Illegal immigration: Has the 'hostile environment' worked?

BBC Reality Check looks at the effects of the hostile environment policy.

Deportation targets, landlord checks, bank account freezes - have the policies that caught out the legally-resident Windrush generation actually worked to tackle illegal immigration?

A row over whether removal targets were or weren't being used by the Home Office became the latest in a series of unknowns, from exactly how many people might have been affected to whether other communities could find themselves in the same position.

What targets?

Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Wednesday insisted immigration removal targets did not exist, before later confirming that they had been used for "internal performance management". A leaked memo has since suggested she was told of their existence.

Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, told BBC Reality Check that every civil service department sets targets against which it measures its performance. Problems only arose because of a "pressure to detect and remove as many people as we possibly can", she said.

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Laws introduced over the past five years were designed to create a "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants - but it has become clear over the past weeks that some people living here legally have fallen foul of these measures because they don't have the right paperwork.

Ms Rudd told Parliament on Thursday that: "Everyone in this House agrees that this group were here legally, but also that people who are here illegally should be treated differently from legal migrants."

The hostile environment

• Private landlords are required to check the immigration status of their tenants, under a rule known as "right to rent"
• The NHS also has to carry out checks as part of its legal duty to identify and charge patients who don't qualify for free medical care for their treatment
• The Home Office has been given greater powers to investigate and prevent "sham marriages"
• The driving licence authority has been given powers to restrict migrants' access to licences
• Banks and building societies must conduct checks of the immigration status of their customers
• Employers have to check their workers' immigration status and face large fines or even prison if they don't

Despite these policies and removal targets, the number of deportations and detentions has been falling.

Part of the intention of these policies was to make life difficult enough for people living in the UK illegally so that they would leave of their own accord.

But Ms Moreton says the falling number of detentions and deportations is largely explained by cuts to the number of spaces in detention centres which mean people can't be detained, and then abscond before they can be deported.

from BBC News - Home https://ift.tt/2FnoHzd