UK immigration policy

Theresa May is pursuing an approach that seems designed to ape the far Right and appeal to the sliver of outright xenophobia that still exists. A sickening consequence is that it is catching in its cruel tangles people who have been legally resident in Britain for decades. Many in the ‘‘Windrush generation’’, who came to Britain from Commonwealth countries with their parents, are finding that, if they never applied for a passport, it has become almost impossible to prove their rights, leaving them unable to access NHS care or take jobs, facing deportation to a country they do not know.

The callousness doesn’t stop there. The clampdown on spousal visas has left thousands of children living without one of their parents. And the ‘‘hostile environment’’ policy has obliged doctors, landlords and bank staff to effectively become border policemen. One study found landlords less willing to rent to people with foreign accents or names for fear of getting the paperwork wrong. Far from keeping pace with social change, government policy is dragging us backwards.

This is politics at its most cowardly and shaming. A government that is loading the burden of austerity on low-income families with children, with few positive solutions to offer in the wake of the financial crisis, slyly nods to an immigrant scapegoat as one cause of the country’s economic woes.