Bashing immigrants and asylum seekers has become a sordid pastime for this government – and the purpose of it is clear

The Tories want to strip immigrants and asylum seekers of the right to challenge deportation orders in the High Court – it laughs in the face of the stated notion of British values

In yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, the government returned to ground where they are simultaneously at their most comfortable and most shameful: bashing immigrants and asylum seekers. Some of the most vulnerable within our society.

This time, the objective is to strip immigrants and asylum seekers of the right to challenge deportation orders in the High Court, under a new crackdown to speed up “removals”. The plan, briefed by a government source, is to stamp out “hopeless claims that have already been adjudicated by tribunal judges which frustrate removals at the last minute”.

The purpose of the right to challenge anything in any court or tribunal is surely to ensure an injustice is not allowed to prevail. British governments of times gone by would have championed this right to the hilt. The government’s move to attack it laughs in the face of the stated notion of British values.

The synonymising of immigrants and asylum seekers with all that is wrong and evil within our society forms a large part of the “war on woke” or “culture wars”. The political purpose of all of this is clear. If it was not popular this government would not be doing it. What is often forgotten, though, is its dehumanising effect.

I will reveal something I probably shouldn’t: I know people who have lived in this country illegally. And all of them are good people. Very good people. Industrious, intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful. They care for our elderly, help us give birth to our young, they stack our shops, they mentor our youth, they clean our homes and offices, they drive our taxis and yes, some even create jobs and wealth.

They are our friends, our family and sometimes even our foes. But one thing they never ever are, is less than us. They are not less human, less worthy or even dare I say – on everything except paper – less British.

I know people who have lived in this country without status and nevertheless modelled British values and love absolutely everything about this country more than I and most other naturally born British people do. The only difference between them and, say, you or I, is that they don’t have a government issued sheet of paper validating them as British.

As a result of lacking that validation, some of these people spent years or even decades afraid to go to a doctor or a dentist. They lived in perpetual fear that their entire lives would be uprooted in the blink of an eye either by the state or by avoidable illness.

I also know undocumented Britons who have been deported. Every time I go to Lagos I go to a street called Adeniran Ogunsanya (in an area called Surulere) to do a bit of shopping. The best part of a decade ago, when getting out of a car, I heard a distinctly East London accent say, “bruv, can you help me out? No shame: anything will help me”. I turned round and saw a guy who sounded and seemed perfectly British. He looked completely filthy. He had been deported and had no family to go to so he had resorted to begging on the streets.

When we speak of illegal immigrants, the tone of the conversation often forgets that these are real people. Real people with hopes, dreams, fears, good and bad sides like the rest of us. The dehumanisation is total to the point where the people deporting them swear at them, call them racially derogatory terms and, in some situations, kill them.

From 2008-2016 Boris Johnson was the “amnesty for illegal immigrants” mayor of London. In fact, responding to a question in 2019 from Ealing MP Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central & Acton, Johnson expressed interest in an amnesty. And at a press conference this year he said: “When people have been here for a very long time and haven’t fallen foul of the law, then it makes sense to try to regularise their status.”

Boris Johnson has a fantastic amount of political capital and a huge majority in parliament. He has truly paid the cost to be the boss. If he wanted to push through an amnesty to regularise undocumented Britons it wouldn’t take much effort. And it would be the single best thing he ever did in his political life. Instead, thus far, he has reduced people who are British everywhere but on paper to “culture war” fodder.

It’s a sad reality that even manufactured, imaginary “wars” have real life victims.

Nels Abbey is a writer and media executive based in London. His debut book, ‘Think Like A White Man’, is out now