BRITAIN’S immigration legislation is racist by design, with racialised people from its former colonies most affected by detentions, deportation, and deprivation of citizenship, a new report found today.
Following the King’s Speech, which announced a new assault on human rights through the Border Security Bill, the Migrants Rights Network released a report examining the central roles that racism and colonialism play in immigration policies.
It points out that since it was created to manage colonial or plantation business in 1792, immigration legislation has existed to manage, regulate or prevent so-called “undesirables” from arriving and living in Britain.
It highlights the role of the 1948 British Nationality Act, which said that “aliens” could become naturalised as long as they were of “good character,” shaping the notion of the “good immigrant” along racial lines.
It was introduced the same year that HMS Windrush arrived in Britain.
The report highlights that since then, legislation such as the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and the 1981 British Nationality Act were designed to keep non-white communities from former colonies out of Britain.
It points out that today’s “good character” test involved in applications for British citizenship invokes racist ideals of “civility” and associations of migrants with criminality.
The report traces the continuity between today’s points-based immigration system and the work vouchers of the 1960s, highlighting that visa schemes, including sponsored worker schemes, are grounded in “racial commodification,” economic extraction and exploitation by the global North.
The NGO says that deprivation of citizenship has “legalised racism,” highlighting that of those who have had their citizenship revoked since 2002, 85 per cent had nationalities from countries in Africa, south Asia or the Middle East, and 83 per cent were from former British colonies.
Migrants Rights Network CEO Fizza Qureshi said: “For people of colour and other marginalised groups, this system simply wasn’t designed for us.
“That is why we are calling for the Hostile Office and immigration system to be dismantled.
“With a new government in power, we hope it works with us to dismantle these cruel structures that have made the lives of migrants and migratised people, a misery and joins us in taking a bold and transformative stance with migrant justice at the heart of policy.”
