An Immigration Fraud

Immigration is a curious issue in British politics. Twenty and more years ago it was a core issue about which senior politicians would debate vigorously on national television and gain headlines in newspapers. Today there is the occasional soundbite but nothing more than that. All parties say they will be strict on abuses of the system but put forward nothing other than generalisations about how they will do it. When the party in power changes, nothing of any real substance ever seems to change.

In one important respect there is nothing any UK government can do because citizens of member States of the European Union have an almost unfettered right to come to this country. In another important respect there is nothing they should do because genuine refugees from the grimmer areas of human habitation must always be given a safe haven.

The point of today's waffle is something called the Ankara Agreement (for a summary of the parts that matter for present purposes, see here). One provision of the agreement allows Turks to apply for permission to enter and work in the UK if they intend to establish a business and show they have the financial means to do so. It is important to understand that an applicant who meets the criteria will be given the right to come and work here, there is no residual discretion to refuse an application that ticks all the boxes. What is required of an applicant is the intention to set-up a business and the money necessary to do so. The whole thing is about allowing in entrepreneurs, joining an existing business or working for a new business set-up by someone else is outside the Agreement. One might think very few people would qualify.

A whole industry has grown up around this aspect of the Ankara Agreement. There are firms of so-called immigration consultants who formulate applications for anyone who will pay them a fee.

These firms have template business plans they print-out with little or no amendment for scores of applicants. It goes without saying that the applicants are almost exclusively young men. One business plan that has been doing the rounds is the establishment of a bicycle taxi service in the West End of London. This was devised by one of the consultancy firms and has formed the basis of applications for permission to stay in the UK by dozens of men who came initially on student visas. It should be no surprise to anyone with a smidgen of common sense that most of them were not genuine students at all, they were the nephews (or sons of friends) of Turkish people already settled here and came to be part of their established businesses. They signed on as students at a language college of greater or lesser repute and worked in the uncle's (or father's friend's) restaurant or shop and then wanted to find a way to stay here when the period of their student visa was due to expire. From the beginning they came here to work and establish a life rather than to study, the student visa was simply a means to an end.

The Ankara Agreement is also treated as a means to an end. Recently I met a friend of a friend who used the bogus bicycle taxi business plan and was refused permission to stay because the judge saw through the scam. The applicant himself was disappointed but not surprised, he knew his intention was to continue working in his uncle's restaurant in the midlands and that he would rather smear his scrotum with toothpaste than operate a bicycle taxi. He knew the application was a scam, took his chance and lost.

I know others who have been given leave to live and work here under the Ankara Agreement despite having no intention at all to set-up their own business. Some just want to live a western life rather than a repressive Islamic life, others simply want to avoid national service in the Turkish army, most want both.

When discussing this topic with local Turks it is obvious that there is no desire to harm the UK behind the fraudulent applications that are made. There is no intention to scrounge benefits or to engage in criminal activity, the intention is simply to come here, work hard and make a life in the UK rather than in Turkey. A few days ago the excellent Mr Raedwald wrote about the Turks (here), his piece encouraged me to write on the subject because his positive view of Turks is the same as mine.

In the normal run of things I would be inclined to denounce systematic fraud of the type behind the hundreds of bogus applications made under the Ankara Agreement each year. I find it hard to denounce people who come here under student visas to see whether life here will suit them and, when they decide it will, want to find a way to remain so that they can earn an honest living. Of course there is a conflict between the honest lives they want to lead and the dishonest means they use to secure a right to remain here. It could be said that they do not want to lead honest lives at all because the lies told in their applications show them to be seriously dishonest. I understand that argument entirely and part of me agrees with it, the other part of me asks why people who want to work for a living should not be allowed to do so. Although their applications are fundamentally fraudulent they are not intended to harm anyone and, as far as I can tell, they do not harm anyone.

Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of the Ankara Agreement. Since then I have been talking to a number of local Turks I have known for years, what they told me about the way the Ankara Agreement has been used for decades accorded exactly with the way it was used by people whose applications were recently allowed or refused and who allowed me to look at the paperwork. Some of it was quite astonishing, particularly the successful application of one man who applied on the basis he was planning to start a website design business when he has worked as a waiter in a Turkish restaurant since he came here two years ago and still does the same job today. He just wanted to stay here and continue his life here, the alternative was at least a year in the army followed by starting from scratch. He was lucky, his bogus application succeeded. Frankly, this country is better for having him here because he is good at what he does and benefits the business that pays him. It sould surprise no one that a Turkish restaurant keeps its customers happier by having good Turkish waiters rather than employing Wayne or Jermaine, why should there be any obstruction to a good Turkish waiter living here so that he can provide that service?

The Ankara Agreement induces fraudulent applications because it establishes an avenue for people from one culture to live a new life in a more appealing culture. Indeed, so appealing is the new culture that a whole business has developed around finding ways to use the opportunity provided by the Agreement. It is a massive fraud.

A better course would be to allow everyone in provided they pay their way - no benefits, no right to housing, no hand-outs. Earn your way or go home. The young Turks wouldn't be going home in a hurry.

A thought on discrimination

I suppose it is inevitable that every government will try to defend itself by putting as good a gloss as it can on the state of things under its stewardship. Equally inevitable is that some aspects of life are bound to improve under a government of any party, and a government in power for a decade or more will be able to point to quite a number of such issues.

Of course whether a change is an improvement is a matter of taste. Some things that were generally perceived to be improvements in one age might be treated with utter derision a generation or more later and be reversed to (perhaps temporary) universal acclaim. How many "improvements" are actually caused by government is always open to debate.

Looking back over the last thirteen years it is probably fair to say that far fewer people today are refused employment because of their pigmentation, gender or choice of intimate companion. There can be no doubt that each of these "improvements" was intended to be a result of the massively expensive programme of attempted social engineering undertaken by the present government, but no one can measure the effect government policies have had. Perhaps they sped-up the process of open-mindedness, perhaps it would have happened anyway - after all, the acceptance of homosexuals and those of dusky hue progressed at accelerating pace throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

I have long been doubtful of the power of government to do anything other than steer the agenda gently in one direction or another on such social issues. Introducing laws to make it an offence to discriminate on the grounds of gender or so-called race must, I suspect, have had an effect because they brought to the issue to the fore and required employers to think a little more about whether someone was suitable to fill a vacancy. We are a generally law-abiding people, even if we do not like a particular law, and I suspect many an employer who resented having legal limits put on who he might accept or reject for a job nonetheless complied with the law when previously he might have acted differently.

Yet there is only so much that can be achieved by such laws. If they are to be effective I believe they must tap into an existing chain of thought. I remember hearing many a narrow-minded bigot in the 60s and 70s say he wouldn't want a black family in his street or a black colleague at work because they are different or untrustworthy or inherently idle or dishonesty. And there was always a "but". It was always the same "but" ... "but I don't mean Mr Patel at the Merrymart down the road, he's a lovely bloke, keeps that shop open to nine at night, very convenient, much better than old Frank who had it before him" or "but I don't mean Winston next door, he's a lovely bloke, cuts old Doris's hedge, lovely family" or "but I don't mean Mr Khan at the curry house, he's a lovely bloke, does great food he does and he gave our Sharon a job in her school holidays". And so it goes on.

The "but" is nothing more or less than "but those I know are actually just the same as us". And how true it is. All over the world countries are full of the clever and the thick, the idle and the industrious, the honest and the crooked, albeit with a different balance between these various elements, just as they are full of the old, the young and the middle aged. Anti-discrimination laws are just part of a package of factors that steer us towards greater acceptance of people from backgrounds different from our own. To my mind the most important factor in persuading people not to discriminate unfairly is exposure to those against whom they might be inclined to act. The unknown is always slightly scary, it become far less scary when it ceases to be unknown. As time passes we will all experience people from a wider and wider variety of backgrounds. The unknown will not just be countered by knowledge of one Mr Patel, one Winston or one Mr Khan but by knowledge of dozens of people from varying backgrounds.

That is not to say that such knowledge is a one-way street. When immigrants from a particular country are drawn almost entirely from the bottom of the pile the impression they give is unlikely to be positive. That might well be unrepresentative of their country's native inhabitants as a whole, but the evidence available to us will inevitably lead to certain conclusions being drawn whether or not they are fair. We can only form views based on evidence and the quality of the evidence dictates the range of conclusions we are likely to draw.

Similarly, some countries have a greater culture of self-sufficiency than others. In some you work or you starve, in others you work or you get a hand-out from the UN. In some you work and have the chance to improve your standard of living steady throughout your life, in others you can never expect more than mere subsistence. You would be hard-pressed to find someone from Thailand who is content to draw benefits. Not only is their economic system one of work-or-starve, but their culture is that living on the result of another's work is shameful. Not so if you are from, for example, Somalia - a country so poorly managed that it is dependent on vast amounts of aid simply to feed its people engenders a culture of dependency. Not just that, but work is not rewarded there for ordinary people, they cannot hope for anything more than subsistence. It is hardly surprising that they do not understand that working in the UK can produce a standard of living far higher than benefits could ever give them - it is just a different world, a world wholly outside their experience. When you also consider that the standard of living they enjoy here on benefits is higher than they could ever expect in their homeland, it is hardly surprising that there is no work ethic.

No amount of law or regulation will prevent people seeing what is before their eyes. It can, if aimed carefully, point their eyes in a different direction so that they see something that was previously out of focus, but it cannot turn apples into oranges.

There will always be justified discrimination against some immigrants because the culture of their country of origin gives rise to a fair presumption that they are unlikely to be industrious. It would be wrong to make too much of this point, it can only ever be a presumption. However, all true presumptions are based on evidence not on irrational prejudices. Once anti-discrimination policies seek to contradict evidence they are bound to result in practices that are both economically and socially harmful. It is one thing to make the previously unknown known, it is another entirely to pretend that what is known as a fact is actually a fiction.

Queen's Speech 2008 Part I - integration

An aspect of life in Britain today is that there is increasingly only one "approved" way to live. Going fast are the days of "it takes all sorts", "each to his own" and "there's nowt as queer as folk". We are badgered not just by government but also by quangoes, charities and self-appointed pressure groups about what we eat, how we dress, how much exercise we take, how we travel, how we heat our homes and countless other things which used to be matters for adults to choose for themselves.

Part of the problem is that quangoes and pressure groups never disband voluntarily and charities now feel they have to promote a cause to justify their existence and, in particular, their government funding. They suffer from "mission creep" by which a modest and laudable task morphs into a wide-ranging campaign requiring more and more compulsion for it to be adopted by a sceptical public.

They might start with the mission to educate people about the benefits of eating more fruit and veg. It starts with leaflets and a free nibble of melon from a display at the supermarket, the education campaign is successful because people then know that fruit is jolly good stuff. Consumption increases and one might think it is job done. But no. People being people, not everyone does eat more fruit and veg. The pressure groups' conclusion is that the campaign must be stepped up, targets must be set. Five portions of fruit and veg a day appears out of nowhere as the recommended intake for everyone. There is no science behind it, some need more to maintain a healthy balance in their diet and some need less because human bodies do not all absorb vitamins and minerals in the same way and different people process fibre at different rates. For the vast majority five portions a day is grossly in excess of what they need to provide themselves with all the vegetative goodness they need, but the slogan has taken on a life of its own and must be defended to the end. It becomes an "official" guideline, "at least" is added by some rabid raffia munching bully, it turns from a guideline into a government sanctioned minimum target which must be enforced in school canteens. Where once people were being informed that fruit and veg are good for them, they are now being told they must eat lots of both, it's not a recommendation but an order. There is only one healthy way to eat, it's official.

The same process applies to so many fringe issues so beloved of our current government. Take homosexuality for example. One of Mrs Thatcher's nuttier ideas was a formal embargo on local authorities "promoting" homosexuality. I have never known what that meant in practice and certainly saw no evidence of town halls handing out pink handbags to lorry drivers and denim dungarees to the ladies knitting circle. Applying one of the finest British traits, many people who previously never even thought of matters homosexual became quite angry that a minority group was being picked on by government. Tolerance of personal tastes and foibles is something we have always been rather good at as a country and many whose tolerance was previously unspoken or even unrecognised found themselves becoming pro-homosexual rather than ambivalent. The mood changed, partly through greater exposure to the overtly homosexual in fields other than entertainment and hairdressing and partly as a reaction to a bullying law.

The current government swiftly overturned Mrs Thatcher's folly and went one step further by outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. One might think that would be that. The wrong had been corrected and homosexuals were given an equal footing in law with everyone else. But no. It was not enough to be fair to homosexuals there was also thought a need to be intolerant of those who had a genuine moral problem in treating homosexual behaviour as acceptable. In real life we have to accept that many people adhere to moral codes different from our own, in fact I suspect we would be hard pressed to find anyone who agrees with us on every single issue of morality.

The scriptures on which Judaism, Christianity and Islam rely all condemn homosexuality as being contrary to their god's will. In a civilised society the adherents of those religions are required to accept and abide by the laws of the country in which they live but they are not generally obliged to abandon (or pretend to abandon) their beliefs. One would expect them to be able to speak out against homosexual practices and explain why they find them objectionable whilst abiding by the law and not discriminating against homosexuals. No doubt that is something the people concerned might find very hard to do because their beliefs are important to them, nonetheless it can be done and I have no doubt a great many manage to do so. When the law goes that one step too far and seeks to act against convictions of morality rather than just actions it risks being held in contempt.

In today's Queen's Speech an interesting measure was proposed about immigration and nationality. For the first time "integration" will be a requirement for those from overseas who seek British citizenship or the right to live permanently in this country. We will have to wait to see the text of the Bill to learn what is meant by "integration". To my mind any definition must involve behaviour because no one can integrate into anything unless they do so by their behaviour. I think I can guess what the government has in mind. It knows that it is at risk of leeching votes to the British National Party in a number of marginal Parliamentary constituencies, indeed the votes in those constituencies could be the difference between Labour being returned to power or exiled to opposition. What the government has in mind is dusky-skinned immigrants of the Islamic faith.

When the country took large numbers from Uganda and Bangladesh in the 1970s many of them continued to follow the practices of their homelands. The man went out to work, the wife stayed at home and looked after the children. In that there was little difference between those families and many pasty-faced whiteys of long British heritage. The difference was in how the wife dressed and acted. Gingham frocks and M&S trousers suits didn't feature; headscarves, veils and head-to-toe black smocks with a slit for the eyes were instead the attire of choice. They did not learn English unless they had to in order to be able to buy five pound of spuds and they did not involve themselves in cultural activities outside those arranged by their local mosque. In other words they did not integrate. This caused and still causes resentment among the very sorts of people who would choose between Labour and the BNP in the voting booth.

I first encountered Bangladeshi families who followed their old customs when I lived in the East End of London as a student and for a few years after starting work. Initially it was quite a shock to my system because I had simply not seen anything like it and my first reaction was to think ill of it. Then I got to know some of my neighbours and it was clear that they were just following the customs they grew up with and which they felt were mandated by their religion. A few years later I moved into FatBigot Towers in Islington. Quite close by is an area known as Stamford Hill in Stoke Newington. Stamford Hill has a large population of Hasidic Jews. Their culture is for the man to work and the wife to stay at home. They also have traditional style of dress. The women do not integrate with the non-Hasidic locals and many of them do not speak English. I am unaware of any move at any time to require them to "integrate" before they could be considered British. They are highly law-abiding people for whom their established religion and culture are of huge importance. In that they are no different from the Bangladeshis I encountered in the East End.

Forced "integration" as a prerequisite of permanent residence or citizenship steps into the same murky territory as seeking to outlaw the expression of religious opinions opposing homosexual practices. It goes beyond requiring people to comply with the law in their doings and impinges on their cultural and religious values in a way that attacks their thoughts rather than their actions. To my mind that is just as offensive as a homosexual person being refused a job because of his sexual orientation, a person of dark pigmentation being refused a job because of his colour or a person of Romany extraction being refused a job because of his race.

They really shouldn't start on immigration

Oh dear. You can tell when a government is getting desperate because it turns to immigration. The new Immigration Minister has announced that he going to limit immigration and ensure that the population of the UK does not rise above 70 million.

The reason governments rarely say much about immigration is that enforcement of limits is all but impossible. No limit can be put on immigration from EU countries because EU law forbids it. The only limit that can be put on illegal immigration is through effective border control, a task that has defeated every government in history. International treaty obligations dictate much of asylum policy and all genuine cases are entitled to stay regardless of how many there are. The only limits that can be imposed are on student visas and on work permits for migrant workers from non-EU countries. Work permits are already subject to a so-called "points system" by which admission is given only to those with skills needed in this country. If they really are needed, it is hard to see how restricting their numbers further can benefit anyone.

Let's look at what has happened in recent years since some of the old Soviet bloc countries entered the EU. The government estimated the number of migrant workers likely to come to Britain to be in the tens of thousands each year, in fact they came in hundreds of thousands. There was nothing the government could do about it even if it wanted to. Vast numbers came here to work because the pound was strong against their home country's currency and there was plenty for them to do. They could work here for three or four years, save as much as possible by sharing houses or flats then return home with enough money to buy a house on a decent plot of land, furnish and equip it, buy a car and still have cash in the bank. Now that poor Gordon's economic miracle has been exposed as a fraud and his pound is crumbling, the benefit to them is reduced or eliminated so they are returning home. As and when there is again a serious gulf between what they can earn at home and what they can earn here (or France, or Germany or wherever) the same thing will happen again regardless of how high our population is at the time.

"They come over here, take our jobs, marry our women" is the cry we hear from time to time to justify strict limits on immigration, but I wonder how true it is that they take "our" jobs. How is it that Polish and Ukrainian building labourers were able to find regular employment in preference to the plucky Brits? One would expect there to be two reasons why an employer would take a foreign worker rather than a Brit: money and the work ethic.

Did they require less money? Quite possibly. An employer who pays less than the statutory minimum wage would probably feel safer taking on foreign workers because he would think there is less chance of anyone reporting him. Having said that, how many British labourers work through the books and how many are cash-in-hand? No one can possibly know the numbers but I will hazard an educated guess that they are happy for as much as possible to be in cash so that they get to spend it rather than handing it to Gordon or having to tell the benefits office about it. Anyway, what is wrong with employing someone who is prepared to do the same work for less money? It allows the business to keep its costs down resulting in either lower prices for the customer or greater profits or, in all likelihood, a combination of the two.

Do they work harder? Only anecdotal evidence is available but it seems pretty overwhelming. You will get plenty of hard work out of a Brit who wants to work but if he already receives large hand-outs of benefits for doing nothing he might be less inclined to stretch himself for a few extra pounds compared to someone who has no other source of income and knows his reputation as a hard worker will increase his chance of being chosen again tomorrow and the day after. The reason I say "chosen" is that a lot of unskilled work, such as labouring for builders, kitchen work in hotels or restaurants and farm work is filled day-by-day, people are not employed on even a semi-permanent basis. There can be no legitimate complaint about an immigrant being employed because he works harder than the Brits who might have wanted the job.

Of course not all immigrants take casual work, many are formally retained as employees and others are self-employed skilled tradesmen running their own businesses hiring out their skills. They compete with Brits primarily on price. Sometimes they can undercut the natives, sometimes they cannot. To complain about someone else securing a job because you would have charged more is a shallow and unattractive argument.

And then there are the nationals of non-EU countries covered by the points-system. By definition those who are allowed work permits receive them because they have skills we need and which are not available here already. It is not a wicked system of reverse discrimination which fills some hospitals with nurses from the Philippines. They are trained nurses who were actively encouraged to come here because there were insufficient home-grown nurses to do the work. As more are trained in Britain so the need to recruit overseas is reduced and the number of work permits allowed for foreign nurses will fall.

We must not overlook the often shadowy area of student visas. Many a brothel and office cleaning company is staffed by those "attending" non-courses at compliant colleges. The course ends, but the "student" is nowhere to be seen. It is a route to illegal immigration but very little can be done about it other than restricting the number of student visas issued in the first place.

So who will now be excluded? How will the new restriction of immigration occur? The only thing the government can control directly is the number of visas issued. It can tighten the points system for work permits and run the risk of a skills shortage or it can restrict the number of student visas and risk the financial collapse of colleges who have complied with governmental diktat to expand student numbers. Apart from that the government can tighten border controls and seek out illegal immigrants with greater vigour. Frankly, you might as well ask them to enforce a ban on farting in curry houses, it just can't happen. They can throw lots of money at it and claim success, and they probably will, only it will not be success because the numbers of illegal immigrants and over-stayers they find and deport will be tiny and the cost of finding them, hearing all the appeals and then shipping them out will be vast.

If I were a cynic I would suggest that the new Immigration Minister knows that hundreds of thousands who have come here from Eastern Europe during the boom times will now return home. Many have already left yet many more remain. Say there are 200,000 in the UK for whom work will become more scarce over the next year and life back in their home country will provide better opportunities. They will leave and he will then claim to have reduced the immigrant population by that figure. It might grab a headline for a day or two until it is discovered that the departures have been caused by the government's incompetent management of the economy rather than some empty slogans emanating from a junior Minister at the Home Office.