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Originally Posted by Chris
I’m not sufficiently anorak to know for certain, however I suspect if the actual intention is to grant the SoS power to decide tougher rules on who can remain in the country, then the prior 7 clauses are entirely redundant in the main body of the act and would probably be deleted during the legislation’s passage through parliament. They belong in the accompanying Immigration Rules, which are variable by order of the SoS. Which rather calls into question why they’re even there in the draft Bill.
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The way I read the bill is that these are the initial criteria by which it can be revoked, and then they can change it. It doesn't seem better for Parliament to leave it up to the SoS on who'll get their ILR revoked. I would say that's even worse, but since the initial reasons are so broad - anything earning less than £38,000 for more than 6 months - then I am not sure how much worse it could be.
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My suspicion is that it’s grandstanding, an advert for Tory tough-talking designed to slash the tyres of Reform’s battle bus.
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Well, it almost certainly is because this wouldn't work in practice.
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I do think we need to be tougher on who gets ILR. I also do think we need to be able to revoke ILR. I simply don’t accept that we have to live forever with the social consequences of poor - possibly pernicious - immigration policy aimed at engineering radical social and cultural change in this country.
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Then those reasons should be specified at the time of ILR being implemented. If it can be taken away, those who receive it should be told how that could happen. They might make different decisions if they were.
We're talking about people who have built their lives here based on an agreement they had with the British Government, which told them they could do so. Had careers, families, purchased homes and even then retired. In several cases, this might now be the only home and community they have.
That is why, even if we're all agreed this is unlikely to happen, it's still a cruel thing to play with for political stunts. We're talking of millions of people who, in theory, have been told they're one election away from getting the boot. People who were told this was their home and had the legal agreement to back that up.
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Also, if polling you’ve seen doesn’t show public support for this, in what sense can you think (as you indicated earlier) that you don’t like what the country’s becoming - because you don’t seem to think that’s what it actually is becoming?
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I don't think we've become a country that supports mass deportation, but I don't like that it's the Conservative Party proposing it. I think that itself is a significant moment. The lives of millions of people in this country have become an abstraction to the point that the Tory Party can throw the idea of deporting them with the main pushback people that they probably won't actually do it because it's too difficult. The fact that today these people and their families might be concerned about their future is just seen as a complete irrelevance. The vast majority of them will have done nothing but what we asked of them.