Home Secretary Sajid Javid is presiding over a resumption of deportation flights of UK residents with criminal records to Jamaica. The deportation programme was halted a few years ago when it was revealed that a good number of the people being sent home had been incorrectly identified. The latest batch of deportees apparently includes people who arrived in the UK as children and people who now have British born children that they will be forced to leave behind.
These people may have been born in Jamaica, but they were not criminals when they arrived on British soil. If they had been, they would not have been admitted to the country. Their criminality is entirely British and should be dealt with in the UK. What chance do people who have never lived in Jamaica as adults have of building a decent life there for themselves? And how is this fair to Jamaica, a poor country with enough criminals of its own that hardly needs to be importing more from the UK.
Not content with the deportations Sajid Javid, who obviously likes to keep himself busy, has now taken steps to deprive Shamima Begum, a young UK-born woman who went to Syria and joined ISIS, of her UK citizenship. If anything this is even more egregiously nasty than the treatment of the Jamaicans. Begum was born in the UK, but Javid is using an obscure legal provision that allows UK citizenship to be taken away from anyone under the age of 21 who also has rights to citizenship of another country. Begum is of Bangladeshi descent, but has never visited that country, and has already been told that she is not welcome there, so in effect Javid is making her stateless.
Begum's decision to run away and join ISIS was stupid -- though she was only 15 at the time -- and some of her pro-ISIS rhetoric in recent years has been harsh. Still, she now has a child who is eligible for UK citizenship, so the moral case for allowing her back into the country is strong. Moreover, in purely practical terms it is surely better to have her back in the UK, where she can be kept under surveillance, than to give her a fresh grievance and let her disappear from view. As one columnist in The Guardian pointed out this week, a radicalized Osama bin Laden was barred from returning to his home country of Saudi Arabia; we all know how that worked out.
Things have come to a pretty pass when former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, not noted for his progressive views, is aghast. In his current role as editor of the London Evening Standard, Osborne wrote as follows:
"I understand the anger of those who say Shamima Begum should not be allowed to return to the UK. But I don’t agree, for a simple reason: she was born in Britain and has British citizenship. Which other is supposed to look after her on our behalf? Syria? Another European country? Can you imagine the fury here if we took a French or Italian citizen who joined Isis?
Begum is homegrown and is our problem. It has to happen here. As for her newborn boy, he will be one of the most vulnerable British citizens in the world. Unless we have now given up on compassion and justice – and believe that the sins of the mother should be visited on an innocent baby."
Osborne is speaking of the Begum case there, but his logic applies equally to the Jamaican deportees. The problem, be it radicalization or criminality, originated in the UK, and it's up to the UK to deal with it.
With the UK Labour Party now in almost as much disarray as the Tories, there are reports that Theresa May might be tempted to call an early General Election. Neither party is prepared to stand up for remaining in the UK, even though polls shoa a majority of voters now favour that. If Javid's moves are a foretaste of the way the Tories might seek to hold onto power, things may get very ugly indeed.
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