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Describing them as borderline totalitarian isn't helpful in the debate. It's OTT, hyperbolic and undermines the point you are making. Requiring someone to prove

by alastor2020 5y ago

Describing them as borderline totalitarian isn't helpful in the debate. It's OTT, hyperbolic and undermines the point you are making. Requiring someone to prove their legal status in the country isn't "totalitarianism" or even "authoritarian". Agree windrush was a total shambles and shameful, but that was largely down to incompetence and not malice. Anyone who genuinely is in a life threatening condition can receive treatment at NHS A&E hospital - like any tourist visiting from overseas.

jlokier 5y ago
I disagree. Describing them as not borderline totalitarian is making them out to be milder than they are towards the set of people I've highlighted. They demand severe subservience by those people who face severe consequences otherwise, and that is the definition of totalitarian. Requiring someone to prove their status for a private, low value transaction between individuals is a strongly authoritarian state. Requiring ordinary people to act as police for the state is also strongly authoritarian. I don't believe that is a hyperbolic view. And "requiring someone to prove status" means a lot of different things. If the issuing of status is itself done abusively, and without regard for the law (the Home Office routinely breaks the law and is routinely found to have behaved abusively), that phrase sounds much more reasonable than it is. You would not think this unless you have witnessed the distressing multi-year effects on people of ambiguous status who are still trying to get a straight and justifiable answer out of the system designed with rejection quotas in mind, irrational decisions at times, and horrible consequences for some individuals. (Note I said "ambiguous", not "without". There are so many cases which ultimately end up resolved as "ok you're fine" after a few years fighting unlawful judgements). The result is obvious: There are people sleeping rough because it is, essentially, the law that they must be kept homeless until their status is resolved. There are many more currently sleeping in dangerous accomodation, and in abusive relationships they cannot leave. And there are people living with life-threatening, curable diseases, where there is nothing they can do but slowly die. I also think requiring people to earn significantly above the median wage before they can live with their own spouse is also, in my view, authoritarian. To be honest I was shocked when I discovered that. I always assumed any decent state would at least allow genuinely married couples to be together. And in fact, EU law does allow that - it's considered a fundamental human right (the right to a family life). But it's not a human right in the UK.
jlokier 5y ago
> Anyone who genuinely is in a life threatening condition can receive treatment at NHS A&E hospital This statement is false. People have died as a result of withheld life-critical treatment under the hostile environment, and not by mistake. One immediately comes to mind who was in the middle of life-critical cancer treatment, when it was abruptly suspended by a hostile environment requirement, and then some months later they died as everyone knew they would. What you are thinking of is emergency treatement, which is not the same as life threatening. Unfortunately I also know of people who have avoided going to A&E despite facing a life-threatening emergency, preferring to cross their fingers than to risk being placed in prison ("detention centres") and later deported, when they turn up at A&E. After all, even if you get emergency treatement, enforcement sometimes turns up to take you away after the treatment before you leave hospital. Whether that fear is justified or not, it is a fact that some people believe that it is dangerous to go to hospital, due to the messages put out by the "Conservative" government and the "embedded" immigration staff at hospitals. There are also pregnant women who ought to attend hospital for the safety of their child, but again, are too afraid to attend hospital due to justified fear of the consequences. Another fine example: The Home Office sentenced a woman to death while she was still in a coma, saying she could recieve "palliative" care in the destination country instead of life saving treatment she was in the middle of receiving in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-immigration-deportation-woman-coma-home-office-crohn-s-disease-bhavani-espathi-a8903271.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-immigrati... In my view, it's not hyperbolic to describe those decisions as authoritarian bordering on totalitarian for those people. But it's because it only affects a subset of people that most other people don't think it's a problem. Those are completely different conditions to those faced by "any tourist". A tourist would receive life saving treatment in the above example.
jlokier 5y ago
> [Windrush] was largely down to incompetence and not malice. The screwup with documentation was negligence. It's incompetence if it's just a screwup. It's negligence when it can be foreseen to cause material harm, which it clearly could by those working in the same office as sets the enforcement policies. Policies intended to cause immediate harm to whoever's documentation happens to be screwed up - which is inevitable (known to be inevitable from appeal court statistics) - instead of treating people reasonably while sorting out the documentation. That part is malice. The Home Office policy of "deport first, appeal later" is not designed to allow errors to be sorted out while treating people in a civil manner. (It often prevents people from accessing their own belongings and paperwork.) It's designed to prevent people from sorting things out unless they have someone still in the UK to do it on their behalf. That boosts the deportation quotas and keeps the appeal rate unjustly low.

jlokier 5y ago

I disagree. Describing them as not borderline totalitarian is making them out to be milder than they are towards the set of people I've highlighted. They demand severe subservience by those people who face severe consequences otherwise, and that is the definition of totalitarian. Requiring someone to prove their status for a private, low value transaction between individuals is a strongly authoritarian state. Requiring ordinary people to act as police for the state is also strongly authoritarian. I don't believe that is a hyperbolic view. And "requiring someone to prove status" means a lot of different things. If the issuing of status is itself done abusively, and without regard for the law (the Home Office routinely breaks the law and is routinely found to have behaved abusively), that phrase sounds much more reasonable than it is. You would not think this unless you have witnessed the distressing multi-year effects on people of ambiguous status who are still trying to get a straight and justifiable answer out of the system designed with rejection quotas in mind, irrational decisions at times, and horrible consequences for some individuals. (Note I said "ambiguous", not "without". There are so many cases which ultimately end up resolved as "ok you're fine" after a few years fighting unlawful judgements). The result is obvious: There are people sleeping rough because it is, essentially, the law that they must be kept homeless until their status is resolved. There are many more currently sleeping in dangerous accomodation, and in abusive relationships they cannot leave. And there are people living with life-threatening, curable diseases, where there is nothing they can do but slowly die. I also think requiring people to earn significantly above the median wage before they can live with their own spouse is also, in my view, authoritarian. To be honest I was shocked when I discovered that. I always assumed any decent state would at least allow genuinely married couples to be together. And in fact, EU law does allow that - it's considered a fundamental human right (the right to a family life). But it's not a human right in the UK.

jlokier 5y ago

> Anyone who genuinely is in a life threatening condition can receive treatment at NHS A&E hospital This statement is false. People have died as a result of withheld life-critical treatment under the hostile environment, and not by mistake. One immediately comes to mind who was in the middle of life-critical cancer treatment, when it was abruptly suspended by a hostile environment requirement, and then some months later they died as everyone knew they would. What you are thinking of is emergency treatement, which is not the same as life threatening. Unfortunately I also know of people who have avoided going to A&E despite facing a life-threatening emergency, preferring to cross their fingers than to risk being placed in prison ("detention centres") and later deported, when they turn up at A&E. After all, even if you get emergency treatement, enforcement sometimes turns up to take you away after the treatment before you leave hospital. Whether that fear is justified or not, it is a fact that some people believe that it is dangerous to go to hospital, due to the messages put out by the "Conservative" government and the "embedded" immigration staff at hospitals. There are also pregnant women who ought to attend hospital for the safety of their child, but again, are too afraid to attend hospital due to justified fear of the consequences. Another fine example: The Home Office sentenced a woman to death while she was still in a coma, saying she could recieve "palliative" care in the destination country instead of life saving treatment she was in the middle of receiving in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-immigration-deportation-woman-coma-home-office-crohn-s-disease-bhavani-espathi-a8903271.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-immigrati... In my view, it's not hyperbolic to describe those decisions as authoritarian bordering on totalitarian for those people. But it's because it only affects a subset of people that most other people don't think it's a problem. Those are completely different conditions to those faced by "any tourist". A tourist would receive life saving treatment in the above example.

jlokier 5y ago

> [Windrush] was largely down to incompetence and not malice. The screwup with documentation was negligence. It's incompetence if it's just a screwup. It's negligence when it can be foreseen to cause material harm, which it clearly could by those working in the same office as sets the enforcement policies. Policies intended to cause immediate harm to whoever's documentation happens to be screwed up - which is inevitable (known to be inevitable from appeal court statistics) - instead of treating people reasonably while sorting out the documentation. That part is malice. The Home Office policy of "deport first, appeal later" is not designed to allow errors to be sorted out while treating people in a civil manner. (It often prevents people from accessing their own belongings and paperwork.) It's designed to prevent people from sorting things out unless they have someone still in the UK to do it on their behalf. That boosts the deportation quotas and keeps the appeal rate unjustly low.