Further to yesterday’s blog.^[1]

In a story this morning (14/2/2018), The Guardian quotes a Commons Home Affairs Committee report saying that “people lawfully in Britain were being caught up in the ‘hostile environment’ [in the Home Office] meant to be aimed at individuals with no right to be here.”^[2] The story gives as an example the case of Haruko Tomioka, a Japanese woman lawfully in the UK, who was

given seven days to leave the country, [the report] said. “This followed a two-year period during which time her driving licence had been rescinded, child benefit payments had been stopped (she had also been ordered to repay £5,000), and she was made to report to Becket House immigration office on a regular basis.” It took repeated notifications to the Home Office that she was here legally and that her husband was an EU national in employment before the department finally accepted her rights.

Clearly this involved a great deal of hostility directed towards someone with every right to be here. This can come as no surprise. Home Office hostility is indiscriminate. There is a “culture of hostility” in the Home Office which both allowed Haruko Tomioka to be put through this mill and led to Reza and Maryam’s treatment described in my blog yesterday. Whether a fair policy towards EU citizens is developed or not (and it looks increasingly unlikely), and whether the apparent problem of understaffing in the Home Office (mentioned yesterday) is tackled or not (it’s been used as an excuse for a whole raft of misdemeanours for a very long time and may be too useful for it to be abandoned now), the “hostile environment” towards migrants (especially asylum seekers) is deliberate policy and is set to continue.

Do we want our taxes to pay for a culture of hostility in the Home Office? If you come here seeking asylum or a new life, and if you really do have to be questioned about your reasons and intentions, should that be done in a “hostile environment”? If it is, cases like these will proliferate. The hostility outlined in yesterday’s blog was obviously indiscriminate, directed at people before any decision had been made about their “right to be here”. Home Office officials make assumptions about your motives before a single question has been asked.

Yet you ought to be treated as innocent until proved guilty. That’s not just an idea I woke up with this morning. It’s the basis of our legal system. And it’s laid down in the Refugee Convention Guidelines. So hostility is inappropriate behaviour. That needs to be included in the alleged exemplary training given to Home Office staff and trumpeted by the department yesterday. The Commons Home Affairs Committee should be told the same thing. Its members seem to think hostility is OK if it’s “aimed at individuals with no right to be here”. It isn’t. If officials really need to ask questions, they should just ask them. They don’t need to shake their prejudiced fists as well.

[1] “The Secretary of State [still] doesn’t believe you”: https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/the-secretary-of-state-still-doesnt-believe-you-2/

[2]  “Brexit immigration plan delays are fuelling anxiety, MPs warn”: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/14/brexit-immigration-plan-delays-fuelling-anxiety-mps-warn?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other