UK: Immigration and Asylum Bill: a nasty piece of work(feature)
01 March 1999
The Immigration and Asylum Bill, introduced in the House of Commons in February and now in Committee stage, is a nasty piece of work. It is not just the segregating of asylum-seekers in a cashless sub-subsistence world of vouchers in isolated ghettoes; it is also the automatic penalties for lorry-drivers found carrying clandestine entrants unless they plead duress, a defence judged not by a court but by an official; the removal of appeal rights from deportees; the imposition of a duty on carriers to provide information on non-EEA passengers, on registrars to report suspicious marriages and on postal authorities to disclose redirection notices; the powers of entry, search and arrest given to immigration officers, and the retreat from manifesto commitments on employer sanctions.
The theme of abuse runs through the whole Bill, which with ten parts, 138 sections and 14 schedules, does not make easy reading. It is often impossible to know how the Bill's provisions will work in practice, since it contains 50 separate rule-making powers, and it will be in the rules, mostly subject to negative resolution only, that flesh will be put on vague statutory powers.
Preventing asylum-seekers' arrival
In the first part, headed "General", the function of giving or refusing leave to enter the UK, up to now exercised by immigration officers when passengers arrive, is made exercisable before they arrive. Airlines will also be under a duty to send passenger lists and "such information regarding passengers as may be specified" to the immigration service, and to notify them of any non-EEA passengers they are bringing to Britain. This would enable airline liaison officers to examine and refuse passengers as they board, and is likely to be aimed at asylum-seekers who use false documents to get on to aircraft overseas, just as the sanctions for carrying clandestine entrants are designed to prevent the smuggling in of those who are unable to obtain such documents. But false documents and clandestine entry are the only ways asylum-seekers can get to the UK. The imposition of visa controls on nationals of refugee-producing countries together with carrier sanctions penalising carriers who bring in inadequately documented passengers has created the market in false or forged documents and the refugee-smuggling industry. In committee, Mike O'Brien makes no bones about it: "Our obligations under the Geneva Convention do not require us to facilitate the arrival of asylum-seekers", a disingenuous way of getting round the international law obligation created by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14 of which declares that "Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum".
Carrying "clandestine entrants"
The new provisions for lorry-drivers (and private car drivers) carrying clandestine entrants will penalise owners, drivers and hirers of vehicles containing clandestine entrants who either get out (or are detected) and claim asylum at the port or who don't emerge until they are in the country. There will be a fixed penalty of £2,000 per person carried. The only defences are having an effective system of prevention in operation and duress, which will be for the owner, driver or hirer to prove to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State (not a court); ignorance of the stowaways' presence will be no defence. Immigration officers will have power to detain the vehicle and to sell it if the penalty notice is not complied with. There will be no compensation for detention of a vehicle which subsequently turns out to be unjustified, if there were "reasonable grounds" for holding the vehicle. Small carriers with only a few lorries could thus have their livelihood destroyed by a decision to detain a vehicle. The only recourse to a court provided for is against the proposed sale of a vehicle if the penalty notice remains unpaid.
Carrier sanctions
Carrier sanctions (penalties on passenger carriers such as ships an