Ever seeking to be seen as the ‘family man’, David Cameron has stated that in future, all government policies should pass a ‘family friendly’ test before becoming law. (#)
It should be pretty clear to anyone with a critical mind that this is nothing more than meaningless spin and rhetoric. Cameron’s government are focussed on what benefits the privileged, not the underdog, but they have to appeal to a moral position in order to condition skeptics into voting for them. However, there’s one specific example that immediately comes to mind that should illustrate the duplicity involved with this proclamation: that of immigration.
The usual bullshit position on immigration in the UK tends to be: “we’re here and it’s our right to be here – nobody else should be allowed. Foreigners should just go home.” – worded more or less diplomatically depending on who is involved. Immigration? Pah! Why should those immigrants be considered anyway?
Interestingly enough, experience has shown that this dogma transforms (as do many others) when the issue comes closer to home. It’s easy to dismiss immigrants of a different colour or nationality in the abstract, but not so much when one of your family members is separated from a loved one because of harsh and unpredictable immigration regulations.
The fact is that immigration policy in the UK is racist, and purposively both complex and contradictory in order to make the application process as difficult as possible. There are no elements of fairness or justice in how people are dealt with, and what results is a maddeningly frustrating and expensive undertaking for anybody who dares to fall in love with somebody from another country. When the system invariably break down, people are forced to appeal to the safeguard of the European Convention of Human Rights, which is then handily used as a scapegoat for undermining national sovereignty. Few point out the responsibility of the UK government to ensure that the system is fit for purpose in the first place.
There are endless amounts that have already been written about my own experience with the UK immigration process alone, but never published. It’s something I constantly swither over making public, partly through fear of any future reprisal. After all, we still have a number of years to go before we are completely out of the woods, and at any point our hard-fought battles could be revoked. Why is so little said about this stuff in detail by those who go through it? Because we are terrified of the possible consequences that might happen. People should know about what injustices happen in the system, and freedom of speech should guarantee the ability for that to happen, but who wants to risk it when their application may be denied?
For those of us who are on the receiving end of such policies, we know how awful it is. We know that immigration is a disgusting mess; one that has no concern for families, or for keeping them together. We know that kids get used solely as an excuse to raise the barrier for entry to the UK, not treated as human beings. We know that what really matters here is ethnicity, not family values. We know that it’s a specific kind of morality that is in mind here: that of the white, mother and father, British kind. We know that all this is true, and have resigned ourselves to being subjected to that, often silently… but to then turn around and talk about the importance of ‘family friendly’ policies is just flat out insulting.
Don’t believe a word of this pish.
