By Dipankar De Sarkar
London : A British government proposal announced Tuesday to charge a deposit of 1,000 pounds for visitors to Britain does not go far enough to deter illegal immigration, a section of British Asians said.
“The bond should be at least for 10,000 pounds – many people pay immigration touts tens of thousands to come over illegally,” said Harmander Singh of Sikhs in England (SIE), a social policy thinktank.
Singh, who was involved in the consultation process leading up to the announcement of the proposal, also came out against proposals to outsource services for vetting people wanting to visit Britain.
“It’s a bad idea,” he told IANS. “In many countries, the process of vetting of visa applications suffers from corrupt practices.”
His comments received backing from some other Asians, who also suggested that visitors should also be made to take out compulsory health insurance because some visitors stayed back illegally and made use of the state-funded National Health Service (NHS), which is a free-to-use service that is paid for by British taxpayers.
“If you haven’t got the money, don’t come here,” a woman who gave her name as Kanta told BBC Asian Network radio from Birmingham, a mid-England city with a large Asian population.
But some Asians said the 1000-pound deposit was better than nothing. “This will stop dodgy employers from smuggling in priests and restaurant chefs,” said one.
The proposals by the British government, which has come under consistent attack from the opposition Tories for its immigration policies, concern visitors from the outside the 27-nation European Union region.
The proposals seek to lower the maximum period of stay from six to three months and consider two new visas – one for ‘business and specialist’ visits, and the other for events such as the Olympic games.
Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath recently asked the British government to consider ways to make it easier for IT workers to visit Britain on short-term assignments.
The proposals, which will now be discussed for another three months, seem to have opened up a divide between many long-term British Asians – especially second or third generation Asians – and those who are in Britain on short-term visas, such as Indian engineer working in the information technology sector.
Many long-term settlers feel that a bond of 1,000 pounds will not stop those who are determined to abuse the system, but will end up deterring law-abiding visitors with no intention of overstaying their tourist visa.
“We are not against legal immigrants. Legal immigration is good for Britain,” Singh told IANS.
He said the Britain immigration system currently was open to abuse – illegal immigrants as well as asylum seekers went underground and stayed undetected for a few years, before benefiting from government amnesties.
A report published Monday said Britain would have seen slower growth and higher inflation, had it not been for the recent wave of immigration.
The Ernst and Young ITEM Club also said the Britain would grow by 3 percent a year if immigration continued to rise at the same rate as in the past two years.
Foreign-born workers appear to have filled about two-thirds of new UK jobs between 2002 and 2006, the report said.
The ITEM Club estimates 1.5 million immigrants have arrived since 1997.
However, the report also points out that the growth of immigration may have also increased unemployment among young British workers.
“Given the age and skill profile of many of the new immigrants, it is possible that ‘native’ youngsters may have been losing out in the battle for entry-level jobs,” it said.
Foreign-born workers now account for 11 percent of the workforce, ITEM said, while immigrants from eight new European Union countries made up 37 percent of new arrivals in 2006.