Opinion - Editorials   

Welcome relief

The Home Office in the United Kingdom has now made it clear to worried migrant professionals that it will not appeal against a court ruling halting the implementation of changes to the immigration rules that could have forced several of them to leave the country. The British government’s tactical retreat will be of great relief to thousands of highly skilled professionals, a bulk of whom are Indians, who would have faced the prospect of deportation under the new rule s introduced in November 2006. The English High Court had ruled that giving retrospective effect to the changes in the British Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) would be unlawful and discriminatory, as the new rules would have required those HSMP workers already in the country to file fresh applications under an altered scheme, to stay on. This insistence on having these workers re-apply under a new points-based system was seen as grossly unfair, especially as this talented and highly skilled community of professionals had entered the U.K. under the HSMP that came into effect in 2002. The HSMP beneficiaries would have lost their right to stay after their contracts expired. The High Court in its verdict had noted sharply that it was not open to the government to “alter the terms and conditions” of an old scheme. The judge, Sir George Newman, also stated that HSMP beneficiaries, some 49,000 according to the plaintiffs, faced an ‘ethnic penalty,’ presumably because of racial discrimination in Britain. But now thanks to the court ruling and the Home Office decision not to appeal against it, HSMP workers still in the country can now apply for extension, and campaigners intend to seek a right of return for those who have left the U.K. since the November 2006 amendment.

This stand-off highlights afresh the discriminatory attitude of the U.K. and other Western governments towards immigration. There is an inherent unfairness in the attitude of many industrial countries which do not hesitate to tap into the talent available in the developing world but are reluctant to acknowledge the valuable contributions made to their societies by this highly skilled pool of migrant professionals. It is time that Western societies redress this anomaly. The U.K. already has laws banning retrospective legislation, namely the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights; but, on immigration, it seems to have fewer scruples over retrospective lawmaking. The double standards in respect of the treatment of migrant labour must be brought to an end. Immigrant workers and professionals from the developing world must be treated on a par with their counterparts from the European Union.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Pulled up short
Welcome relief
Reading the Afghan equations correctly
A friendship train back on the rails after four decades
New cricket, old nationalism
Corrections and clarifications
Wall of shame
Reservation debate

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu