officer; after an arrest or a prison sentence; and when a decision to remove the migrant has been made. However, there is a lack of information on the Home Office’s discretionary decisions on when and who to arrest and detain.

There has been a tenfold increase in the number of detainees between 1993 and 2012, and there have been approximately 3,000 migrants detained at any given time between 2009 and 2017. The 30,000 people who spend varying lengths of time in detention each year tend to be from former British colonies (South Asian countries and Sub-Saharan African countries by mid-2018). However, accurate data on detained persons is hardly available due to the complicated trajectories which could have led to a person being detained.

The most publicly criticised issue about immigration detention is the lack of a time limit. The UK has refused to institute a statutory time limit to detention and is thus the only state in the European Union without a legal detention time-limit. In 2016, around 81% of detainees were kept for two months or less. However, around 2% were in detention for 6 to 12 months, with another 1% kept for longer than a year.

Allowing for an open-ended detention period has no direct relationship with the ‘legitimate aims’ of immigration detention, which is to facilitate the processing of unclear immigration statuses or impending removal. Contrarily, this allows the government to use immigration detention for administrative convenience, and also as a means to punish and scare migrants. It causes major psychological distress; prolonged detention takes a serious emotional toll on detainees.

Yarls Wood has made the news on numerous occasions due to accusations of mistreatment and even abuse of women detainees. Women represent around 10 percent of the total population in detention and are concentrated in Yarl’s Wood. As reported by the media and a number of charities, an increasing number of women were detained despite evidence that they were victims of torture, rape and/or human trafficking. Many of these detained women were victims of gender-based violence had sought asylum on those grounds, but Home Office had violated rules by placing them in detention. Diane Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti were also disturbed by detainees’ lack of access to legal advice. Indeed, among detainees held in IRCs, just one in four were able to secure a legal aid solicitor in 2017.

The classification of detention as an administrative rather than a punitive measure has far-reaching consequences. Contrary to criminal law cases, there is no automatic judicial review of detention, which means that the Home Office, whose staff are known to be poorly trained and overworked, rather than judges, have the power to detain people. Therefore, the vast majority of detainees do not receive justice as they are entitled to and remain in uncertainty about their length of detention.

Detention is also extremely expensive. It cost the government £523.5 million between April 2013 and March 2017, with an additional £16.2 million spent on damages awarded to immigrants who were detained unlawfully in the same period. There has been much support for setting a 28-day limit to detention.

Detention has also been used almost as a prison “overflow” space. Among those detained for longer periods of time, many had some kind of criminal record and their detention periods end up being even longer than their prison sentence. This present situation is that of double punishment. In the second half of 2017, 1,671 (12%) entered through prisons, according to Home Office statistics.

In conclusion, human issues surrounding detention, as well as the financial costs have proved to be problematic, and the effectiveness of detention as a policy measure to control and patrol migration remains controversial. While major flaws are apparent, detention is far from a simple, one-root problem. It ties in to the UK’s hostile attitude towards migrants. In order to deal with the huge financial and human costs of detention, there is a need to revisit the state’s whole immigration regime, and the rationale behind it.

Elisabeth Tsouloukidse is an undergraduate student at Oxford University. Nina Khamsy is the head of Agora migration programme. Additional contributor: Jennifer Ngo holds a masters degree from SOAS University.