David Lammy and Jamaican deportees

[Myohmy111]

David Lammy’s speech, in which he is critical of the government’s decision to deport convicted offenders to Jamaica, was very impassioned. However, it was disingenuous of him to have made the connection between this issue and the Windrush scandal. The two are not the same; the Windrush debacle was a disgrace and involved numbers of innocent individuals being caught up and deported illegally to the Caribbean . Those who were deported today were convicted criminals who served at least 12 months in prison and crucially, they were subject to due process. Unless there is evidence to indicate that other nationals of different ethnicities and races, such as white Australians, have not been subject to the same level of enforcement of this policy , he is wrong to label it as a racist move by the government.

Didn't manage to quote properly

Last two sentences are mine

I find it hard to have any sympathy for convicted criminals who are not British citizens being deported.

The fee to apply for citizenship is a lot cheaper in the U.K. than most other countries. Some countries like China and Singapore you cannot even apply for citizenship no matter how long you live there as a legal resident.

You mean those UK fees, that Amnesty International, the human rights charity, has been campaigning about, on account of how expensive they are? Those ones?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/19/high-court-says-uks-1012-child-citizenship-fee-is-unlawful

According to the Home Office, the cost of processing a child citizenship application is just £372 so the department makes a profit of £640 on the registration of each child. This surplus is used to fund other parts of the Home Office’s immigration work.

The families of many children who have the right to be registered as British citizens, having been born in the UK and lived here for their first 10 years of their lives, simply cannot afford the high cost of registration, so thousands are condemned to live in limbo.

The court found a “mass of evidence” showing that the fee prevented many children from registering for British citizenship, leaving them feeling “alienated, excluded, ‘second-best’, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK”

Here are some quotes from 2017, when it was cheaper than in 2019, and yet still staggeringly expensive.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-citizenship-children-cost-expensive-france-belgium-eu-too-much-immigrants-uk-a8107621.html

The Government is under pressure over the “astronomical” rise in the cost of British citizenship for children, which is now 22 times more expensive than in Germany.

Costs to register a child’s citizenship application havesoared by 153 per cent in the last seven years, from £386 in 2010 to £973 today.

The fee is considerably higher than in other European countries, with the figure standing at 80 euros in Belgium, 55 euros in France and just 51 euros in Germany.
[...]
Each application costs the Home Office £386, meaning the department makes a £586 profit per child registered. With 40,537 applications made in the year to September 2017, the Home Office is expected to make almost £24mthis year from children registering for citizenship.
[...]
The soaring costs mean afamily with three children who have come from abroad and settled in the UK for 10 years, accessing citizenship for all members, including those born here, would have paid out more than £15,000 to be “naturalised” as British citizens, taking into account all migration fees.There are an estimated 120,000 “undocumented” children across the UK, more than half of whom are legally entitled to a UK passport. Many are unaware of their status until they apply to university, try to open a bank account or need a passport for foreign travel, according to Citizens UK.

@maylis

Many Jamaicans are British citizens by decent then, Jamaica only gained independence in 1962.

If you read the article at the link I posted earlier you will understand why this isn't so.

I'll never forget the Jamaican woman who was crying everytime I saw her. I honestly have since forgotten the particulars, but she'd brought her two sons to the UK when they were very young. There were no qualms with their status at the time. Her first son was deported due to some crime (I think maybe selling drugs, or something of that level). He was targeted and murdered in Jamaica within months. This lady was grieving his death when the home office decided it was time to kick start the deportation of her youngest, who has just turned 16. Gosh I've never felt so helpless. She had built up a life here, worked so hard her body wasn't even right anymore. Yet she was slowly coming to the realisation that she would have to follow her son to Jamaica, although she had no close family remaining there as they had since moved to Canada and the US. She was fighting for his stay but the costs would always get her down. She was definitely depressed while having to go through all of this but not seeking any help for it. Very sad.

Then there was the Jamaican woman who worked stupid hours at M and S. She had daughters here, born just after the gov decided to stop dishing out passports to all children born here. I remember she had to work like a dog to fund the entire family because her girls couldn't work legally and one had a child. The cost to fight deportation was way beyond what she could comfortably afford, but she was fighting, and getting very tired of being sent from pillar to post. One daughter eventually married. And then we lost touch. I just remember the relentlessness of it all.

Before meeting these two women, deportation wasn't anything I'd thought about. I also lived in Haringey, and this is where I'd met these two women. I have witnessed David Lammy evolve from a mere shadow of Bernie Grant's legacy. He's become a pillar of strength in his own right. Public awareness on this matter has been long overdue, I'm so happy. I can only hope that some fairer way of handling these situations comes to light.

@JayDot500 your stories will fall on deaf ears here. The only stories that will be listened to are racist anecdotes. There is plenty of evidence which is statistical and proven which show that BME people are more likely to be charged with a crime, more likely to get a custodial sentence when committing the same crime as their white counterpart, less likely to get job interviews (unless they have a Caucasian name) etc... however, I’ve seen at least three posters on this thread try to argue that these facts are not true.

Jay
It’s shameful
And it’s happening right under our noses

Some of the crimes that have been committed by the people who have been deported are awful. There is no denying that.

However - the point stands.

They have come to the UK as children. They did not actively choose to move here as adult migrants,. They came as children. They lived in the UK , were brought up in the UK - with all the issues someone from a BAME background can face - and that has been outlined on MN and elsewhere time and time again - and were brought up in a UK education system.

They committed crimes - just as other people who have been brought up in the UK under similar circumstances have done - they are all subject to the same conditions that could lead to a criminal act - they were tried in the British system and served time for their crimes.

Is it right that these people are then deported to a foreign country, one that they left as children, because they are considered foreign criminals?

I appreciate that some people will think 'Good riddance'. It's an easy answer to a question when it comes to the statement 'Should foreign criminals be deported after they have committed a crime'?

Standing up for the rights of criminals is a tough thing to do and is unpopular. Campaigning for prison reform in the past was very unpopular. I am sure some people would be more than happy to return to the old style of prisons.

We do have to show some humanity. And yes - even to people who have committed crimes that are awful.

Showing humanity can often be unpopular.

The driving offence was awful, he admits it was wrong. But deportation and separation from his father and siblings?

Those citing the dual nationality of some, I’m not clear, are you saying that if you have citizenship of two countries you can be deported to either if you commit a crime in one? Because, my understanding of my dual citizenship is that when I am in either country I am treated as a citizen regardless of my other citizenship. So if I made a bomb I couldn’t be deported because I am British and the same in my second country they would not send me to Britain. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

Regardless of these people's precise legal status, I think that it is ethically dubious of this country to deport what are essentially homegrown criminals.

Why should Jamaica put up with it? We made 'em, we deal with 'em.

Why is Rolf Harris still here? Is it because he is white?

He's probably British, is the likely reason. Any idea if he ever took British nationality? Thought not, because you'd never know. Still, let's assume it's colour without having an actual clue eh?

Also, let's just ignore the fact that foreign offenders of ALL colours are regularly and routinely deported in such circumstances...

Why should Jamaica put up with it?
I guess that would be because they're Jamaican. Same as we in the UK have to accept deported British people (gasp, yes - that happens too...).

Cheeserton, as I said before, "Regardless of these people's precise legal status, I think that it is ethically dubious of this country to deport what are essentially homegrown criminals."

I can copy and paste too!

One of the aspects that needs to be monitored is whether the threat of deportation has any impact on serious crimes committed by those in the groups impacted by that threat.
People claim the death penalty acted as a deterrent, but analysis showed there was no evidence of this being true.
But yes, many people I know, including non-white immigrants who have settled, unquestioningly see deporting criminals as a good move and support it.

The driving offence was awful, he admits it was wrong. But deportation and separation from his father and siblings?

Gilead what annoys me about the reporting of that Chevon Brown case is that the term 'driving offence' seems to be being used to mean 'trivial'. But it is not trivial. For most of us driving is the one thing that we do that has real potential to put others in danger. A mistake or moment of inattention and we could kill others. Driving offences are not trivial they have the potential to destroy the lives of innocent people.

But Chevon Brown didn't have a moment of mistake. He took a car when he had no licence or insurance. He went on an extraordinarily dangerous car chase: driving at 115 mph; on the wrong side of the road; through densely populated residential areas; and over people's gardens. The judge said "It’s a terrifying catalogue of driving. It was extremely dangerous. Anyone could have been coming from those blocks of flats. They would not have stood a chance.” www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/15246900.learner-driver-jailed-following-115mph-chase/ So when he says (in your Guardian link) "nobody was hurt, I didn’t crash into anything, there was no damage,” frankly it sounds as if he still has utter contempt for the lives of the people around him and we're all safer without him on the road.

I don't know enough about the rest of his case to judge whether the deportion was correct but he was born in Jamaica to Jamaican parents, lived there for most of his childhood and education. Came to the UK to live with his father in his teens but actually was in care for a good chunk of his remaining childhood www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17420921.home-office-deports-oxfords-chevon-brown-jamaica/. So on the face of it it doesn't seem that awful for a young man in his early 20s to be forging his life in the country where he grew up, even if that does put him far away from the father that he briefly lived with.

Disclaimer I only looked at the press reports of this case because it was being used in the press as a particularly shocking deportation and I was interested to see whether it was. There may well be more I don't know.

I can copy and paste too!

Congrats on that, but obviously the law operates on the basis of what nationality people actually hold, not what you imagine they 'practically' or nearly are considered to be. They are Jamaican nationals.

If we take away the specifics and look at the general idea _the law states that foreign nationals should be deported after they commit a crime with a sentence of more than 12 months.

Do people think that should automatically happen?

Do people think that should automatically happen?

It generally does happen, although to listen to the outrage about this deportation charter, some seem to think it's only Jamaicans and somehow conflate it with the Windrush scandal...

There's no media outrage when Albanian drug dealers get deported, for example, or an American paedophile, or an Indian fraudster, or pretty much any other nationality or colour. It's been the law since 2007.

Consider also that sentencing being as it is in the UK, you have to do something really quite serious to warrant at least a year's imprisonment as a sentence. I also don't have a great deal of time for the whining about who was exploited by county lines gangs etc, when the fact is that all mitigation will have been heard and considered by the court before sentencing. David Lammy is no-one to simply revise a judge's careful consideration so summarily. All this outrage and always so light on the actual details of cases.

Those citing the dual nationality of some, I’m not clear, are you saying that if you have citizenship of two countries you can be deported to either if you commit a crime in one? Not for most crimes. Most crimes you’d not be deported but be imprisoned. Only crimes that are regarded as treason like terrorism, or joining the armed forces of an enemy would result in your citizenship being stripped and deportation.

So if I made a bomb I couldn’t be deported because I am British and the same in my second country they would not send me to Britain. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

If you made a bomb in the UK and are a dual U.K.-X national, then the U.K. can strip you of your U.K. citizenship and deport you to country X because that is a terrorism offence. And vice versa.

I don't know if those cases you mention are people who came here as children. Are those cases you mention to do with people who came here as children or are they to do with adult immigrants?

Chom
law states that foreign nationals should be deported after they commit a crime with a sentence of more than 12 months. Do people think that should automatically happen?

I do. Furthermore it should happen before they serve their sentence. They should serve their sentence in a prison within their home country. They can appeal from outside the U.K.

I don’t care if the foreign nationals were born in U.K. or immigrated as a child or adult. There should be no special treatment.

Why not?