The Politics.Co.UK yesterday reported that a judge, Mr Justice McCloskey, had ruled that the Home Office’s deportation of thousands of foreign students was illegal and unfair. The article begins:
The ruling could hardly be more damning. It found Theresa May deported thousands of students from Britain on the basis of unscientific hearsay evidence. The Home Office behaved like a tin-pot dictatorship: detaining innocent people, accusing them of made-up charges without providing anything to back it up, denying them their day in court and then deporting them.
Today’s ruling could open the doors to the return of thousands of students to the UK, if – of course – they wish to come back to a country which has treated them so appallingly. And it brings to a shuddering halt Theresa May’s mass deportation programme of students. It also raises serious questions about the legal and operational functions – as well as the basic morality – of the Home Office.
The Home Office started rounding up foreign students after Panorama aired a programme on how students at a single London school were cheating to pass the ETS language test. Instead of just treating this as a single instance, the Home Office decided that everyone, who had taken the test must also be guilty of fraud. The students themselves were rounded up in dawn raids, husbands and wives were separated. And they were also not allowed to see the evidence against them. Which from the point of view of the government was just as well, as there was none.
The case rests on the performance of a voice recognition test run by an American firm, ETS. This claimed that it had run thousands of tests comparing its software with humans. When it came to the court case, however, ETS did not appear. It sent no witnesses, and gave no evidence one way or another.
The article raises the following questions about this sorry affair.
How did the Home Office get to the point where it started deporting innocent people on the basis of unreliable hearsay evidence and without any proper judicial remedy? Why did the home secretary breach her duty of candour with those being accused of fraud? How is a private firm contracted to do public service work for the UK government issuing fantastical information to the Home Office? Why is it getting away with shutting up shop and refusing to comply with a tribunal? How did the Home Office end up being completely reliant on a foreign private contractor in the first place? And what is the home secretary going to do to contact the people who were unlawfully removed from this country so that they can now return to the UK?
The article is at http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/03/23/disaster-for-theresa-may-as-legal-ruling-brings-student-depo
What struck me was the sheer lack of any kind of proper legal process from the accused. They were just rounded up and deported. If they were tried, they weren’t allowed to see the evidence against them. I’ve already commented about the real, serious threat to democracy the government’s system of secret courts present, and how this is very close to the perverted court system set up by the Nazis. Under these courts, those accused of terrorism may not be allowed to see the evidence against them, or know who their accuser is, and the court proceedings carried on in closed session if this it is felt there is a threat to national security. This case shows how the same unjust procedures have been expanded to cover immigration. It’s hard to see how these foreign students en masse constitute such a threat that they could not see the evidence presented against them. Of course, the real reason they couldn’t see it, was because it didn’t exist. The government just wanted to throw them out of the country.
Well, it started with those accused of terrorism. Now it’s been extended to cover possible illegal immigrants. I don’t doubt that the government is hoping they can extend it even further to the general public, and specifically those sections Cameron doesn’t like: the poor, the ill, trade unionists and left-wingers. His proposed trade union bill, remember, would have required strikers on picket lines to give their names to the police. It was a measure too far for even David Davis, who described it as ‘Francoist’. And, like Franco, Cameron no doubt ultimately aims for the arrest and detention of left-wing opponents of the regime, whether they’re trade unionists on strike or protestors holding a march. This is the beginning of a police state. And Mr Justice McCloskey is to be applauded in upholding justice against Theresa May for combatting this piece of it.
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