Why has Britain, unlike every other country in Europe, insisted on requiring all Ukrainian refugees to obtain visas before travelling here?
In justifying the decision, Priti Patel has again pointed to the Windrush scandal as a key factor in the government’s refusal to waive visas for people fleeing Ukraine. But it is a reasoning that has left immigration experts baffled.
Refugee charities have repeatedly called on the UK to scrap visa requirements for Ukrainians, and there is rising public anger about the delays in the visa issuing process.
Explaining why Britain is putting refugees through a visa application process, Patel told the BBC: “I’m pretty certain you may have reported on a previous scandal which was Windrush – because they had no documentation effectively people tried to remove them. The visas are important because they are documented – it gives people the right to work, to establish themselves, to get their children into school.”
Last month Patel gave the same justification in a debate in parliament, insisting that visas were necessary because of “something known as the Windrush scandal”. Her comments triggered cries of anger in the Commons, prompting her to add: “They may holler on the other side but the process is absolutely vital in terms of the verification, notification and permission to travel, but importantly to give people the status when they come to the United Kingdom to have that right to work, the right to access some benefits and also the digital verification of their status.”
But the comparison is somewhat confusing. In the Windrush scandal, the government mistakenly categorised thousands of people who were living entirely legally in the UK as illegal immigrants, and some were arrested, detained and deported to countries they had left as children decades earlier.
Those affected had arrived legally in the UK in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s when there was a principle of free movement between the UK and countries previously colonised by Britain. When immigration restrictions tightened in the early 1970s, not everyone was given new documentation, and when checks on documentation were intensified under a series of so-called hostile environment policies from 2012 onwards, many of those affected found themselves unable to prove that they had the right to live in the UK. Paperwork that might have helped them to prove their right to be here had been destroyed by the Home Office in 2010.
Most Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country are travelling with modern biometric passports, and if they do not have a passport most will be carrying an ID card. For the few people who have fled their homes with no documentation at all, different checks could be put in place. Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the UK’s asylum system was designed to make sure that people who arrive here without paperwork are given documentation on arrival.
“This whole notion that visas are the only mechanism to facilitate paperwork to ensure someone is able to remain here and doesn’t end up like the Windrush individuals just doesn’t hold water at all,” he said. “I think the government is on the back foot. Priti Patel recognises that she’s having to apologise, and she’s having to cast around for justification – but this justification seems to smack of a degree of desperation.”
Colin Yeo, an immigration lawyer and the author of Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System, was also puzzled. “I can’t see any reason to compare this to Windrush, it just doesn’t compute,” he said.
“It seems like a total misunderstanding of the way the visa and immigration system works. If you lifted the visa requirement for Ukrainians, they would be in the same position as EU nationals or as American tourists coming to Britain. They would still pass through passport control or get examined by an immigration officer, and then could be granted leave to remain just as a US tourist would.”
