Immigration management in crisis
From Mr David Forbes
Madam, — While all the attention in immigration seems to be falling on external issues, such as stopping the flow of small-boat arrivals, closing down hotels, and creating draconian deterrent measures imported from Denmark, little is being said about the internal crisis that immigration practitioners like me are facing with extraordinary delays in decision-making and their effect on clients.
As UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) and Foreign National Offenders Removal Command (FNORC) Command now say that there are no service standards for decision-delivery, and the average decision waiting time is 18 months (as reported to us by MPs recently), it may just be that the biggest problem in immigration today lies in the management of the immigration service itself.
UKVI and FNORC are just not managing, and the problem is exacerbated by a parallel gridlock in the immigration appeal tribunals: appeals are taking an average of 15 months to reach a judge.
This issue has been sidelined by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, in favour of the headline-grabbing Denmark solutions aimed at appeasing public opinion and asserting the power of the executive over the rule of law. The latest insult to asylum-seekers, refugees, and migrants is a pamphlet targeting them as socially and morally inferior to the population as a whole.
In all this, my immigration micro-entity has acquired a large portfolio of clients who are a small sample of that huge group, which seems to have been completely forgotten in the current proposed reforms. We refer to the 170,000 or more who are on the already existing ten-year route, and a sub-set who are on a still-longer route resulting from irrational time penalties whereby a person who misses the 14-day window for renewal forfeits the entirety of the years already accumulated and has to return to the starting line. We are engaging with several such “re-started” people and cannot tell them when justice will be restored, if ever.
People on this route also suffer from anomalies, such as effective double taxation arising from the imposition of draconian fees (almost £4000 per individual two-and-a half-yearly renewal, even if they are in a family group) and ever more complicated and stringent fee-waiver arrangements, which result, in effect, in double applications for each renewal if you are unable to pay the government fee in time, and mountains of UKVI requests for clarification.
A big anomaly, too, is the fact that the UKVI’s own long decision-making delays in implementing the four renewals are effectively added on as extra time, so that, in most cases, the last renewal of two-and-a-half years falls barely a few months from the end of the ten years when settlement is due, meaning an effective doubling of the weight of fees falling on each individual, and so a need to “benefit” from two years’ extra time in order to save enough money to apply for settlement, there being no fee waiver at that stage.
This group’s biggest issue with delay is that their jobs and benefits are on the line, because, while they are waiting endlessly for a decision, there is no immigration share code proving their ongoing entitlement to work and benefits; so loss of jobs and/or benefits is a constant threat.
Similarly, for those who have won an appeal allowing them to move on in their situation, there is no service standard for Home Office implementation of a judge’s decision. We have one client who has been waiting nearly ten months, to date, for the FNORC to release him from his asylum accommodation and let him move on with his life at the bidding of a Tribunal Judge supported by the Upper Tribunal.
In the course of this century, the Immigration and Nationality Department and the UK Border Agency have come and gone. The UKVI and FNORC urgently need to go or be radically reformed so that “normal service can be resumed.” This should be the priority, not creating ever longer routes to settlement and certainly not a kind of collective slandering of refugees and migrant care workers.
DAVID FORBES
Lifeline Options, Birmingham
Responses to the sudden death of Dr Jason Arday
From the Revd Dr David Isiorho
Madam, — We talk a lot about “Black Lives Matter”, but what does that mean to the so called white indigenous population of the UK? Sadly, I don’t think Black lives do matter to a lot of people.
The person who cleans my house was very upset about the murder of Ann Widdecombe and talked about Miss Widdecombe and Nigel Farage as if they were personal friends. Don’t get me wrong: what happened to Miss Widdecombe was horrible. What happened to Dr Jason Arday (News and Comment, 21 August) was also horrible, but in a different way. My cleaner has not mentioned Dr Arday to me despite the publicity given to both deaths. Many people in the UK have not identified with Dr Arday; so he is not on their radar.
This is important, because if black lives are not valued by a section of the UK population, then this is where Reform is most likely to get support. Clearly there are people of all social classes who genuinely seek racial and gender equality, particularly those who are associated with the churches. But my cleaner is not likely to engage with the Church Times. That should tell us something about the professional, educational, and class divide of the UK.
DAVID ISIORHO
Stowmarket, Suffolk
From the Revd Dr Ian K. Duffield
Madam, — The sad and tragic Arday saga requires more examination than is being offered by the co-lead bishops on racial justice (News and Comment, 21 August). Indeed, it is too limiting to imagine that harassment and the moral duty of the press are the best way to frame what has happened.
From an academic point of view, a number of serious issues need addressing. Given unmistakable evidence of serious errors and plagiarism by Arday, questions need to be raised about how his Ph.D. was supervised and examined, and about how he was given senior appointments at a number of universities, not just Cambridge. Given that we are told that he was a vulnerable human being, why did no one dissuade him from seeking a prestigious public position at Cambridge University, where he would be in the limelight and his academic competence, or lack of it, on show.
Similarly, why was he not dissuaded from publishing his memoir with fantastical claims (though some were edited out) that invited scrutiny, even if he was offered £1.4 million in advance (a claim made by Dr Arday, but unconfirmed by Simon & Schuster).
This story was never going to go away after his resignation. After his sad death, reviews and reflections of many kinds are required to comprehend the phenomenon that was Jason Arday.
IAN K. DUFFIELD
Sheffield
Congregation applies its intelligence to AI
From Mr Philip Smith
Madam, — The congregation at All Saints’, Little Totham (near Maldon and therefore in deepest, darkest Essex), were most interested to read your article report “Church guide on using AI launched” (News, 31 July).
We have developed our own concern at the possible uses, and opportunities for misuse of AI within the church context, particular in the sphere of sermons and the preparation of prayers. As with books, and the use of the internet in general, AI has an important part to play in providing information that will aid and support original thinking. But how can we keep it under control?
As an experiment, we asked Google Gemini to prepare a sermon based on Matthew 16.13-20, the Track One Gospel reading for Trinity 12. The result was somewhat frightening, and we asked our congregation to reflect on it in time for discussion at a pre-Advent Course in October, which will be the first of a series of courses over the next year with the generic title “The Church In The World Today: Are We Coping?”
The AI Guidelines for Christian Ministry will now also be used during the course of discussions.
As part of this course also, we have asked Google Gemini to write a 1,000-word article to explain why Google Gemini should not be used for writing sermons. That result, too, was quite frightening, and certainly illuminates the dangers that lie ahead. If anyone is particularly interested in pursuing this subject, it is well worth asking it to perform that same task.
PHILIP SMITH
Lay chair and secretary, of the PCC, All Saints’, Little Totham
Tolleshunt Major, Essex
Cathedrals’ ministry
From the Very Revd Dr Christopher Lewis
Madam, — I am glad that you gave a headline to cathedrals and their attendance (News, 7 August). They are, however, varied. My first experience of three was in Canterbury in the late 1980s. Two of us canons might be called “junior”, and we both wanted far less attention to grandeur (my colleague Michael Till had a badge to put on the ridiculous copes; it said “Underneath all this I’m a nudist”), and much more attention to the regular congregation and their needs. We eventually escaped to Winchester and St Albans.
The lesson learned was to be an active local “centre” of variety rather than a place of grandeur. One of the most effective changes in St Albans was to start a girls’ choir; another was to have close relations to local places of learning and their needs and events. Then there was the possibility of good ecumenical relations with other churches. And the cathedral got involved in the founding of an Emmaus community.
Cathedrals do have a high degree of opportunity for independent reflection and action, and it is great when those are put to good use.
CHRISTOPHER LEWIS
Aldeburgh, Suffolk IP15 5ED
Recyling the Church Times: what readers do
From the Revd Dr Simon Cocksedge
Madam, — Our hens are avid readers of the Church Times. After extensive trials, they have concluded that your newspaper is much the best for re-lining their henhouse every couple of weeks, prior to its ultimate destination on the compost heap. For which, many thanks.
SIMON COCKSEDGE
Edale, Derbyshire
From Patricia Johnson
Madam, — Clare Bryden asks what we do with copies of the Church Times after reading. Mine are taken to church each Sunday and left for my vicar, who is non-stipendiary. If you print this, he will see it one week later.
PATRICIA JOHNSON
Penrith, Cumbria
From the Revd Helen Kerridge
Madam, — While most of my Church Times does go for recycling, the occasional interesting article is saved, and the crossword is cut out every week.
Three years ago, I needed to wrap some runner beans to take to my elderly neighbour. The Church Times was the only newspaper available. Little did I realise that the sheet that I used contained the crossword. A week or so later, my neighbour told my husband that he had completed it (impressed).
This neighbour, a 95-year-old widower, is as sharp as a pin mentally and now gets his crossword delivery as part of the weekly shop that we do for him. He is no churchgoer, but completes the clues each week, though has been bemused at some solutions. When one answer had been “lambada”, which he looked up, he was shocked to the core: not the sort of thing he expected in a “church” crossword.
HELEN KERRIDGE
Ringsfield, Suffolk
From Mr Charles Essex
Madam, — Clare Bryden’s article about recycling the Church Times omits a very obvious use, and one that must have been considered during the shortages of some items during lockdown: namely, cutting sheets into four-inch squares and using them in the smallest room in the house.
I was brought up in Yorkshire with a father who was a disabled war veteran, in a back-to-back house with a shared outside privy. This meant that money was short for luxuries. The reviled Izal toilet paper, hard and non-absorbent, could hardly be described as a luxury. The Huddersfield Examiner was actually an improvement.
Sheets of newspaper threaded on to a string were hung on a nail well away from the wall. Nearly 70 years later, when I visit someone else’s house, I judge whether they are posh or not by how the toilet roll hangs. If it hangs with the loose edge nearer the wall, they probably had no experience of an outside toilet. If a toilet roll was hung like that in an outside toilet, the sheet of toilet paper would stick to the condensation on the walls, rendering it useless. It was always hung with the loose edge facing away from the wall.
CHARLES ESSEX
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
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