Moving dispatches from the immigration front line
Our immigration system is enough to reduce decent people to tears – and that’s just the lawyers who have to deal with this Kafka-esque labyrinth. Imagine how the applicants feel. Who Should Get to Stay in the UK? (BBC Two) was a sobering insight into its endless loopholes and everchanging rules.
As the Home Office groans under the strain of the 700,000 applications made by non-eu citizens last year, this three-part series follows individuals desperate to remain in the country and the lawyers trying to help them. In a sort of high-stakes, debate-stoking reality show, this opening episode tracked a trio of contrasting cases.
Resembling a cross between Kim Kardashian and Melania Trump, Valeriya was a rich Russian student hoping that the bank of mum and dad would help her to set up a fashion label and secure an entrepreneur’s visa. One slight problem: her business plan had more holes than Swiss cheese.
At the other end of the scale, Dillian was seeking asylum after fleeing persecution – not to mention a gun attack – in Trinidad & Tobago for being gay. It was down to long-suffering Legal Aid lawyer Mike Mcgarvey (the secret weapon of this show) to make
sure this “Walter Mitty” character’s case was watertight.
Finally, there was Rashed, who had an aggressive case of Crohn’s disease and would die if he was deprived of vital medicine that he could not access at home in Bangladesh.
Striving for balance, this documentary sometimes sent out muddled messages. Statistics detailed the whopping costs of processing applications, housing asylum seekers and treating them on the NHS, while campaigners were at pains to point out how they were a benefit, not a burden. The BBC does tie itself in knots sometimes. It has more in common with the Home Office than it thinks.
In the end, the right people won. Valeriya was still awaiting a verdict, but Rashed and Dillian were allowed to stay, which might save both of their lives.
This was an intimate, moving film which, without descending into mawkish sob stories, personalised an issue that is too often reduced to cold, hard numbers. After all, as Rashed’s impressive lawyer Ousman Noor pointed out, human rights should be about human beings.
Poor Susanna Reid. She gets a week’s break from sitting with Piers Morgan each morning, only
to go and sit with a reviled monster. For Death Row: Countdown to Execution (ITV), Reid travelled to Texas to meet death row inmate Patrick Murphy as his execution date drew ever closer.
Murphy was a member of the notorious “Texas 7” gang, who launched one of the most infamous prison breakouts in US history before embarking on a crime spree. He now faced a lethal injection for his part in murdering a police officer while they were on the run.
Picking over the 19-year-old crime was the least interesting part of the documentary, littered with lurid clichés (“nationwide manhunt”, “armed and dangerous”, “deadly force”). Far more enlightening was Reid’s journey around Huntsville, home to America’s busiest death chamber. Criminal justice is the town’s principal industry, with its cluster of prisons and death row museum employing 6,700 people.
Murphy didn’t for a moment dispute his guilt, but two things felt troublingly unfair. First, as the gang’s getaway driver, he didn’t pull the trigger and wasn’t even at the murder scene, so surely didn’t deserve the death penalty. Second, the deeply conservative state of Texas would only allow Christian ministers in the chamber, whereas Murphy’s last request was for a Buddhist monk to be present. This ultimately led to a late stay of execution, leaving this film frustratingly open-ended.
Reid was tough when she needed to be, gently empathetic at other times. The latter came into its own when meeting Murphy’s son, who barely knew his father and grew up with the shame of a “cop killer” in the family. A gentle bear of a man who just wanted “closure”, he was almost as much a victim as the dead police officer’s family.
ITV screens far too much true crime fare of questionable quality, under the banner of its interminable Crime & Punishment Season. At least this was one of the more thoughtful and less salacious offerings.
Who Should Get to Stay in the UK?
Death Row: Countdown to Execution