Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

Refugees: Tightening the Screw 87
hearing. Some undecided cases date back to 1990 and appeals can take 15 months
to list in London. Delays of this order send a clear message to abusive applicants that
the system cannot cope and is ripe for exploitation; while those in genuine need of
protection are condemned to a cruel limbo of worry and uncertainty over their future.
This is one of the few recognitions that delays, or any other aspect of the
system, cause suffering to refugees. Mostly, however, delays are blamed on
‘abuses’ by people who, not surprisingly, do whatever they can to avoid being
deported. Paragraph 8.9, summing up the reasons for aiming at faster
decisions, concludes:
At present economic migrants abuse the system because its inefficiency allows them
to remain in the UK for years. A faster system with more certain removal at the end
of the process will significantly deter abuse.
So the white paper announced plans to computerise immigration records to
‘provide a basis for improvements in identifying fraud and abuse of the
immigration and nationality processes’. It proposed to control ‘unscrupulous
immigration advisers’ who are alleged to spin out the process
unnecessarily. Although the act ends the scandal of the non-availability of
legal aid for representation at appeals, the white paper complained that £26
million is spent on legal aid for immigration cases and proposed to bring its
use ‘under tighter control’ so that ‘public funds are not misused in support
of deliberate abuse of asylum procedures and immigration controls’.
The reality is that it is refugees who suffer from the activities of unscrupulous
lawyers, and are exploited by them, but the white paper did not say so.
It is true that some, scrupulous rather than unscrupulous, immigration
lawyers work long hours with great dedication and skill and do, as the Home
Office accuses them of doing, explore all avenues to save their clients from
deportation and removal. But they are probably greatly outnumbered by
lawyers who, far from doing too much work, often do little work at all. They
may not turn up for appeals, which are then quickly dismissed. They may
also be either incompetent or fraudulent or both; some, for example, demand
fees from asylum seekers even though they are receiving legal aid. Diane
Taylor in the Big Issue of 22–28 February 1999 gives an account of the
‘blatant corruption’ experienced by asylum seekers queuing at the
Immigration and Nationality Directorate at Lunar House in Croydon:
‘interpreters’ employed by unscrupulous firms of solicitors openly tout for business
in full view of immigration officials and right next to a notice saying: ‘Representatives
are prevented from soliciting for business’. ...
Although the Home Office has promised to be ‘firmer when dealing with abuse’
such as this, there was no evidence of officials mingling with the queuers, and not
even a glimmer of interest from the desk-bound officials. ...
Interpreters are paid around £300 a week to recruit as many as 100 other new
asylum seekers for firms of solicitors. .... once they’re signed up they get little or no
such help and are left to flounder in the choppy waters of the system.