Human Provenance Project again

The policy instruction to UKBA staff on the sinister sounding Human Provenance Project (who cooked this name up, for heaven’s sake?) has changed yet again. The link on my last post on this still works, but the document it links to has changed and now reads as follows:

Alterations have been made to the nationality swapping – Isotope analysis and DNA testing process. This process continues to operate.

The present instruction has been withdrawn whilst amendments are made.

Thanks to my normal source of geek rather than immigration news, The Register (‘Biting the hand that feeds IT’), I see that the journal Nature has published an editorial condemning the project. It looks like the project may resurface, though, perhaps with a re-worded section on the use to which test results may be put by UKBA. I very much doubt that playing with the wording will somehow render the unacceptable acceptable.

Filed under: News, Policy

More on alleged 6 year rule

Further to my earlier post on the alleged relaxing of asylum rules, see the Government response to media claims:

Asylum seekers – government response

09 October 2009

The government has responded to claims in the media that up to 40,000 asylum seekers will be allowed to stay in the United Kingdom because it would be too difficult to return them to their home countries.

Phil Woolas, [still] Border and Immigration Minister, said:

‘There is no amnesty.

‘Our guidelines were updated to provide case workers with a simple framework to judge cases, and to avoid long drawn out court battles.

‘No lawbreaker will be allowed to say, and each case is still decided on its individual merits.

‘The UK Border Agency continues to ramp up performance and is concluding several thousand cases a month.

‘Less than 40% of cases are being granted and I am confident that we will clear all of these cases by 2011.’

Filed under: News, Policy

Six year rule for asylum seekers?

The Daily Telegraph has claimed that there is a new policy that asylum seekers may be granted settlement after a wait of four to six (or possibly eight) years following a quiet change to immigration policies.

The policy is allegedly set out in a memo The Telegraph claims to have seen from Matthew Coates, a very senior figure at UKBA, which was signed off by still Immigration Minister Phil Woolas. It concerns Legacy cases and asylum seekers from countries such as Zimbabwe and Somalia to which it is almost impossible to enforce removals. The Telegraph reckons that Coates rejects the idea of an sort of formal amnesty but:

Instead, he recommends changing the current guidance to make it easier for immigration officials to allow the 40,000 to stay in the UK.

He suggests they could be allowed to stay here after having been here for as little as four years, in the most difficult cases, or around six to eight years – rather than 10 to 12 years as the rules stated.

He adds: “We do not believe the rule itself needs amendment. We do, however, need to make some amendments to the underpinning operational guidance to give caseworkers the necessary latitude to deal with this cohort.”

A rather incoherent article has followed the story in The Daily Mail but it really only confuses the issue. It is an appalling piece of writing.

There has been no formal change to Immigration Rule 395C, which lists compassionate circumstances to be considered in removal cases. However, there was a change in the summer to the Enforcement Guidance and Instructions on rule 395C (chapter 53.1.2), which now includes the following examples of cases that should be considered sympathetically:

• An initial application or an ‘in-time’ application for further leave (an application made before the individuals leave to enter/remain had expired) was submitted some time ago. A significant delay in such cases considered as being between 3-5 years.
• ‘Family’ cases where delay by UKBA has contributed to a significant period of residence (for the purposes of this guidance, ‘family’ cases means parent as defined in the Immigration Rules and children who are emotionally and financially dependent on the parent, and under the age of 18 at the date of the decision). Following an individual assessment of the prospect of enforcing removal, and where other relevant factors apply, a 3 year period of residence may be considered significant, but a more usual example would be 4-6 years. Family units may be also be exceptionally considered where the dependent child has experienced a delay of 4-6 years whilst under the age of 18.
• Any other case where delay by UKBA has contributed to a significant period of residence, Following an individual assessment of the prospect of enforcing removal, and where other relevant factors apply, 4-6 years may be considered significant, but a more usual example would be a period of residence of 6-8 years.

These passages are probably the source of the story (or perhaps reflect the implementation of the Coates memo) but they do not seem to bear out the spin given in The Telegraph and The Mail, neither of which mentions that the guidance applies to family cases where there has been significant delay. However, it does explain the occasional strangely liberal, compassionate looking decisions that lawyers may have seen recently.

Filed under: Legacy, News, Policy

Plug pulled on Provenance Project

It looks like UKBA have suspended the isotope analysis testing programme ominously called The Human Provenance Project. A revised policy instruction has been placed on the UKBA website simply saying that it has been ‘temporarily suspended’. It is doubtful whether it will be resurrected, though, as this is Government-speak for ‘permanently shelved’.

It was difficult to credit that the Government had decided to go ahead with this in the first place. My last post on this focussed on the ridiculous claims made for the science behind the project. The project was simply incapable of producing the results claimed for it by UKBA. This is presumably why it has been abandoned.

I did not previously dwell on the principle of the thing. The idea of subjecting human beings to this kind of laboratory analysis to determine their ‘true’ origins was highly offensive. Sadly, I doubt that had much to do with the decision to pull the plug. Asylum seekers will continue to be viewed as sub-human test subjects.

Filed under: News, Policy

The Human Provenance Project

It sounds like the title of a dystopian science fiction film, and it is every bit as bad as it sounds. The first I heard of it was on 14th September 2009 after this letter was circulated to UKBA stakeholders. I had a little rant about it at the time in another forum, complaining there was something unpleasantly eugenicist about it, lamenting the daft liberal arts graduates who approved it who understand neither science nor statistics and suggesting they start measuring skull size and penis length for good measure.

Free Movement is a proud graduate in, er, history, incidentally.

The Human Provenance Project involves taking tissue samples from asylum claimants, including children. This is only done by ‘consent’, but the policy document that UKBA has published makes it quite clear that failure to give consent will count against a claimant:

If an asylum applicant refused to provide samples for the isotope analysis and DNA testing the case owner could draw a negative inference as to the applicant’s credibility and if appropriate apply Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. Section 8 states that where an asylum applicant has behaved in way that is designed or likely to conceal information or mislead the UK Border Agency; it could be seen as damaging the applicant’s credibility.

Bold claims are made in the policy document. The tissue samples ‘voluntarily’ handed over will be subject to isotope analysis. The science is held out as the miracle solution to disputed nationality cases:

Isotope analysis is based on a forensic technique which was pioneered during the ‘Adam Torso’ case – a police case in which a child’s torso was found in the Thames too mutilated to offer any kind of identification… In this case the child’s body was traced to a small Nigerian town in an area about 100 x 50 km wide.

To be fair, the document does state that the Adam Torso case involved bone testing, and that even UKBA thinks that taking bone samples might be a little intrusive. What is not stated is that instead UKBA seem to be relying on a very different form of isotope analysis to that used in the Adam Torso case, which is far less accurate and cannot possibly help determine nationality with any useful degree of accuracy.

This first started to emerge in the blogosphere but is now hitting the mainstream media. There are also items about it here, here and here worth reading.

One would hope that even arts graduate immigration and other judges wouldn’t give any test results the time of day given all this adverse scientist reaction. One also has to wonder (a) how much money UKBA has spent on this and (b) what idiots thought it was a good idea and then what idiots approved it. And what subjects they studied at university.

I’ll end by noting how dishonest the policy document is. It very clearly seeks to suggest that the test results are far more accurate than they actually are. In nearly ten years of doing this work I can’t remember seeing clearer proof of UKBA deceit. This kind of debacle does the organisation no favours, to put it mildly.

Filed under: News, Policy

UKBA Inspectorate

I’ve been following with some interest the establishment of the snappily-entitled Office of the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (OCIUKBA to its friends). Like many initiatives to establish supposedly greater accountability for the Home Office, there has been some scepticism about this new institution. The early signs are rather promising, though.

John Vine

OCIUKBA is supposed to be an entirely independent organisation. There are now around 40 staff working there, many of whom have been recruited from UKBA but also from other parts of the civil service and various inspectorates. The Chief Inspector himself, a very genial (too genial?) man called John Vine, was previously a police force chief inspector.

So far there have been several inspections and two reports published. The annual report is due in October some time and should make interesting reading. The two reports that have been published were on a without-warning inspections of the Asylum Screening Unit at Liverpool and a pre-warned visit to the Entry Clearance operation at Rome.

The Liverpool ASU report doesn’t mention the two OCIUKBA inspectors that were apparently bitten by insects from the infested carpets and doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the mother with a young baby that checked in at 11.15am but had been overlooked until the counters closed at around 5pm and had no accommodation to go to. When the OCIUKBA team brought this to the attention of the UKBA staff, there was apparently an adequate but far from ideal panicked response, followed by excuses about this being exceptional, never happened before, etc etc. The material that did make it into the report was very critical of the layout and material conditions at the ASU, particularly about the lack of privacy available to people claiming asylum, but was mainly complementary about the professionalism of the staff. It is a little worrying that even with inspectors literally looking over their shoulders some of the UKBA staff were reported to act in an unprofessional manner – it rather suggests they don’t actually know how to behave properly. This was a small minority, though.

The Rome report is perhaps a little less interesting, but still worth taking a look. The inspection team took a sample of 100 files. The report is fairly positive, but highlights an embarrassing failure to grant visas for a legitimate invitation-only sporting event run by the British army. The report includes a short comment about the introduction of the Points Based System having ‘unintended consequences’ – a perfectly well qualified and highly skilled individual had been turned down under Tier 1 but the ECO said the application would have been allowed under the more flexible previous Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.

UKBA have also published responses to the inspections. A number of quick changes are being made at Liverpool ASU, including a ‘deep clean’ and replacement of some of the knackered old chairs, but proper improvements to deal with privacy issues will wait until 2011.

The big change is that UKBA staff now know that they might be inspected without warning at any time. The Liverpool ASU inspection is said to have sent shockwaves through the organisation. Some proper accountability can only be a good thing and should motivate UKBA to self-improve.

Filed under: PBS, Policy

Forced Marriage Unit warned Home Office of risks in increasing spouse visa age

Courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, I can exclusively report (I’ve never written that before!) that the Home Office has finally released the full research report it commissioned into the issue of forced marriages and the spouse visa age. I have previously posted on the research summary that had already been published.

The research was carried out between March 2006 and February 2007 in three locations – Birmingham, Manchester and Tower Hamlets. It set out to examine four main issues:

1. The impact/outcome of the recent increase the age of sponsorship/entry from 16 to 18 years;
2. The benefits and risks of increasing the age of sponsorship or entry to 18, 21 and 24;
3. The range of communities in which forced marriage happens; and
4. The factors which were perceived to increase or decrease the risk of forced marriages.

As can be seen from the issues, the research was commissioned to look into the effect on the existing increase in the spouse visa age and to look at the possible effects of future increases. The research strongly suggested that a further increase would be harmful to victims or potential victims of forced marriage (sections 10, 13.1). It also concluded that the no recourse to public funds policy is very harmful to victims of forced marriage (section 7.3.2).

So, what has the Home Office done? It has gone ahead and increased the visa age and maintained the no recourse to public funds policy, all in the name of helping to prevent forced marriages. The report was not published by the Home Office because, I quote “the report (rather than how the research was conducted) is not of sufficient quality to be published in the Home Office research series. The report contains unsubstantiated findings and what appear to be potentially misleading statements. It is also difficult to establish how individuals or groups/organisations have responded to certain questions.” So says Kate Hitchcock, Head of Managed Migration Research.

Having read the report, I find it is very difficult to understand this criticism. Section 10, on the visa age, looks scrupulously fair. None of the three survey groups (stakeholder groups, including Bradford police and the Forced Marriage Unit, forced marriage survivors and community focus groups) thought that increasing the visa age would be helpful to victims or potential victims and all thought it would be harmful. The most serious identified risk was that young people would be taken outside the UK until they had reached the new visa age, thereby completely removing them from any realistic possibility of access to help or support. Both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s own Forced Marriage Unit and the Home Office’s Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Sheffield considered that there were ’some benefits’ to increasing the visa age to 21 but there were ’substantial risks’ (page 62). IND Croydon thought there were no benefits at all to such an increase. These are the government’s own front-line workers and experts and they have been ignored.

Their opinions might be said to be ‘unsubstantiated’ but I can’t think of better qualified people than these three survey groups to offer an informed opinion. And I trust their judgment somewhat more than that of still Immigration Minister Phil Woolas.

Many of those surveyed also expressed the opinion that an increase in the spouse visa age would target certain communities to reduce immigration selectively. Given that in raising the spouse visa age the Home Office has gone against the only research that was available on the subject and has quietly dropped the other measures it was announced in July 2008 it would implement to prevent forced marriages, these fears were well founded. The measure is clearly a discriminatory one, in reality aimed at reducing immigration from certain communities but disguised as a way to reduce forced marriages.

Filed under: Policy, Spouse visa age

Dereliction of duty

There has been a noticeable trend recently for the Home Office to refuse applications but not to take enforcement action. Several lawyers have commented on this elsewhere, I’ve just come across a couple of cases and so has a colleague in chambers.

Where a person’s leave has already expired, if he or she makes a new immigration application there is no right of appeal to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal if the application is refused. This is because a refusal of leave to remain where there is no existing leave is not an appeal-able immigration decision.

In two recent examples, applications were made in time that would have generated a right of appeal. In one, too much money was paid for the fee, so the whole thing was rejected. I know. Bonkers. By the time the rejection was received, leave had expired and when the application was resubmitted it was refused with no right of appeal. In the other case it was a domestic violence application. The applicant claimed to be destitute and therefore exempt from the fee, but the Home Office rejected this assertion and therefore rejected the application purely on the basis of no fee being paid. Again, by the time the rejection was received, leave had expired and so when the re-submitted application was rejected there was no right of appeal.

Short of introducing some sensible rules on re-submitted applications and rights of appeal, what the Home Office should be doing in such cases is issuing removal directions to take enforcement action. The decision to make removal directions would generate a right of appeal, and the tribunal could then look at the merits of the case. As it is, UKBA is instead writing a letter saying (I paraphrase) ‘if you wouldn’t mind awfully, it would be nice if you left the country’.

Whichever way you look at it, this is woeful behaviour. It is a failure to take enforcement action against those who have no right to remain and it is also denying them a right of appeal to seek to prove their case. It’s bad for everyone.

Instead, privately paying clients and the Legal Services Commission end up paying immigration lawyers lots of money to bring judicial review applications that are almost certain to succeed. The Home Office must really love us.

Filed under: Policy, Work

Forced marriages and the new visa age

The Home Office recently increased the minimum age for both spouses to 21 if a foreign spouse is to enter the UK on a spouse visa. The same requirements apply to unmarried, same sex and civil partners.

As discussed previously on this blog, the justification given by the Home Office was that the change will help prevent forced marriages. Some very thin statistical evidence is cited for this claim, and the Home Office very lightly dismissed the concern that increasing the visa age would not stop foreign spouses coming in, it would force young settled men and women to move abroad instead, to be with their foreign spouses.

It turns out that the Home Office commissioned a respected team of specialist researchers to look into the question of whether raising the spouse visa age to 21 or 24 would help prevent forced marriages. The researchers did what sounds like some excellent work on the subject and found that forced marriage survivors and everyone else thought that the risks outweighed the benefits, Nand that there was no evidence at all to suggest that the previous rise in the visa age from 16 to 18 had done anything to prevent forced marriages. A summary of the findings is available [29/5/09: I've had to upload a saved version as the University of Bristol one vanished]. The risks were, amongst other things

“Increased risk of physical and psychological harm to victims and potential victims of forced marriage, which included young British women being taken abroad to marry and kept there forcibly until they were old enough to sponsor their spouses; entering the UK with false documentation; and implications for mental health, particularly attempted suicide and self-harm. The concern was that an increase in age could also prevent victims from accessing some potential sources of support, such as those provided via child protection legislation and education-based counselling support.”

It was also suggested the change would have a discriminatory effect and would adversely affect the human rights of those who entered into marriage by consent (the vast, vast majority).

These outcomes are the opposite of what the Home Office says that it hopes to achieve. Does the Home Office have access to some research results that suggest the above is all wrong? I think not. In truth, what has happened is that the Home Office commissioned the research, disagreed with the evidence and despite the risks to young people in this country and abroad have decided to go ahead with it anyway.

Oh, and the Home Office have decided not to publish the research in full. Evidence based policy making this most certainly is not.

Increased risk of physical and psychological harm to victims and potential victims

of forced marriage, which included young British women being taken abroad to

marry and kept there forcibly until they were old enough to sponsor their spouses;

entering the UK with false documentation; and implications for mental health,

particularly attempted suicide and self-harm. The concern was that an increase in

age could also prevent victims from accessing some potential sources of support,

such as those provided via child protection legislation and education-based

counselling su

Filed under: Immigration rules, Policy, Spouse visa age

Certificates of Approval

Just a quick post to highlight the fact that charges are no longer made by the Home Office for Certificate of Approval applications. The other old requirements to get Certificates of Approval still apply and are covered in an old post on this blog. This is relatively old news as the change was announced on 9 April 2009 applying with immediate effect.

I have railed before against the Home Office’s systematic disregard for the rule of law and inaction over cases they lose. What I only just found out about the Certificates of Approval change is that it was forced on the Home Office by yet more litigation. Someone (I’m not sure who) challenged the failure to respect the judgment of the House of Lords in Baiai, and the Home Office have conceded the case. Abandoning charging was apparently part of the consent order.

The Home Office announcement says that the Certificate of Approval policy is under review and hints that those who paid the fee may have it refunded. Keep watching the Home Office website for details.

I sometimes wonder if the Home Office secretly love immigration lawyers and like to make unnecessary work for us. They are currently forcing the development of a whole new area of satellite litigation: cases to force the Home Office to respect and implement old cases they already lost.

Filed under: Cases, Policy