The children of Windrush
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Treacle Toes
Time
I'd feel exactly as he does.
The hostile environment has and will cost more lives.
There was a case last year which I think sums up the callousness...
Leukaemia patient whose sister was refused a UK visa to give her a transplant dies
What happens when you don't have a family or a support network to campaign for/with you? Rhetorical question obviously.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
Theres callousness like that, and then there is the callousness required to tell a bloke - who is the living embodiment of this issue - that he has to wait two to three weeks for a letter telling him when his appointment is.
Either the entire Government is in open revolt against May and people are doing this just to make her look stupid, or they have no idea of the potential damage that this will do to them (especially if, God forbid, his cancer has gotten worse whilst they were blocking his treatment).
Treacle Toes
Time
Why are you making a point about his case being callous as well? Of course it is. You surely can't think I feel any different.
On your other point, I actually don't think they care. It'll be out of the news again soon enough. They've known about the questionable cases for a while already. In 2013 May said to deport and let the appeals happen from abroad. They don't give a shit. They hoped people would put up, shut up and accept their 'fate'.
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Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Good to see you persevering with this.
This is what I have to deal with on regular basis in Brixton forum. Has started to grind me down. One would have thought the Windrush issue would have been big topic on Brixton forum. Sadly no.
As a long term resident of Brixton and London. ( My whole adult life) I've found your posts and others here heartening. It's what I come on Urban for.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Thank you.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
Why are you making a point about his case being callous as well? Of course it is. You sure can't think any different.
On your other point, I actually don't think they care. It'll be out of the news again soon enough. They've known about the questionable cases for a while already. In 2013 May said to deport and let the appeals happen from abroad. They don't give a shit. They hoped people would put up, shut up and accept their 'fate'.
Sorry, that was poorly worded. What I meant was it takes a certain level of callousness to do what they have been doing; it takes even more to do something like this whilst (a) they are claiming to be sorry and (b) they know he is in direct, regular contact with national journalists and MPs.
Treacle Toes
Time
For me it's tory buisness as usual... knowing that woman would die without her sister's bone marrow, leaving this guy hanging despite the focus on these cases at present...same evil.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
But Mays hostile environment isn't about government agencies enforcing borders.
It's about getting landlords, employers to run checks on people.
This was new. A friend of mine who rents out her old flat told me told me she can get fined now if it turns out her tenant isn't "legal".
This as she pointed out raises a whole load of issues. She resents it any way. As she said it's not her job to be immigration control. Apart from that she's not a trained lawyer in right to be here. So in practice she errs on side of caution in whom she rents to.
A big piece of hostile environment was to make non government people do the nasty work under threat of big fines.
So ur happy with that?
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Heard Michael Gove on radio this morning. He was asked about Windrush issue and about rights of EU citizens post Brexit. The interviewer was correct to say if post 1971 the status of Carriibbean people is still questioned will this government make sure that legalisation affecting EU nationals is written to ensure what's been happening to Windrush generation won't happen to them.
His answer was that this was still in process of being written. Not a categorical answer.
As my partner is one of those EU nationals , and reading posts on this thread about people trying to get there spouse right to stay here, I am getting worried.
The second thing that got me about Gove interview ( which was good) was the way he presented himself as liberal and tolerant.
Of course he thought this country was tolerant and welcoming to immigrants. Asked about May "hostile environment" policy he said to much had been made of that.
So his position was the classic liberal one. Ive told you I'm tolerant so stop going on about details like hostile environment.
He also deflected Windrush issue from Tories by saying how good it was that "we" were having a "national conversation" about the contribution of Windrush generation to this country. Turning an issue that is about Tories. In particular May when she was Home Secretary to an issue where "we" as a nation all discuss this issue.
Gove is clever.
He was trying to put forward idea of good immigration controls. Also that immigration that happened years ago is now a good thing.
I was listening to this in morning and getting more wound up. This is the liberal view that so hard to argue against.
It's the liberal I like immigration but want immigration controls line. Maddening.
His answer was that this was still in process of being written. Not a categorical answer.
As my partner is one of those EU nationals , and reading posts on this thread about people trying to get there spouse right to stay here, I am getting worried.
The second thing that got me about Gove interview ( which was good) was the way he presented himself as liberal and tolerant.
Of course he thought this country was tolerant and welcoming to immigrants. Asked about May "hostile environment" policy he said to much had been made of that.
So his position was the classic liberal one. Ive told you I'm tolerant so stop going on about details like hostile environment.
He also deflected Windrush issue from Tories by saying how good it was that "we" were having a "national conversation" about the contribution of Windrush generation to this country. Turning an issue that is about Tories. In particular May when she was Home Secretary to an issue where "we" as a nation all discuss this issue.
Gove is clever.
He was trying to put forward idea of good immigration controls. Also that immigration that happened years ago is now a good thing.
I was listening to this in morning and getting more wound up. This is the liberal view that so hard to argue against.
It's the liberal I like immigration but want immigration controls line. Maddening.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I'm sure you are perfectly aware that I quoted it back at you to provoke a response. It's an exaggeration to call it a complete misrepresentation. I pulled out two statements that seemed inconsistent because they were both half-answers to the question that I'm interested in. But it's a question you don't want to answer. You've explained as much as you are able why you don't want to answer it. I accept that you don't want to answer it, and I don't think there's any point us going any further.
This was the question:
You can try and tell me that my question wasn't what I thought it was. I know what it was. I think I know the ways in which you want me to make it more precise, but essentially you want me to construct the question on your terms, to an extent where it seems we can't really take the discussion anywhere. Ultimately, you it appears you don't want to discuss ways of dealing with things that involve processes reliant on the mechanics of parliament and so on. I on the other hand think that there are certain things that simply can't be dealt with without some engagement with those processes.
By the way it's not that I don't get what you are saying when you talk about the YouGov surveys. I know what you mean.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Yes of course we do. Why do you ask? Do you want to try and make out I'm "anti-immigrant"?
I'm sure you're aware that most of the UK is not anything like Brixton; and that's not irrelevant to the reasons we're both living here having come from elsewhere.
Humberto
Relax
Its funny in a way that TM talks recently about red lines, this for me is past that. They are tormenting people, mentally and physically. Thankfully we have a press though. Or at least one that is still quite worthwhile. That would probably need proper argument, and I'm not going to do it now, but that is my position. I'm cognisent of the fact that it is the very same press that creates this toxic environment. Its the enemy that should be tormented, not our brethren/comrades.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
how about fixing the blame on the people who should be blamed - the employers?
just a thought
Employers don't set immigration policy.
Happy, no. Do I think it is needed? Sadly yes. It's all too easy to tell a lie and get through the border itself, to say you are here on tourism or to visit family.
Sadly we sometimes need to catch people later on
How would you enforce the borders?
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
[the mechanics of parliament]
I'm happy to discuss what they do. But I see that as something I'm observing, rather than something I'm involved in. I don't think of any Parliament run by any party as "we", but as "them". It's this idea of engagement with the processes that I think is a dead end. I think the history of the Labour Party nicely illustrates exactly that.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
This is a not-half-bad take on Home Office policy by Nesrine Malik in yesterday's Guardian.
She emphasises what's been talked of earlier in this thread -- that the way "the Windrush generation" has been treated is no isolated aberration
She emphasises what's been talked of earlier in this thread -- that the way "the Windrush generation" has been treated is no isolated aberration
Nesrine Malik said:
not-bono-ever
meh
Distillation into good and bad immigrants
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It brings us back, doesn't it, to the Kenan Malik piece I quoted from earlier:
“I am always struck by how silent liberals are when it comes to the actual use by European nations of gunboats against refugees and the attempt to wall off Europe by paying millions to the most unsavoury regimes from Turkey to Eritrea to Libya to lock up would-be immigrants in hell-hole detention centres just out of sight of Brussels, Paris and London.”
Some just don't want to confront their cognitive dissonance; others, like Teuchter, at least have the honesty to admit the consequences of the policies they support.
The question is why single out immigration? Immigration has not caused the problems that people face. To quote Malik yet again:
"However low one caps immigration, it will not affect austerity policy, or the atomisation of society, or the crisis in the NHS, or the neutering of trade unions."
And yet, immigration quotas are what we have. And in order to satisfy those quotas, people who have been settled here since they were children are falling foul of the rules. These shifting rules (and in this case shifting borders - these people were relocating within what was at that time a greater border as defined by the centre) leave liberals flailing to define what is citizenship itself, a concept they are keen on but can no longer pin down. Because immigration has become the shorthand for the locus of today's political debate, in which instead of looking for the actual causes of austerity or whatever it might be, people talk of numbers, of dilution of culture, of the country being full. Economic and social issues expressed in cultural terms. Not that I'm saying teuchter has done that, but he has accepted the narrative that This Is What The Issue We Face Is (or maybe just This Is An Issue We Face), but either way that the Answer must be sought in a Bureaucratic Response. Well, a bureaucratic response leads inexorably to Windrush children being repatriated, gunboats in the Med, and millions paid to unsavoury regimes to run detention centres the likes of which no European sensibility would be prepared to take direct responsibility for.
I return again to saying that the response to this division of people into us and them has to be solidarity. And through that process we need to interrogate the reason immigration became the scapegoat for economic and political dissatisfaction in the first place.
I don't think life is that clear cut. What about someone who got a drugs conviction in the 90s but has worked all his life? Good immigrant or bad immigrant?
What about a Windrush immigrant who was involved in Brixton rioting, has spent time in prison, but also cared for his mum? Good immigrant or bad immigrant?
You can't simply break it down like that. There are lots of people with jobs who are utter cunts. Lots of people without who are decent, whatever the Daily Mail may try to suggest.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I'll try and come back to some of the other points later.
But "solidarity" as a response, as I see it, just isn't going to change the fact that are gunboats in the med. I do agree that as a response it can help with things like how existing immigrants are recieved, and accepted, and so on. If the theory is that it's part of a build up to some kind of revolution, which then changes the gunboats-in-the-med situation through non-parliamentary mechanisms - I simply don't see that as plausible. It's not going to happen. Of course, maybe I will be proven wrong. But because I don't believe that's going to ever happen, I resort to the unsatisfactory beaurocratic methods as a plausible means to make things less bad.
But "solidarity" as a response, as I see it, just isn't going to change the fact that are gunboats in the med. I do agree that as a response it can help with things like how existing immigrants are recieved, and accepted, and so on. If the theory is that it's part of a build up to some kind of revolution, which then changes the gunboats-in-the-med situation through non-parliamentary mechanisms - I simply don't see that as plausible. It's not going to happen. Of course, maybe I will be proven wrong. But because I don't believe that's going to ever happen, I resort to the unsatisfactory beaurocratic methods as a plausible means to make things less bad.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Solidarity as a response, if it included enough people, could most certainly change the gunboats-in-the-med situation. We're nowhere near that at this moment in time, which is perhaps what you're pointing out. I doubt dlr or anyone else would disagree. But aiming for something that could work is something. I don't even see that you aim at anything here - the 'unsatisfactory bureaucratic methods' method is what has brought us here, is part of the problem - the disgusting, and in effect racist, visa system; the burden of proof placed on individuals to prove that they have a legal right to be here, where in any court of law it is normally accepted that it is the state that has to prove its case before it can act against people. The arbitrary use of violence by the state is the hallmark of totalitarianism, and yet it is happening here every week at the moment.
Regarding immigration controls, which you appear to consider a necessary evil, I would simply point out that, pre-1962, every Commonwealth citizen had an open-ended right to come to the UK. Somehow we survived ok.
I'm very aware of that, thanks...So your point is 'oh look, here's a Black guy who agrees with me'?
He isn't an immigrant btw.
I'm no more trying to ''hijack" it than anyone else is. We all agree that the treatment of these people is awful. That was established pages ago. Even the Daily Mail agrees it's awful
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Also worth closely watching is the use of employers and landlords and others to police racist immigration regulations. Brings to mind "everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state".
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Stands a better chance than voting Green, say. And it's at least doing something to redress the divisive forces at play.
trabuquera
Modesty Bag
How about the organs of the state specifically set up for the purpose of administering and enforcing immigration law, rather than civilians?
Neighbours, co-workers, family members perhaps?
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