Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 632)
TUESDAY 28 MARCH 2006
MR BOBBY
CHAN
Q620 Chairman: We spent a good session
on that earlier.
Mr Chan: My phone has not stopped
for three weeks.
Chairman: Mr Chan, these are important
issues but I think that we looked at the work permit issue at
some length. We need to press on. Otherwise we will not be able
to touch on some of the other areas.
Q621 Mrs Dean: We have heard evidence
that there are sometimes delays in issuing family visit visas
and that there is a backlog of them. Could you tell us what are
the impacts of these delays on clients who are UK citizens and
who want their family members to visit them?
Mr Chan: They are clearly disappointed.
They are coming here to visit, probably for a particular reason,
like marriage and all sorts of things. Particularly—I am
not sure if you know—for a Chinese woman, when you give
birth you are supposed to stay at home for the first four weeks,
and you usually require your family to be with you, to tell you
what you need to do, what sort of food you eat, and all sorts
of things need to be done during that particular four weeks. A
lot of elderly clients are coming here precisely for that reason:
to help their daughters or daughters-in-law to look after themselves
during that four weeks. Usually a lot of them actually miss the
date by a few months. Perhaps I could give you a further example.
I have a case where we have a written appeal which was allowed
by the Immigration Judge, as it is called now. The applicant has
come here from Malaysia for a working holiday. It took the person
six months to get an interview with the British High Commission;
was refused; and another nine months for an appeal. It took them
18 months to go through the whole system. Even though she won
her appeal, she might not be able to come back into this country,
because there have been changes in the immigration rules. Malaysian
citizens do not have working holidays any more.
Q622 Colin Burgon: Can I ask some
questions about students as well? I understand from the latest
figures, 2003-04, there are about 48,000 Chinese students in the
UK, and that has shot up dramatically. In 2004, the UK overtook
the USA for the first time as the favourite destination for Chinese
students. Why has there been that change? Is it just because of
the tightening up after September 11, or are there other reasons?
Mr Chan: I think that to some
extent, as you said, September 11 in America has had a big change
to the amount of students going to America. Also, the feeling
within the Chinese community of a glass ceiling, whereby they
are not able to progress in America, makes a big difference. My
wife is from Beijing and she has many friends in America. Quite
a few of them have been working in very highly skilled jobs, like
designers for Ford motor vehicles, and they have returned to find
jobs in China instead of staying on in America, precisely because
of the feeling of not being wanted; not being allowed to progress
in America. Secondly, for example the Taiwanese no longer want
to go to America but they want to come into this country, because
of a different political make-up. They prefer a more liberal type
of education in England and in Europe, rather than in America.
This is part of the reason. Clearly in China, with a one-child
policy, you have only one child and this is your hope, and whatever,
in the future; therefore you put all the attention into that one
particular child. My wife has a friend who has a daughter studying
in this country in Badminton. They spend £50,000 a year in
this country for the child to study in this country—which
is a lot of money in Chinese terms.
Q623 Chairman: It is a lot of money
in anybody's terms!
Mr Chan: Also, it is because getting
a foreign qualification assists you in having good prospects.
Q624 Colin Burgon: And coming to
the UK is considered to be one of the better places to go?
Mr Chan: In a sense, yes, because
the United Kingdom speak English, which is an international language
and, in terms of education, it has been considered as a very high-quality
one.
Q625 Colin Burgon: Moving to another
question, last year in Beijing there was a 45% refusal rate for
students applying for visas. We were told that it was the conduct
and approach of the student recruitment agencies that caused this
high refusal rate, but there is also the question of fake documents.
How important are fake documents in explaining that high refusal
rate?
Mr Chan: It is difficult to say
how important it is, but I can give you an example of the subjective
factors in ECOs seeing documents as fake or not fake. We have
a large number of people applying to this country, for family
reunions and all sorts, where they look at the wage slip and say,
"This is a forgery because it is printed by a computer".
My representation at that time was, "What wage slip is not
printed by computers nowadays?". This cannot be the reason
for a refusal that they use. Clearly there are forged documents.
There are in every country; it is unavoidable. But it is the way
in which that, without any investigation, they now have the idea—looking
at the previous six months—that all documents provided by
the applicants are likely to be a forgery, unless you go and get
it notarised. So you are getting people to pay a lot more money
to get the normal documents needed to provide for an application.
Q626 Colin Burgon: You are saying
that fake documents are not a problem; it is the way that these
documents are interpreted by officials?
Mr Chan: Both, I think. Clearly
there are forged documents, but what I am saying is the subjective
factors that are being used by the ECO.
Q627 Colin Burgon: As you will be
aware, probably better than most people, the right of appeal against
refusal of student and other visas is being abolished in most
circumstances. What effect do you think that will have on Chinese
nationals, especially in relation to students? Will they try to
come in illegally or simply look for another country to go and
study in?
Mr Chan: I think that they are
likely to go to another country—Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Realistically, we have quite a lot of cases of second-year and
third-year students at university being refused. You have to look
at the reason why they refuse people in this country at the moment.
It is basically that if they expect you to send in all the documentation,
and sometimes documentation does not arrive on time, you get refused.
You go to appeal and you win your appeal. If those appeal rights
are being abolished then, after spending £40,000 on the university
course, you are in your last year and you have been told, "Sorry,
you have been refused"—it is not justice as far as
I am concerned. I remember at the last meeting with Mr McNulty
he said, "Trust us. We will train our officers a lot better";
but, unfortunately, over the last 25 years since I started my
immigration work, the immigration officers' understanding of rules
sometimes, and the subjective factors, actually do mar the way
they make decisions. I think that the right of appeal is the only
way to guarantee justice being done in front of an Immigration
Judge, which is independent from the Home Office.
Colin Burgon: So, in relation to the
question, they probably would choose another country.
Q628 Mr Benyon: The Home Office tells
us, Mr Chan, that a significant proportion of migrants living
in the UK have no legal status, because they have migrated from
a legal position—a tourist, a student or work permit which
has expired—to living illegally. What proportion of people
that come into your office would you say fit into that category
and are seeking to regularise their status?
Mr Chan: Coming into my office,
you would be talking about 40% at least. There are a large number
of people who overstay; who, after a period of time, have probably
got married. There are all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, within
the Chinese community there have been and still are some very
bad immigration advice consultants around, which give very bad
advice. I will give you an example of a case. This person is here
legally as a visitor. She still has about a month to go. It was
about two years ago. She was offered a post as a chef. She got
advice from a consultant saying that, "To do that, I will
help you to extend your visitor's visa first and then I will put
in an application for a work permit"—which I believe
is wrong advice, because the maximum period is six months for
visitors and she had been here six months. There is no reason
that you can get it. Consequently, she overstayed. In actual fact,
she is still waiting for the determination on the visitor's extension,
which has still not been decided and has had no reply. At the
same time, she met someone, got married, and her application for
marriage has been refused. Her position now is that we have advised
her to go back to China, come back as a legal person, and this
is the best way to do it—even though we have to tell them
that, with the immigration rules at the moment, there is a specific
section which states that if you have committed an offence, then
you are not likely to be allowed in. But, in her circumstances,
we did quite a few appeals on it and we have won every single
one. In her circumstances it is not her fault that she is—
Chairman: I am going to have to cut you
short slightly, to make sure we can put some more questions to
you. You have illustrated it well.
Q629 Mr Benyon: First of all, how
do you think we should regularise the large numbers of people
who have overstayed and are wanting to remain here? One bit of
advice we were told is to offer an amnesty, and government are
very against that. Is there a method, do you think, that could
regularise many of the people that are here illegally?
Mr Chan: Even the British Government
over the past few years have had some sort of partial amnesty.
For example, the family policies which allow people who have children
born in this country to stay in this country, because of the humanitarian
concerns for the children. My belief is that to increase and to
tighten up immigration does not in any way stop people coming
in. It will only give the snakeheads more ways of making more
money to come into this country. If you look at the prices of
people coming into this country through illegal means, from our
clients, the trip used to be £15,000, now it is £25,000.
If you make it any tighter, it will probably go up to £35,000.
It does not stop people coming in. It will just make people pay
more to come in: that is all.
Q630 Chairman: Can I close on this
point? Ms Lee gave evidence earlier and said that the type of
employment practices that led to the Morecambe Bay tragedy were
very much the exception. As you say, Mr Chan, you are working
more at the bottom end in the labour market. What is your estimate
of the number of Chinese people here who are being illegally employed
in, sort of, hyper-exploitative conditions that those people who
died in Morecambe Bay lived?
Mr Chan: It is very difficult
to say, because they are not only working nowadays; they are selling
on the street—DVDs being one of the types of employment
there. I am not sure if I should say it. I am not sure that you
know there is a Chinese student who died a few weeks ago on a
bus. According to the police report at the moment, it is possibly
death by accident. I am also the chair of Min Quan, which is a
Chinese civil rights group. We help families dealing with cases
of policing and racial harassment. This particular family—the
parents have actually arrived in this country—we had a meeting
with the police. After the formal meeting, when some of them were
having a cigarette break, there was a discussion that the possible
reason why this Chinese kid died was because the three white youths
perceived him to be a DVD seller and wanted to rob him. He was
attacked a week before, and he jumped out of the bus—and
that is how he died. So in a sense the unauthorised workers, so
to speak, are also victims of a lot of crime in this country.
Q631 Chairman: We understand that
and we saw that on a tragic scale in Morecambe Bay, but perhaps
I can press you as to the final point. It may be that you just
think it is not an answerable question. Can you give the Committee
any sense of how many people live in that stark part of the labour
market where they are not protected?
Mr Chan: It is difficult to say.
I have talked to someone who is very close to the Fujianese community
and he told me that in his records there are at least 10,000.
That is in the Fujianese community.
Q632 Mr Winnick: In a newspaper report
today the figure is given as seven times that. The writer—who
is presumably of Chinese origin—said that, long before cockle-picking
became a job opportunity, at least 70,000 unauthorised Chinese
workers were already doing various works in the food processing
chain, agriculture, catering and construction. Do you think that
is a gross exaggeration—70,000 here, illegally working?
Mr Chan: It is difficult to say.
I cannot say for sure. That amount, 70,000, seems to be farfetched.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
It was a very helpful session.
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