As Theresa May ends her leadership of the Conservative Party, amid universal condemnation of her Brexit failures, it is timely to reflect on perhaps the most toxic element of her six years at the Home Office and three as prime minister.
In her first major speech on immigration in November, 2010, May promised to reduce numbers overall by “weeding out those who do not deserve to be allowed in.” Four-and-a-half years later she told The Telegraph of her intention “to create here in Britain a really hostile environment”. While this was claimed to be aimed at ‘illegal’ immigrants, its effect is to scapegoat vulnerable people, to blame them for the consequences of Tory austerity measures, to appease the hard right in her party and among her supporters at the ballot box: crucially to contain the rise of Ukip, and now Brexit.
The effects of the hostile environment on the Windrush generation have been well-documented, as have May’s ‘go home vans’ that even Nigel Farage found “nasty” and “unpleasant”. Less well-known are the 27,000 people in detention, and the asylum-seekers living in sub-standard accommodation infested with vermin. In deprived areas, there are none apparently in Theresa May’s Maidenhead constituency. With no right to work, if eventually granted refugee status they are often forced into homelessness and reliance on food banks.
Other consequences have been pressure on the NHS to hand over confidential data to the Home Office, reports of permanent health complications and death, and in education, hungry children denied free school meals and students from predominantly Muslim countries having to register with the police within a week of arriving. Women have also been adversely affected, with refusal to remain in the UK after domestic violence doubling between 2012 and 2016, following the implementation of Mays family legislation.
Almost invisible are those families divided under the Minimum Income Rule (MIR). I love my foreign spouse is a Facebook forum established to enable mutual support in the wake of the 2012 rules. The largest of several such groups, it has been growing exponentially and currently has nearly 16,000 members. Under the MIR, any British person who falls in love with someone from somewhere outside the EU needs to earn at least £18,600 a year – otherwise they face years of separation, even if they are married or in a civil partnership. Overall, the total costs to eventually get UK citizenship, which takes at least five years, are phenomenal.
In my own case, for my wife and step-daughter this amounted to nearly £47000 over a seven year period. In addition to visa costs and solicitors fees, this admittedly included flights, hotels and subsistence, since you have to apply for certain visas from countries of origin. As an academic, I was able to get loans, impossible for those on average incomes, so we could stay together as much as possible, and minimise our life as a ‘Skype family’ (the only available evidence of the number of children in families where communication with at least one family member was by Skype revealed over 15,000 children in 2015).
The rules are obviously classist, telling nearly 60% of us that we don’t earn enough to build a life with someone we love. But they are racist and sexist, too. In a world of structural racism and sexism, imposing a fixed income threshold means actively discriminating against anyone who is not a white man. White women are 30% less likely than their male counterparts to be able to marry a partner from outside the EU, and women of colour are penalised still further.
The emotional costs can outweigh the financial. I know how far the hostility goes. Having had to ‘prove’ to a faceless Home Office caseworker that we were not in a sham marriage, having to see my step-daughter cry at the airport because she was born in the ‘wrong’ country, and when seriously ill in hospital in south-east Asia, hearing from the British Embassy that my wife could visit me, but only if on return of her passport, she started her visa application all over again.
All this is in total contradiction to the centrality of ‘the family in Tory ideology and to May’s ridiculous claim that what guides her every day are ‘the interests of ordinary working families’. In reality, it represents a full frontal assault on family life. As May leaves office, we must begin to tackle and end a hostility that has permeated every aspect of our society and inject humanity and heart back into our immigration system.
Mike Cole is a professor of education at the University of East London and author of Theresa May, The Hostile Environment and Public Pedagogies of Hate and Threat: The Case for a Future Without Borders