Memo to all staff: Graduation Deportation Protocol

To: all staff.
From: university security and ceremony directorate
Subject: Graduation Ceremony protocol.

Colleagues, like every university, we have a formal procession at graduation. The students take their seats in the Grand Theatre and we staff march there in pairs from the ivory tower in all our finery, escorted by a chap of military bearing carrying a great heavy mace. The traffic stops as the townsfolk pause to admire us and (hopefully) aspire to one day join us.

Next year, thanks to the Home Secretary and her leadership aspirations, some alterations will have to be made to the pomp and circumstance.

Theresa May to 'kick out foreign graduates' in new immigration plans

• We will still parade through the streets, but we'll be accompanied by a phalanx of G4S security personnel (Mubenga Division), resplendent in their ceremonial body armour and steel toe-caps. The billy-clubs and handcuffs will be merely symbolic detail and the Mace of Office will be adapted to include a spring-loaded net to ensure full attendance. 
• Outside the Theatre, gleaming black transport will await our honoured overseas graduates, complete with blacked-out windows on each bespoke, individual cell. 
• Each bright young student will hear their names called and walk on stage to collect their degree certificates from the Vice-Chancellor. Enclosed in the scroll will be a heavy parchment copy of the student's extradition order, personally electronically signed by the Home Secretary wishing the lucky graduate a safe and speedy trip out of the country. 
• Before they leave the stage, an accountant in gold-trimmed robes will formally offer each student a card reader to settle any tuition fees and deportation costs while an appropriate song plays to cover the sounds of any churlish and undignified protests. 
• Staff are reminded that weeping is undignified and that higher education funding is now dependent on informing the authorities on any student or colleague suspected of a) being foreign b) holding unauthorised opinions. (Please note: annual appraisal will now take place in the basement. Please ensure that you bring a signed copy of your Extremism Disavowal form CTCH-22 and warm clothes).
• As the beaming, freshly-minted graduate leaves the stage, the Mubenga Corps will offer them a congratulatory headlock and escort them into the airport-bound black maria. On arrival any survivors will be given celebratory 'bumps' by their guards of honour and waved off to start a new life using their new-found skills somewhere else.

We trust these minor tweaks to the annual ceremonies meet your approval.

They come over here, taking our front pages…

I wonder what people would have said ten years ago when asked to describe a Romanian or Bulgarian. Perhaps some highly-informed people would have muttered darkly about Ceaucescu (Romania) or poisoned umbrellas (Bulgaria), mentioned Romania's origins as a Roman military veterans' resettlement colony (which is why Romanian is so close to Latin) or noted that even by the standards of the USSR, these countries were extremely repressive.

Now of course, thanks to the viciousness of the tabloid press and the briefings of the government, we all know that millions of Bulgarians and Romanians are riding donkeys to Dover ready to rob the UK blind both individually and via the benefits system. Don't we? That's certainly the impression given by the media which is happy to lie, distort and mislead in pursuit of a readership apparently consisting of paranoid, reactionary, gullible fools. Apparently it's perfectly OK for millions of British people to fan out across Europe in search of sun and cheap housing, but not for anyone else.

People of Britain: get over yourselves. Yes, life here can be great, but (and I hate to have to say this to you), your international reputation is rather poor. Having spent 400 years invading and ransacking other people's countries, and the last 50 bombing and subverting them whenever the US clicks its fingers, Abroad has formed the impression that life in the UK is just Not All That.

I've worked with, socialised with and lived with Romanians and Bulgarians for many years. Emigrants are usually a society's pioneers: hard-working, committed and determined. No doubt we see the best of a country's population when we associate with their exiles. Sure, they aren't perfect: at least one Romanian I know objects to the Daily Mail's coverage because it depicts 'Gypsies, not Romanians', which suggests – to put it mildly – that Romania has its own racial divisions too. It's weird, too. The Daily Express, Daily Mail and Telegraph are all huge supporters of the 'hard-working families' doing their best… as long as they aren't foreign. They're also big fans of the British Empire too, which was little more than heavily-armed illegal immigration on a global scale.

But why is the British press so racist (and stupid and opportunist, of course)? Does it really think so little of its readers that it can just airily ascribe this country's problems to 'them'? Are British people totally uninterested in the messy, complex, interesting realities of life in other countries? Sadly, they probably are: at least one of my local students had never heard of Wales, which can be glimpsed from the top floor of my office block. Even more shamefully, the tabloids are owned by the kind of people they disapprove of: Murdoch is an American citizen of Australian origin, the Telegraph's owners live like Bond baddies on a (tax-free) Channel Island. The Daily Mail's owner is French (but only for tax purposes) while Richard Desmond of the Express is a leading member of the Jewish community and should know better about how migrants and religious minorities have been treated. In particular, the above headline ('Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britain) could just as easily be applied to Jews: Jewish courts are recognised by the British legal system, which I generally think is a good thing. Shame Mr Desmond can't extend this to Islamic citizens.

This is probably why there's not a single report in the UK press about the so-called 'Bulgarian Spring', going on right now after Plamen Goranov set himself alight in protest at the government's corruption and incompetence. But that doesn't suit the narrative. Let's just perpetuate vicious, mean stereotypes, egged on by politicians who know that the way to retain power is to appeal to the electorate's lowest impulse. What a way to run a country.

Good article on Bulgaria, immigration discourse and media filters here, by one of our graduates. With thanks to BC for the tip.

London Met: it couldn't happen here… could it?

London Met university has lost its state licence to sponsor visa applications by non-EU students: under the system, the government waived its duty to scrutinise applications on the understanding that the university would do the work, a scheme disguised as a streamlined service to students and institutions. Essentially, this means it can't recruit any more, and every single one of its current 3000 extra-EU students will be deported, because Borders Agency checks revealed that 25% of them had no leave to remain here, an unspecified proportion do not have sufficiently good English to manage a course, and the university hasn't been tracking lecture attendance.

The fear is that the university system is being exploited as a soft way to immigrate into the UK - sign up for a course, then melt away. I suspect it's not that much of a problem, especially at university level. These students are paying £13,000 per year for their degrees, and there are cheaper ways to get here. No doubt there's some abuse, but not too much.

The universities are in a difficult position: overseas students' fees subsidise those of the home students, though of course the new regime in which the home student takes on a lifetime of debt may alter the ratios a little. I don't suppose there's a university that looks too closely at their overseas recruitment procedures. We all know that in early September, we welcome hundreds of students with IELTS Level 6 English proficiency courses who can hardly string a sentence together. Someone's passing these tests, and it's not always the student sitting in front of us. Usually they're quite intelligent enough to pick up enough English to get through the course, and there's no benefit to prying too closely. Quite frankly, we need the money, and the recruitment agents have no incentive to fail people at their end.

More widely, I resent being turned into either a salesman for an educational 'product', or into a border guard. London Met wouldn't have this problem if the state took its own responsibilities seriously. Visa sponsorship (which applies in limited numbers to staff too: I've twice had to pressure the university on behalf of colleagues faced with deportation) was sold to universities as a way of making international recruitment easier in the pursuit of UK Degrees Plc. Then the tabloid sensibilities of the anti-immigration lobby took over and we're suddenly expected to police these students - to track their visa status and march them into our offices if they've missed a lecture. It's a classic case of market forces meeting neoliberal, outsourcing state ideology.

My home and EU students don't have to attend lectures compulsorily. It would be better for most of them if they did, but they have to be given the chance to work independently, or to fail. My own lecturers made this clear in lecture 1, first year: turn up, or don't turn up, they said - managing your own development is part of being an adult. I try to understand the myriad causes behind non-attendance, and tailor my support according to the student's position. Someone juggling jobs, children and study gets support. Someone too stoned to attend who suddenly demands all my time when panic sets in gets rather less sympathy. But in neither case do I feel the hand of the state on my shoulder. I deeply resent being told that my class registers (which I keep so that I can spot patterns of attendance/non-attendance) form part of the security state's defence against the Foreign Hordes (especially as the UK's history is largely one of ignoring everybody else's borders).

There's fault on all sides. There are some fraudulent enrolments. There are corrupt recruitment agents, paid on commission and running a neat sideline in forging test scores or providing skilled linguists to pass tests, and there are universities forced to marketise and which therefore have no incentive to look to closely, allied with a natural and admirable reluctance to become an outsourced arm of the state's shambolic immigration agencies.

In any case, this crackdown won't work: those hardworking students who turn up to lectures will politely, if resentfully, leave the country when the letter comes - careers and educations wrecked. Those who were gaming the system will have already disappeared. The result will be injustice to individuals and a worldwide recognition that the British approach consists of hypocrisy, high-handedness and willingness to pander to newspaper headlines. It'll look like something has been done, but it won't be the right thing, on closer inspection. Where will all those potential students go? Elsewhere, and we'll be all the poorer for it.

(PS: I don't have much sympathy for LMU as an institution: this is the university which wants to outsource most of its activities and transfer its staff to some dodgy subsidiary company).

Won't somebody rid me of this troublesome MP?

Well, Paul Uppal's back from his extended holiday from his responsibilities. Sadly, he's far from refreshed. Once again, he's hawking jaded and predictable talking points around like a child who's learned to use a potty.

Some years ago, a prominent immigration lawyer told me that the two main drivers of immigration are, first, the perception—right or wrong—that we have an overtly generous welfare system in the UK; and secondly, lax human rights legislation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in this statement and through our welfare reforms, we are tackling those issues head-on?
The shadow Home Secretary talked about a bond. Does my right hon. Friend not find that ironic and perhaps politically opportunistic, given that, when in power, Labour considered such a measure but chose to put it to one side, but in opposition they sing a different tune?

Oh dear. I've suddenly got Morrissey's 'Asian Rut' song going round my head. It's not pleasant. Why Morrissey? Because like Uppal, Morrissey's the son of immigrants who has somehow managed to find common cause with fascists like the BNP and their Conservative fellow-travellers. There's something utterly sickening about a man casually raising suspicion of immigrants for political advantage in general - but doing so after having been the beneficiary of a humane immigration policy.

Let's note in passing that Uppal always has a useful source to quote - a constituent who uses Parliamentary language to express opinions identical to Uppal's, for instance. Very convenient.

I like the 'right or wrong' bit (and for the sake of kindness, let's assume the 'overtly' is a transcription error rather than one of vocabulary). It makes him look impartial, when we all know very well that he means 'wrong'. For information, here's what refugees are entitled to:

• Almost all asylum seekers are not allowed to work and are forced to rely on state support – this can be as little as £5 a day to live on.

• Asylum seekers do not jump the queue for council housing and they cannot choose where they live.
 The accommodation allocated to them is not paid for by the local council. It is nearly always ‘hard to let’ properties, where other people do not want to live.

And here's what immigrants (non-EU ones have to prove they've got a large chunk of cash before they arrive) may claim:

anyone who does not have ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain)or British citizenship will have "no recourse to public funds" marked in their passports; this includes visitors, people on spouse visas, students, work visa holders, etc. However, once someone has ILR they have the same entitlements as British citizens in the same circumstances, they can access JSA, Housing Benefit, go on the council waiting list, etc.

OK? Not exactly the land of milk and honey.

Moving on. What exactly is a 'lax' human right? Is it Britain's recognition that all humans have the right to life, safety and a family? Which rights, exactly, would he like to withdraw? Shelter from torture? From all of us? Or just the vulnerable? Does he want to withdraw his own parents' human rights? Or just some nebulous 'others'?

I'd have thought that the 'main drivers' of immigration to the UK are exactly the same reasons which brought his parents here. The British Empire (I notice Uppal and his friends never condemn that violent and unwelcome mass movement of people to other peoples' countries) spread English round the globe and sucked in the labour and goods of its constituent nations. When it withdrew, people like Paul's parents found themselves a long way from their national origins and were naturally drawn to the colonial power because it was rich. Personally, I think the UK should be paying reparations to the countries it looted, and abandoned without industry, economies and democratic government.

I'm sorry to be so personal, but I've got to, provoked by Paul's cynicism. He make no distinction between refugees and economic migrants - but nor would I wish to. My family is partly made up of economic immigrants from Ireland. Given what the UK did to Ireland and other countries, you could argue that we're owed something. More importantly, migrants contribute hugely to the economy - Paul's made millions and I'll presume - for the sake of argument - that he pays tax. Without migration, Paul wouldn't be here (I'll resist the obvious point).

What the Tories want to do is impose a massive cash bond on immigrants. The idea is that we keep out the poor. I think this is sickening. Many of the most innovative and creative contributors to society have been dirt poor, and worked their way up. Would Paul's parents have got in if they'd had to find £19,000?

Even more so than usual, I find Uppal's behaviour sickening and cynical. To pull up the ladder behind him in pursuit of BNP votes is his lowest point yet. I hope his constituents - many of them poor, hardworking Asians - agree with me.

Take the citizenship test

Have a go at this: a selection of the questions asked of immigrants seeking UK citizenship. I am ashamed to admit that, despite my addiction to news, politics, history and culture, I only managed 18 out of 24 (wrong on 8, 9, 10, 14, 18 and 24). Thankfully, my Irish passport means you can't get rid of me. Mwahhahahahahahahahaha etc. I wonder how UK citizens would fare.

Post your scores in the comments box.

Call-Me-Dave's Shop A Minority Wheeze

Anyone else choke into their cornflakes over the headline 'Cameron Urges Public To Report Suspected Illegal Immigrants' this morning?

As I read it, I could hear crowds chanting 'Juden Raus', smashing glass and shifty phone calls. How, exactly, are you meant to tell who is an 'illegal' immigrant, who is a 'legal' immigrant and who is a refugee? My guess is that Daily Mail readers and other racists will be making anonymous calls when black people move into their streets. Gangs of EDL supporters measuring noses and

Imagine the possibilities for abuse. One quick call and the sweatshop owner gets rid of his uppity workforce. Neighbourly disputes escalated by a 4 a.m. raid, mistaken or otherwise. I could get rid of students to whom I take a dislike, and they could do the same to me.

This is vicious lunacy. We all know there are illegal immigrants in this country. Many businesses depend on their slave labour. But the way to deal with it is certainly not to encourage a culture of vigilante mobs, anonymous informers and spies. The public isn't informed enough - nor should it be inclined - to know who is legal and who isn't. I suspect most of us don't understand the EU freedom of movement laws, let alone the refugee legislation. There's a border authority which exists to apply the immigration laws If citizens do start flooding the police with calls, the system will collapse under the weight of xenophobic paranoia.

There's only one explanation for raising such an impractical, dangerous notion: David Cameron thinks there are votes in raising lynch mobs and blaming the nation's ills on immigrants rather than speculators and their pet politicians.

How politics works

I'm not really enjoying the squabble between Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Home Secretary Theresa May over whether or not an immigrant was (as she claimed) or was not (as he said) given leave to remain in the UK 'because he had a pet cat' nearly as much as I should be.

"The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – I am not making this up – he had a pet cat."

Obviously, it's not true: the cat was mentioned in court as a jokey anecdote showing that the man in question really had settled down in a family relationship rather than in a marriage of convenience. It's the kind of moronic claim which appears in the Mail, the Express or sadly the Telegraph these days: if it fits your worldview, you splutter and rave down at the golf club. If it doesn't, you start to wonder whether the judicial system is just possibly more intelligent and complex than it's being presented by a politician trying to make a name for herself at a party conference.

What depresses me though is the post-speech spinning. Newsnight, for instance, featured Damian Green, some kind of ministerial flunky, who claimed that a) both May and Clarke were both right although May was most right, and b) that the whole affair was trivial and that there were far more important abuses of the immigration system which deserved attention.

Fair enough. So why did his boss decide to caricature the immigration laws and the courts (disgracefully) by telling stories about cats, on live television? The media didn't trivialise this debate - the government did, for cynical and racist political purposes. Meanwhile, we're in the worst depression for 8 years.

Another three and a half years of this…

Immigrants: what have they ever done for us, eh?

Feorag NicBhride (Scots Gaelic for 'Squirrel'!) has quite a lengthy list. It includes basic foods, drinks, the language, law, cutlery, the alphabet, tea, music,  sport, music, politics, religion, the built environment, business, culture…

Sorry, 'English' racists, you're descended from immigrants too, and (brilliantly) there's no way to distinguish between any of the people on these islands: we're pretty much all Celto-Norman-Saxon-with lots of other bits.

This isn't to say that there aren't cultural differences which can be celebrated and enjoyed. But it's a useful reminder that there's no point at which anyone can say there was a 'pure' people or culture no matter what Nick Griffin or the GAA or anybody else says. Quite often the process of hybridisation was violent or involuntary. Get over it.

(Disclosure: I wander the world with an Irish passport).

How to calculate social value

The new visa system for immigrants is very scary indeed.

If you have an MBA or a £150,000 salary, you're in at Tier 1: immediate visa. If you have a PhD and an academic salary, you're Tier 2: limit of 20,000 people across all industry.

So to sum up: if you're one of the thrusting business monkeys with an expensive qualification in the kind of economics which bankrupted the entire country, come on in. George Bush has an MBA.

On the other hand, if you're a young academic with a PhD, which in itself announces that you've made a clear contribution to your field (and most brilliant books and amazing discoveries are made early in a researcher's career), you can sod off, however many things you might invent and students you might inspire.

The Hegemon is suffering already from the reduction in visa sponsorships it's allowed.

Clearly, Britain's on the right track.

In the Wildersness

 A while back, I had some fun at the expense of Nazi Alan B'stard lookalike, Geert Wilders, who was turned away from the UK for being a grubby little racist demagogue.

Now he's back for a bit of nose-rubbing with British scum - the UK Borders/Immigration service has decreed that he's allowed in - presumably on the basis that one more racist won't make that much difference.

No doubt Mr Wilders will claim that he's not racist, he just hates Muslims. In that case, I assume that his manifesto will call for the expulsion of all white Dutch converts to Islam. It's just too glib - like Christianity, Judaism and all the other faiths, there are groupings and sects ranging from the token to the fanatic, and there are individuals ranging from the Mass-every-day (my mother) to the weddings and funerals only brigade. Wilders, however, agglomerates all Muslims into one giant, scary THEM, despite the evidence that immigrant and minority groups tend to take on the attitudes of the country to which they move.

One more thing: Wilders lives in the Netherlands. Why can't he take the train to the UK? It takes 2-3 hours, whereas the plane requires two hours check-in, baggage reclaim, travel in to the city. His country will sink first of the European states!

We are a charitable lot

In the middle of another story, here's an astonishing statistic, if true:

The number of students prevented by their parents from attending sex education classes increased during the Iraq war, when many Muslim families immigrated to Sweden. The Scandinavian country, with 10 million inhabitants, granted full refugee status to 24,799 Iraqis between 2003 and 2007, compared with 260 by Britain.

How astonishingly mean-spirited. The UK invades a country on a false pretext, having previously armed and encouraged its dictator, wreaking havoc and a concomitant civil war, then found room to accept only 260 individuals, despite the immense hardship. Meanwhile a much smaller country with no global pretensions and no responsibility for the war opens its doors to a much greater proportion of refugees.

Förlåt, Sweden!

Support the SOAS cleaners!

SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London. Given that name, you'd think it would be good on multiculturalism.

You'd be wrong: the private cleaning contractor ISS (typical - give the dirty work to some grasping gangmaster), the university and the police got together to imprison and interrogate the cleaning staff about their immigration status - at their place of work. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they waited until the end of the shift, to extract a few hours work without interruption. In response, the students have occupied the building.

OK, you might object to the presence of undocumented migrants working here. That would be fine, if it wasn't the case that illegal labour pays our way. We rely on slave labour all round the world to make cheap goods for us. Even the expensive goods, such as my lovely old Mac, are made in the cheapest, most exploitative conditions available to corporations. How many UK citizens do you know who deliver pizzas, sell kebabs, clean your offices? These things are too cheap because we don't want to pay people properly, especially those whom we never meet. My institution, at least, pays its cleaners direct - and get good service in return for proper conditions.

By contrast, cleaning, especially in London, is the preserve of the poorest, the most desperate. When they start to agitate about illegal pay levels, dangerous conditions, or unreasonable burdens, their employers sack them or, if they're feeling particularly vindictive, call the immigration service, as has happened in this case.

Yes, local people should have jobs - but a lot won't take 'menial' work, and many more won't take illegally-paid jobs (the minimum wage is £5.73, in case you want to check your wage packet) on principle, which is quite right. This country owes its colonial victims a lot more than £5+ an hour - and we need to run our economy justly and fairly. Until this happens, unscrupulous companies will employ the desperate to do what we won't, then cast them aside. Support the SOAS cleaners!

Immigration + Daily Mail = pure lying poison

As if anyone needs more evidence of this paper's corrosive influence on journalism, Mailwatch fillets the Mail's disgraceful dependence on nasty little pressure groups and their press releases which it then distorts even further to scare selfish racists (i.e. their core readers).