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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 775-vi House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Tuesday 28 March 2006 MS SARAH HARLAND, DR JOANN MCGREGOR and MR CRISPEN KULINJI MS CHRISTINE LEE, MR ROBERT LEE and MISS XIAO HONG Evidence heard in Public Questions 528 - 632
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Tuesday 28 March 2006 ________________ Present Mr John Denham, in the Chair Mr Richard Benyon Colin Burgon Mrs Ann Cryer Mrs Janet Dean Steve McCabe Mr Richard Spring Mr Gary Streeter Mr David Winnick ________________ Memoranda submitted by The Zimbabwe Association and Dr JoAnn McGregor
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Sarah Harland, Zimbabwe Association, Dr JoAnn McGregor, University of Reading and Mr Crispen Kulinji gave evidence. Q528 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. As you know, we have been having a series of evidence sessions about the operation of the Immigration and Nationality Department. It is a particularly valuable session this morning because we will be talking to people who have different aspects from different places of experience of IND and how it operates and the issues that arise. So we are very grateful to you for your written evidence and for coming this morning. For the record, could I ask you to introduce yourselves? Dr McGregor: I am JoAnn McGregor, a university lecturer at the University of Reading. Ms Harland: I am Sarah Harland, the coordinator for the Zimbabwe Association, which is a support group for Zimbabweans, asylum seekers and refugees. Mr Kulinji: I am Crispen Kulinji and I am a guest of the Home Office. My case is still pending. Q529 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. What I would like to start with is a few background questions. As we know, about a third of all visa applications from Zimbabweans were refused in 2004-2005 - the last year we have figures for - and half of the student visa applications were refused in the same year. What is your sense of why so many people from Zimbabwe are refused entry clearance to the UK? I do not want to ask of you to answer each question, you will be pleased to know, but who would like to have a shot at that? Ms Harland: We feel that many people are being refused because of the perception that Zimbabweans coming into the UK are fleeing from political persecution, and no matter whether they come under a student visa or a holiday visa there is a high possibility that they might claim asylum here. Q530 Chairman: So you feel that there is a tendency to have a blanket refusal just in case people would then claim asylum? Ms Harland: Yes. Q531 Chairman: I do not know if you have direct or perhaps indirect experience of the immigration service in Harare, but in your experience do British Entry Clearance Officers treat individuals fairly or are there particular problems with the system there? Have you come across issues of racism or of corruption or problems with the operations of the ECOs in Harare? Dr McGregor: There were Press allegations of corruption in 2004 and they arrested a number of police officers and army officers who policed the queues outside the High Commission, who were taking foreign currency bribes to speed up the process. Q532 Chairman: Were those employees of the British Government or of local officials? Dr McGregor: They would have been local Zimbabwean employees but serving to police the queues outside the British High Commission. Q533 Chairman: In general or otherwise what is the experience of Africans who try to use the system in the proper way in Harare? Ms Harland: Some people feel that they spend a lot of money trying to get the visa, and it is not refundable. The fee nowadays for the whole package, when money is paid to an agent, the fees to the Embassy, et cetera, is something like 39 million Zimbabwean dollars. Even if you get your visa - someone recently got a student visa after three months and got to the UK at Gatwick and was refused entry here anyway because immigration here felt that there was a similar course available in Zimbabwe and so he should be taking that. So some people feel that even if you go through the whole process you might not get in anyway. Mr Kulinji: I think I would like to add to that. First and foremost, where the British Embassy is located is just close to where Mugabe put his offices, so we are talking about someone who visits the Embassy who is seen at the British High Commission. That area is concentrated by heavily armed CIOs and field sergeants. Then the procedures to get a visa are so complicated. We are looking at a person who is running away from persecution, and the first thing that person needs to have is a Zimbabwean passport, of which it takes a year to get that passport - that is if you get it after paying a lot of price. Then you come to the British requirements to get that visa: they need proof of the address of where you are going and proof of employment or education, and a bank statement which has 100 million in dollars for three months in your account. But you are looking at a country whereby an average salary is nine million and doctors earn 12 million. Then we are looking at someone who faces persecution, who earns roughly five million a month and he is expected to have a bank statement of 100 million Zimbabwean dollars in his account for three months, to show that the money is his. Then from there he needs proof of address to where he is coming in the United Kingdom. After getting that visa that person is not guaranteed entry. I do not know if there is a double standard between the British authorities here and the ones who work back home in Zimbabwe because if someone is granted a visitor's visa why then is he denied entry at Gatwick airport? An asylum seeker does not get a visa to come to this country, but if he is facing persecution what does he do? Either he gets a foreign passport, which is easy in Africa, or he seeks a visa as a visitor to get entry into this country and then claim asylum, which most Zimbabweans are doing. Then after that the Home Office will come and say, "Why did you claim asylum at the port?" Yet they are the same people who are refusing the asylum seeker a visa while he is still in Zimbabwe. So these are the complications that a person meets. Let us go to the money that the person has paid. They are expected to pay 850,000 Zimbabwean dollars; from there you pay a visa fee to the British Embassy, which is 9 million Zimbabwean dollars, if my figures are correct; then from there you are using an agent to get that visa, and you pay a total amount of 30 million - this is the kind of figure. Q534 Chairman: By an "agent" do you mean an adviser? This is a legitimate process, not an illegitimate process? Mr Kulinji: Yes. You pay 30 million Zim dollars, depending on the agent that you are using back home. Q535 Mr Streeter: Can you give us a rough conversion rate at this stage? Mr Kulinji: I think I would need a calculator because on the black market you are talking that one pound is equivalent to 355,000 - that is black market. With the bank rate one pound is equivalent to 166. The rate is always fluctuating because of the inflation in Zimbabwe. After that the process takes about six weeks to two months, waiting for a visa for someone who is running away from persecution. From there, after you have been refused that visa you are now in a situation whereby you are going to lose 39,850.000 Zim dollars, a person who has been working for four years, starving his family to save this money. But my question still stands: will this person save this money while he is still running away from the most cruel security agents at home? Q536 Chairman: Thank you very much. Indeed, you have set out very well the difficulties that face people. If I could turn the issue round though and put the dilemma, as it must appear, perhaps, to the British Government? As Mr Kulinji said, a number at least of those who are applying for visas are seeking to flee persecution. You said in answer to my first question that the IND is refusing visas on the grounds that people might be fleeing persecution and wanting to seek asylum. There is a dilemma there, is there not, for the British Government? If the British Government - and we do not represent the government, of course - is not minded to issue asylum to Zimbabweans then it is perhaps understandable that they are refusing visas on the grounds that people might apply for asylum. Do you take my point? How should the system be operated differently in Harare so that legitimate visitors do not face the obstacles that they do? I mean straightforward rather than legitimate - so that straightforward visa applicants do not face the problems that they do, but asylum issues are dealt with properly so that people are not forced into the visitor route. Is there a way that the government can square that circle? You see the dilemma? Sarah Harland. Ms Harland: Yes, I can see the dilemma from this side, but our perception is that people who are able to travel freely from Zimbabwe are largely members of the elite. There are exceptions, there is the academic elite, but there is also the government elite. Those people have all the criteria, they have enough money and they can do what they like. It is the people who are suffering in Zimbabwe, who are stranded there, who are suffering in this way. We know that the UK has tried to cut down on asylum figures here and is trying to contain the situation but the neighbouring countries in southern Africa have taken a huge burden on the people fleeing from Zimbabwe. Botswana is a country of roughly 1.8 million in population and there are probably about 400,000 to 500,000 Zimbabweans who have gone there; 33% of people in various towns there are Zimbabwean illegals. The same is true of South Africa; that anything between two and three million Zimbabweans have gone down there; about a third of the Zimbabwean population is outside. The number of Zimbabweans who claimed asylum in the UK in the last five or six years is round about 16,000, which is nothing compared to what southern Africa, the neighbouring countries are taking in. Until there is a stable situation in Zimbabwe people are going to continue to leave. And Britain has an historic connection; it has huge links with Zimbabwe. If the Foreign Office is continually condemning what is going on there but at the same time not being willing to accept that people are fleeing from persecution and need help then we have that problem again. Dr McGregor: Another relevant fact is that the current system is simply forcing people into the black market - it is not stopping people from leaving because there are cheaper, less cumbersome, less politically visible alternatives than queuing up for a visa officially. So the current system is simply creating a problem of irregular migration, whereas if you had a system that appeared more politically neutral, appeared more transparent and was less costly then you would have people coming in in a legitimate way rather than forcing them into illegitimate routes. Q537 Chairman: The government might say yes, that is fine, but if in real crude small "p" politics we made it easier for people to come here and claim asylum then there would be an unlimited number of people - clearly 400,000 people go to Botswana - so what would your answer be to the government saying, "The pressure is on us politically from our voters, from our electorate, and whatever, is simply to stop this flow of asylum seekers, however it is done"? Dr McGregor: Some of the main constraints on leaving Zimbabwe are raising the finance. So if there was a counterbalance system where you could apply for a UK visa you still would not have every Zimbabwean at Gatwick because people cannot afford the flights, and Crispen was telling you about the average salaries, even of a doctor, and it simply does not translate into an air fare. Chairman: Thank you. Richard Spring. Q538 Mr Spring: Thank you, Chairman. I just want to say that there is no Member of Parliament who is not just totally appalled and horrified at what has happened there. I visited Zimbabwe myself a few years ago and certainly will not be going back - or would be very unwelcome if I went back to it, shall we put it like that. But what I do not quite understand is that you are painting a picture of extreme difficulty in coming to this country - and maybe this is a question that Mr Kulinji might wish to answer - and also, Ms Harland, you mentioned the fact that there were significant numbers of Zimbabweans in neighbouring countries, which is perfectly logical, so why would people want to come here? If they are escaping persecution, which obviously is true, given the huge difficulties of the cost of the fares and everything else to come here, why would people want to come here at all if they are going to be safe - and that is the key to this, we are not talking about economic migrants here - in neighbouring countries? It is a question which I am asked and I would like to know what your feeling about that is, because we had a comparable situation in Bosnia at one point. Ms Harland: I will put in a quick example. Amongst the people in the UK who are asylum seekers we have an example of someone who fled to Botswana during the Kukurundi in 1988 when there was a massacre of civilians in Matabeleland. He was a political activist; he was with ZAPU. He fled to Botswana and the CIO came across the border and brought him back to Zimbabwe where he spent three years in a Zimbabwean jail before the Unity Accord in 1987. People do not feel safe if they have been a fairly high profile political activist. The borders of southern African countries are very porous; you get CIO people popping up in Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, all those countries, so if you have been very active you know that you can be picked off and taken back to Zimbabwe. There have been cases of women abducted in South Africa and found on the border in the boot of the car by the South African police. The people were not arrested who were taking them back there but the women were released, and that is happening frequently. Mr Kulinji: I have something to add on that. Especially in the southern region in Africa the Mugabe junior minister is a good example, whereby a delegation led by the opposition leader was in Zambia. The following morning they were deported. The Zimbabwean police arrived in Zambia giving directives to the Zambian government to deport, including the MDC president. Then we have a situation whereby Zimbabweans are put in the prisons of Africa. Hence, instead of putting them on a train because they will jump off and go back they are now putting them on a plane from South Africa back to Zimbabwe. Another good example is one of Mugabe's personal aides who tried to escape and he went to South Africa and the following morning he was back to Zimbabwe. So the issue of people getting refuge in the neighbouring countries is a bit difficult. Like in Malawi we have a president who is married to a Zimbabwean - the president of Malawi has a family in Zimbabwe - and Mugabe's aides opened the parliament on Tuesday in Malawi. So the links are so strong that a person, especially a high profile member, cannot go and seek refuge in the neighbouring countries. Chairman: Thank you. Richard Benyon. Q539 Mr Benyon: My first question to Sarah Harland might sound rather trivial after what we have just discussed and before what I want to move back to, which are the experiences of Crispen Kulinji. But as we are working through these issues I want to ask you about the ancestral visa matter. Is that a matter with which you have been involved? A lot of us as MPs have found people coming to our surgeries who have tried to use the long-established ancestral visa route for getting into Britain and have found that they have been held up for 20 months, sometimes more, because of alleged fraud amongst people trying to get into this country through that route. Do you have experience of that and do you know what these allegations of fraud are and the extent of them? Ms Harland: We have heard a little of some fraud that has emanated, I think, in Scotland - there was a case there. We have had very little to do with ancestral visas ourselves because the vast majority of people who come to us are people who are not entitled to ancestral visas anyway. So we have just heard on the grapevine that there was some production of false documents, and I am aware that that has been investigated but I do not know much more about it, I am afraid. Q540 Mr Benyon: When I say "trivial" I am not referring to the particular plight of the individual, just the fact that it is about 300 cases as opposed to the many thousands that we hear about. Ms Harland: Every now and again a different sort of scam or trouble emerges and that is one that we only know of but we do not know much about it. I cannot help with that one. Dr McGregor: There were Press sources and in fact I saw this because I downloaded a Press source on this. There was a South African led ring of people who were operating in the UK doing scams on the ancestral visa lobby and digging out names of Rhodesians who had died or whatever and issuing Zimbabwean passports under false identities for them; but they were never arrested, I think it was last year. Q541 Mr Benyon: I still have constituents who are waiting to get their leave to remain. Ms Harland: Sometimes we have had occasional cases of people on the ancestral visa, or going through that route, where they might inadvertently have not complied with all the regulations, like they may not have been resident here for four years in succession - they may have been away in the middle of that - and once we have explained that it is a bureaucratic matter holding up their case we are hopeful that it will run smoothly. Q542 Mr Benyon: Can we move back to Crispen Kulinji? I think it would be helpful for the record if you were just to give us a very brief history of how you got here, the route you came and why you consider yourself to be at risk going back to Zimbabwe, and really your political history. Not too long, just a brief summary. Mr Kulinji: First and foremost I was the Organising Secretary for my constituents, which is the coordinator of the Movement for Democratic Change in Harare and for Zimbabwe. In 2003 we had a mass action against the regime, which was supported by the Zimbabwean National Army. Because every security department is headed by Mugabe's relatives, unfortunately my family was a targeted family and I was abducted I spent about two days at the base where they keep their guns and their vehicles and I was tortured. Then the following morning they took me to Harare International Airport where I was left for dead. Luckily enough a Good Samaritan managed to take me into hospital and I stayed in hospital for six months, and after the hospital I went to stay in a safe house. I stayed there for six months but unfortunately the safe house was raided by the CIO, but by the time that happened I had already managed to escape. Before that I was once arrested in 2000 and my passport was taken away by the police. Q543 Mr Benyon: So you had no passport? Mr Kulinji: I had a Zimbabwean passport. Q544 Mr Benyon: But it was taken away, I mean. Mr Kulinji: It was taken away by the police because I was released on bail and I had a reporting condition and my passport was taken away by the police. Q545 Mr Benyon: Then you went to Malawi. Mr Kulinji: I had to go to Malawi to get a Malawian passport that allowed me to travel to this country, but I travelled in my own name. Because I was Secretary General before the division of the parties I had some connections at the airport, and then I managed to board a plane to this country on a Malawian passport with my name, and it is a genuine passport. Q546 Mr Benyon: So what was the argument of the authorities here as to why it was safe for you to go back? Mr Kulinji: The authorities are insisting that I am Malawian because I am a Malawian passport holder. Q547 Mr Benyon: If you get sent back to Malawi the evidence is - not wanting to lead my witness here - that you will then be sent back to Zimbabwe? Mr Kulinji: That is automatic, yes. There is no question about it because we have the case of the guy who was once deported to Malawi. He did not have any relatives there, he ended up a vagabond and the last thing was that he was put into prison and his passport was taken away by the police, and no one knows what is happening to him. Q548 Mr Benyon: So in any of your experiences this neighbouring country route is a very well-established route of entry for people escaping the tyranny of Mugabe? Mr Kulinji: At the moment the president of the Malawi government, his own personal security is from Zimbabwe. Automatically the airport should also be monitored by Zimbabweans. As long as the Malawi government is being giving, and the president, personal security by Mugabe then automatically they must let them into Malawi. By which I got the passport through fraudulent means, automatically if I arrived there that passport would be confiscated like the issue that happened to Elias Kaposa. Ms Harland: A small number of Zimbabweans who came with Malawi passports to the UK and who have been returned to Malawi, the number that we know of have had their passports taken away on arrival back in Malawi because they are not entitled to them because they have not got them through the regular channels or regular processes, and people have either ended up in prison or they have ended up as vagabonds on the street, which is a criminal offence in Malawi. One lady was made to give all the money she had on her to avoid going to prison. Q549 Mr Benyon: We could continue down this route but I think we are going a little bit off the purpose of our inquiry. Following on from the Chairman's earlier question what we really want to know is how we can stop the elite, who get their means through ill-gotten gains and through the black market and through friends in high places, who can swan through the system, and how we can help legitimate people trying to get to this country. I am still not clear whether there is a way we can do this, that we can tighten up either at the High Commission end, or whether we should improve reception centres in southern African states bordering Zimbabwe, or whether we should tighten things up here. I am still looking for clues from you. Ms Harland: The problem about the elite is that it is so interwoven. You may have two sons of a Cabinet Minister and one of them may be a progressive, open-minded person and the other may be someone who is profiteering from violence and criminal actions. The other thing about the government elite is that certainly in the past they have used a wide range of different names and they are not hampered by the need to be honest about anything. So how do you keep a track on how many names the child of a Cabinet Minister is using? There is a substantial amount of high placed people in the UK, Zimbabwe high placed government people and their families, but trying to track down the right names and collect the right information is a very difficult task. At the same time you do not want to stop the elite who travel around the world letting people know what is happening in Zimbabwe - the trade unionists, academics, businessmen, et cetera. It is a problem, yes. Q550 Mr Benyon: We could of course expand the stop list, the list which seems to me to be restricted to about 30 people when I last looked at it. In my mind it should be probably ten times that size, but it requires a lot of intelligence work. I do not know if you have any comment? Mr Kulinji: I have a question on that. Let us suppose the British government says that they are going to take 500 asylum seekers, and here comes Crispen Kulinji, a genuine case, after this number of this number of 500, what happens to that person? And the issue of somebody with a passport without a visa, obviously that passport was being abused by other foreign countries. Then giving Croatia a free visa. If someone comes on a Croatian passport does this qualify him to be a person from Croatia? And on his voluntary return we have a chap, Feka, who volunteered to go back to Zimbabwe on a Malawian passport. There was no appeal about it, he was sent direct to Zimbabwe. After, his case was refused because they believe that he was a Malawi. So why send him to Zimbabwe? Is it that he volunteered to go there? Chairman: I think we had better move on. Colin Burgon. Q551 Colin Burgon: Ms Harland, we recognise that very many Zimbabweans are living here in the UK illegally, but would you say from your knowledge that it is easy for the Zimbabweans to live illegally in the UK? And, if they do, do they support themselves mainly through illegal working or in other ways? Ms Harland: There are a large number of Zimbabweans in the UK who are forced into supporting themselves through working illegally, either because they came as visitors once and overstayed or because they are end of process asylum seekers. They have the option; many of them know that if they return to Zimbabwe they are going to face severe persecution, harassment, et cetera, and they feel that they have no option but to stay here. There are many who do not want to go down the road of prostitution, theft, et cetera, and find it a far better way to work, even if that is illegal; they find it the lesser of the two evils. Because they are working illegally they are also being exploited by a wide range of employers who will work them around the clock for the minimal level, and that is what is happening in such a large way here; because of the situation people are being exploited. There are some very capable and able people; there are teachers, medical staff - a whole range - engineers and every range of job. Those people could be doing something useful with their time; they could be putting more back into this country. They could be paying larger taxes; they could be doing something here. Most of them are only here on a temporary basis and if it were stable at home they would be gone. Q552 Colin Burgon: Dr McGregor, running on from this, the report you have done is on Zimbabweans working in a care sector. You suggest that employers or agencies in the care sector employ illegal Zimbabweans rather than legitimate EU citizens, primarily because the Zimbabweans have a better command of English. Is that the main reason? Are there any other reasons? What is the role of actual agencies run by Zimbabweans themselves for procuring people for that kind of work in the care sector? Dr McGregor: I should start off by saying that there are huge shortages of carers in the UK, both in skilled and unskilled. Q553 Colin Burgon: You made that point in your report, yes. Dr McGregor: Zimbabweans and other African groups, Philippinos also, and quite a lot of recent arrivals from the Caribbean also have quite a long history now of filling jobs at the kind of bottom end of the market, these temporary labour jobs, and they were established in the care sector people before the recent wave of migrants from the Accession States. I think that language has been a problem in terms of people coming from Lithuania or Latvia or whether taking up jobs in the care sector because communication is so important, and that has been a real problem for home managers and for employers within the care sector. Also, for historical reasons African groups are now quite well established as carers in the UK alongside other groups. They are not all illegal, there are many Zimbabweans working very legitimately in the care sector. A lot of students are working there for 20 hours to support their studies by taking jobs in old people's homes and so on. Q554 Colin Burgon: So the reasons then that care sector employers would prefer to employ legal Zimbabweans rather than EU nationals, you think it is far more complex than just the fact that they have command of English? Dr McGregor: Language and also they are familiar with Zimbabweans and other southern Africans now. They have the reputation of being very hard working. I interviewed a number of people running care agencies and they said that they would actively choose Zimbabweans because they have a reputation for never cancelling a shift, and they are very hardworking. So there are positive elements to the kind of stereotyping that reinforces their role in this area. Q555 Colin Burgon: I am one of those who does not go along with this wonderful theory of what we call flexible labour markets because I am aware of how they actually work on ordinary working people. So what would you say the impacts of this large number of Zimbabweans working illegally in the care sector, both in terms of general employment conditions and then, quite separate from that, in terms of the quality of the care to the elderly themselves? Two separate issues there. Dr McGregor: I think the key problem is that the situation at the moment is favouring the unscrupulous employers who are prepared to have their bands of temporary labourers who are prepared to work here and who are getting less than the minimum wage, and often they are getting a pittance. Because you have these cascading sub-contracting chains it is very difficult to say who the employer is - there is a blurring of boundaries there - and so the remuneration is often not getting down to the people who are doing the job of caring, it is being taken by these intermediary agencies. So the current system is favouring the unscrupulous employers over the scrupulous employers, and I think that is very detrimental. Q556 Colin Burgon: Just one final point, your report does mention that groups of Zimbabweans are actually setting themselves up as agencies. Generally speaking, from your knowledge, are they good agencies, bad agencies or just reflect what domestic agencies are like? Dr McGregor: I think they pretty much reflect domestic agencies. There is a whole span from very legitimate employers to dodgy gang masters, basically. I would not see any difference in that. A lot of the people who set up care agencies have a history of working as social workers or in the NHS because they had the contacts of local authorities when they were privatising, and obviously use the Zimbabweans who were skilled and had a history of work in local authorities were well placed to set up agencies like that. A lot of them are very legitimate; they have received small grants from the government to help them set up in businesses. I would not want to over emphasise Zimbabweans. My own interest is that I have a long history of engagement with Zimbabwe, which is why I was looking at Zimbabweans, but there are many other different African groups and different sorts of migrant groups. Chairman: Thank you. Richard Spring. Q557 Mr Spring: Dr McGregor, just to continue, you are absolutely right to say that there is a shortage of carers in this country and with the increased emphasis on care in the community I daresay that that situation will only become more difficult. I wondered how you think this matter could be regularised because, given that so much of the caring professions are now dependent on Zimbabweans - if it is correct to make that judgment - how could the situation be regularised in a way that those who are legally here, who are in this kind of employment can stay on a basis that would involve legality rather than illegality, without actually having the effect of drawing more Zimbabweans illegally into this country, both to their disadvantage and with all the problems that we are looking at? Dr McGregor: I suppose there are two ways to go. Either you could have some kind of amnesty for Zimbabweans, particularly failed asylum seekers who were granted the right to stay in this country but they do not have the right to work; that puts them in a very insidious situation and of course they are going to be forced into situations where they will be exploited and paid a small minimum wage, resulting in bonded labour type set-ups. So an amnesty is one route. I know that the Commission for Social Care Inspectorate is interested in setting up a route to fill both unskilled and skilled gaps within the care sector. What is obviously important is that it should not marginalize the people who are already doing the job and who have built up the skills. So it would need to mop up the people who are already in this country, who are trapped in this country because they cannot go back to places like Zimbabwe, as well as obviously bringing in more people from outside if that were necessary. The current situation is very damaging; the human rights of the people who are working to look after elderly people are being abused. They have to work double shifts; their pay is being withheld by unscrupulous employers. It is bad for legitimate employers in this sector who are trying to pay decent wages and they are trying to institute training systems and so on. It is undermining the whole regulatory structure, the NVQ systems, health and safety standards and so on. And it is bad for the old people. I was talking with somebody within the social care CSDI earlier this morning and they are very concerned. The Home Office has been raiding care homes particularly over the last year, and they are very concerned with the effects of that. Are homes suddenly going to lose all of their staff like that? It creates immense instability for employers within the care sector. It is very bad for the well being of the residents of those homes which are trying to create an atmosphere of stability and security. So they are very concerned that the Home Office raids should not exacerbate the problems that they are trying to resolve in terms of creating a more stable and regular labour force. Q558 Mr Spring: Given that we all do not want to see a situation of Zimbabweans being here illegally the next question is really this: is it possible to have a scheme whereby individuals would come here to fulfil certain roles, at least on a temporary basis? I think the inference of what you are saying is that probably for powerful economic reasons this is not likely to happen. You have the Commonwealth scheme, for example, whereby young people can come here and they are required to go back unless they give specific reasons of job opportunities. Is there some basis for that to try to bridge this problem of legality and illegality? Dr McGregor: I think a temporary permit scheme would be one way to go, as long as it was open to people who are staying in this country and cannot go back, so that there is a route then for them to regularise their status; they are doing the job anyway. And we are brought back again to the conditions in a country like Zimbabwe and any kind of temporary permit system would have to take those conditions into account because people cannot go back to Zimbabwe at the moment even on a temporary permit. I interviewed lots of people who are working as care workers who are eligible for work permits - doctors, engineers, university lecturers - but they cannot go back and come in through official routes, they would qualify under the points system. They simply cannot; they are trapped here. Ms Harland: This is one of the desperate things about the situation, the fact that there are people who could be in a different category but they are now here, they are stranded, whether it is trying to get into a different work permit category or for things like spousal visas - they cannot return to Harare to apply for a spousal visa, so they are just stranded in this sort of no man's land. Q559 Mr Spring: The difficulty is, however, that as much as one feels for Zimbabweans - and certainly that feeling is very powerful - there are many other countries which simply refuse and decline on the same basis to take people back and that presents a broad picture problem for the British Government. Ms Harland, you are probably the right person to answer this questions, in terms of clearly indicating to the existing Zimbabwean community in this country what their rights are and how they can challenge whatever is put before them, are there sufficient structures or flows of information within the Zimbabwean community living in this country to effectively to be able to do that, to give advice? Ms Harland: Within the last year there has been a huge improvement by the establishment of a newspaper called The Zimbabwean and that has been spreading out throughout the UK, but it is extraordinary how even now we will come across pockets of Zimbabweans who have been in remoter areas and they have no real understanding of many of the dominant groups that are operating in things like asylum and other fields. The Home Office sometimes takes the view that if people do not know about something it is not credible, that they should, but we are always coming across people who are ignorant of things. I just want to briefly mention that a lot of the asylum seekers who are in the process now and are referred to as failed asylum seekers, they may be people who arrived here in 2001 and who were preyed on by a number of unscrupulous legal representatives who have since come to the attention of the legal authorities in this country, and served prison sentences. But all those cases, all those people who went through those hands, their cases were dismissed out of hand and those people had legitimate cases. Chairman: Many other Members may want to ask supplementary questions but unfortunately because of the fire drill and everything else we are running nearly half an hour late so I am going to have to draw your session to a close, but could I thank you very much indeed for coming this morning; it has been enormously informative and you have given us a very human side to the inquiry with which we are dealing. It is little comfort to say it but the whole Committee does hope for the day in which some of the underlying problems that are driving migration will be resolved and we return to normal relations with Zimbabwe and its people. Thank you very much indeed for coming today. Memorandum submitted by Christine Lee Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Christine Lee, Solicitor, Christine Lee & Co., Mr Robert Lee, and Ms Xiao Hong, gave evidence: Q560 Chairman: Thank you for joining us this morning. You sat in on the earlier session so you have an idea of how things work. Can I ask you each of you to introduce yourselves briefly, for the record? Christine Lee? Ms Lee: My name is Christine Lee. I am the Chairman of the North London Chinese Association covering Brent, Barnet and Harrow, and also the coordinator for the Immigration and Nationality Bill 2005 campaign, an also the representative of the Chinese community, the whole Chinese community in the UK. I have set out a brief account already. On my right is the employer. Q561 Chairman: Mr Lee. You are an employer? Mr Lee: Yes. I run restaurants and I am here to give an account of my experience that I have been faced with. Q562 Chairman: Ms Hong. Ms Lee: This is Xiao Hong, who is the employee who has difficulty in getting entry clearance to come over, but she managed to get here now. But her English is not very good. Q563 Chairman: So you will be translating for us. Thank you very much indeed. Can I start by asking some general questions? Inevitably at the top of everyone's mind over the last few days has been the Morecambe Bay tragedy and the sentencing of at least some of those who were involved in that trafficking. We would like to think, I am sure, that that is not a typical experience of that level of exploitation and abuse that those people suffered, before they died as well as their tragic deaths. But could you give us some idea? Of the about 400,000 Chinese that you believe are living and working in the UK how many of those suffer the sort of extreme exploitation that we all got a glimpse of in the Morecambe Bay tragedy? Ms Lee: I have been working on this Bill and lobbying the government for the last four months. I have been travelling up and down the country for four months as well and I have been through the whole country talking to all the Chinese community and Morecambe Bay is very exceptional - I have never heard anything like this before. So I can assure you during my four months of talking to the Chinese employers that they all suffer what I have set out below; but the Morecambe Bay case is a very exceptional case. Q564 Chairman: Obviously the deaths are tragically exceptional but your own view is that there are not large numbers of Chinese in this country employed in such an abusive or exploitative way for such low wages? Ms Lee: Not the ones that I have been talking too, obviously; if they have they will not be talking to me about it. So all I can tell you is that during the last few months all the employers I talked to have the same problems as Mr Lee and not of the Morecambe Bay's problems. Q565 Chairman: Do you have any sense of how many people are working in those circumstances at all? You say it is exceptional, but it has painted a picture for most of the public that perhaps that this is a fairly typical experience of people trafficking and exploitation in this country. Ms Lee: Yes. A lot of the problems that you see are on the media. The perception is that there is a lot of exploitation from the employer but this is not true. The true fact is that because there is a chef shortage in this country if the employers want to maintain their business they have to employ chefs and the government should help the employers to get these chefs. Q566 Chairman: We will come directly to the issue about chefs and the legal migration you are looking for in a moment, but I think we all know that there is some straightforward illegal trafficking of Chinese people and by no means all of those people go into the restaurant trades or what one might call legitimate businesses. It may be, as you say, that you are not the person who has a sense of how big that issue is, but it is quite important for us because our report may need to give some idea about the priority that ought to be given to tackling that problem as opposed to other issues. So leaving aside the restaurant trade for a moment, do you have a sense of how big the business is of people working here illegally in agriculture, construction or other sectors? Ms Lee: No. Q567 Chairman: Let us turn now to the issue of employers' liability, which is a particular issue you have raised with us. You are concerned, I know, that the government is now enforcing the existing legislation to prevent illegal labour in restaurants - you say there has been a big impact. Has there, to your knowledge, been a big increase in the prosecution of employers and illegal labour? Ms Lee: In the last two months there has been an increase but before that only about 21 cases have been prosecuted. Q568 Chairman: So when you say that there is big impact has that mainly been, if you like, fear amongst employers that they are likely to be prosecuted rather than actual prosecutions? Ms Lee: Yes, the fear of being prosecuted is very, very important. Section 8, the maximum that they can go to jail for is 14 years, so obviously they are very worried. Q569 Chairman: You raise the difficulties that an employer has of keeping track of their employee's immigration status. What ways around that might there be so that employers are aware of whether their employees remain legal migrants? Should the Home Office, for example, have the responsibility for telling employers if there is, for example, a refusal to extend the permission to remain, or something of that sort? What is the best way around that problem? Ms Lee: When the civil penalties come into force there is a Code of Practice. I have seen the Code of Practice and it is very slim, there is nothing in it to tell the employer what he exactly needs to do. So I think that if you can bring in a law such as this that affects the employers then they should have the regional bases where the employer can actually phone up and ask them what they are supposed to do with the employees, because a lot of the employees will come up with the piece of paper to say that they are allowed to work. For example, asylum seekers can come up with the IS91 and say that they are allowed to work and this piece of paper could be false, but as far as the employers are concerned they would not know the difference between genuine documents or not. So if you set up a regional office then the employers would be able to ask for particular information so that they would get the response and would not get prosecuted just because they cannot read whether they are false documents or not. Chairman: Thank you. Steve McCabe. Q570 Steve McCabe: Ms Lee, the other thing you said in your report was that the government has not responded very favourably to representations made by the Chinese business community. I have two questions. Firstly, what is the mechanism for communicating with the government? Is it only the All Party Chinese in Britain Forum or are there other methods as well? Ms Lee: We have 680 organisations that have joined us already, so when you actually start your White Paper or Green Paper all you need to do is to let us give you the list of people that you can contact, because after four months of lobbying I have this list now. So if you can give us some way in which we can call upon the whole of the country then we will be able to give you the specific list that you need, to give it to the Chinese community as such. At the moment all we are relying on is the All Party Group and Andrew Dismore as the Chairperson, and through that we learned a little bit about the law making process; but before that we did not have a clue and because of the language barriers it is very, very difficult for us to get anywhere near the government, never mind being told what is going on. In cases like that the 2005 Bill affects not just the employer but it affects a lot of different society as well, so we ought to be told really before you start making the law. Q571 Steve McCabe: So the main mechanism at the moment is the All Party Group but there is a much wider list that could be made available. Thank you. In terms of the representations you have made, however they have been made at the moment, have you received any response from the government, formal or informal, and what was that response? Ms Lee: Not really. I have been lobbying the House of Lords quite heavily for the last three months and the House of Lords have been absolutely wonderful. A lot of Lords and Baronesses have been helping us with the Bill, especially Lady Ashton, Lady Lockwood and Lady Anelay, and these are people have really pushed the Bill out for us and getting what we demanded. We enclose a letter from Lady Ashton as well to say that they agree with our points and that they would talk to the government about it. I did manage to talk to Tony McNulty as well and he has agreed some of our demands - some he does not but some he does. Apart from that I think they are trying to make us aware of what is happening now much more than before the lobbying, so hopefully we will manage to talk to Tony McNulty's staff because he says that we can talk to the staff about the skill shortage on the chef front. Q572 Mrs Cryer: I just want to ask Mr Lee about the shortage of qualified chefs in this country. Robert, I understand that you had a catering business, a restaurant and you had to close because you could not get qualified chefs at all; is that the case? Mr Lee: Yes, that is the reality I have been facing. I am for a controlled environment in terms of issuing work permits to anybody, regardless of their origins and where they are from, because it is just commonsense, is it not? I can give you my personal experience. Q573 Mrs Cryer: Yes, indeed, but particularly with regard to immigration control. Mrt Lee: I had to close one of my restaurants - it is a small, countryside hotel with a restaurant inside - because of staff shortage. I had to shuttle between different places all the time, racing against time. I have not been trained by profession as a chef but because of all these successive crises in terms of staffing I was forced into it by default and now I am a chef. It is a diabolical situation. I have been thinking about quitting the business altogether because it is not workable at all. But can I elaborate? I was really thrilled when I learned that I could employ the Polish or people from the Eastern European blocs because now they are EU Member States. But going back to the gentleman's point, of course we can employ a lot of EU staff here but the real factor is the language barrier and I cannot cope on a daily basis. I can give you some examples. When customers order something they always get something wrong. For example, I divided the whole evening into time slots. If for the first half an hour or an hour we were failing then that would have a knock-on effect on subsequent custom. If we were failing in terms of serving we are failing and it is not on. I have to give specific instructions to staff, like having a brief staff meeting before we kick-start. It is like a football team, everybody has to play their own role and if one link is failing it is not working. I had to explain at great length to no avail about certain instructions. Even customers face the same thing. I had one customer, who is a local businessman, saying that they are - but I cannot say the word, it is not politically correct. Now I am employing staff from Poland and he wants to get his wife to work in my place as well and I said, "That is fine," but when she came to see him I was trying to talk to her, "Do you want to see Cooper?" and she could not understand that, and that is very difficult. It is not just about ability, I think language varies and that is the first step to tackle, apart from hands-on experience, whether you are familiar with certain types of tasks. I think chef-ing is a very specialised skill. I can say something about Chinese chef-ing that because of the way that we cook food it takes a while to train. I was trying to train up some Polish guys to learn how to wok, how to chef, and after a few weeks they just gave up. At the moment I am employing university students as part-time staff but because of the constraints laid down by the Student Union I cannot really affect their studies. So I have to spread out the shifts in order to facilitate their hours and sometimes that is not working either because in this trade there is a high turnover of staff. Chairman: I think we have the picture quite well. Q574 Mrs Cryer: So you have a problem with the Poles not speaking English and Chinese people who you just cannot acquire with their skills, as far as Chinese food is concerned. Apparently there is a problem also in Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani catering establishments, so they have a shortage of skilled chefs. Do you think that it might be a good idea to introduce new courses at colleges in the UK for food preparation? I am thinking particularly of Food Hygiene Regulations but also specific ways of cooking for Chinese and Indian food. I do not think there are any, but you tell me: are there courses? Mr Lee: Yes, definitely. Eventually that may be the natural outcome of the whole thing. I have been thinking about this as well, to start a sort of miniature chef school locally. Q575 Mrs Cryer: Have you put this idea to the Government, through Christine? Ms Lee: Yes, we told the Government that there is absolutely no catering school to train their chefs and that they are all hands-on. They have to be in the kitchen to be able to train. Chinese and Indian food is very different. You cannot really learn just from the catering college. You can learn the basics, but you still have to be hands-on and to work inside the kitchen before you know what is what. It takes five years upwards to learn the skill of a head chef. Q576 Mrs Cryer: But it would be helpful to have this basic training in colleges, for food hygiene for instance? Mr Lee: I think that food hygiene is a necessity; it is the compulsory thing that we need to do anyway. Regardless of what kind of cuisine you do, if you are a food handler then you have to go through the basic food hygiene course in order to handle food. In terms of different cuisines, I think that eventually we have to think about that, yes. Q577 Mrs Cryer: So the need for these courses has already been put to the Government? Ms Lee: No, it is more that the Government have put it towards us. The Government have mentioned it but, as I said before, it is very difficult even to get English people interested in coming into a Chinese kitchen, never mind cooking. They are not that bothered and they are not that interested. Yes, we can help to set up or whatever, and even lots of restaurants are prepared to invite people to come into their kitchen and work. A lot of employees I spoke to said, "Yes, we would be very happy to come". They do say that they will come and say, "Yes, I will be coming to train". Then, after a few phone calls, they just give up. The thought of going to a Chinese restaurant, seeing loads of Chinese people working in the kitchen, is just not what they wanted. It is long hours; it is very hard work; and loads of Chinese people yapping in Chinese - not many people would want that! They try it; they try it for a few hours and, after that, you never see sight of them again. It is very difficult. Q578 Chairman: The implication of what you are saying about the changes in the new Immigration and Nationality Bill is actually that the restaurant trade has existed for years on the basis of illegal migration that everyone has turned a blind eye to. Is that fair? Ms Lee: Yes, I think your Morecambe Bay business may come into that, because a lot of employers do not know what the papers are all about. If the employee who is an illegal immigrant comes in with a piece of paper to say that they are allowed to work, with that piece of paper the employer can actually employ them and put them through to the NI and the PAYE. As far as the employer is concerned, they are doing a good job; they are employing genuine people. But from your side they are illegal people. A lot of these people are earning a lot of money; then they bring it back to China and start building houses. When the Chinese people see all the houses being built, they say, "Wow! This is a place we should be going"; therefore people are coming to the UK, because they are making a lot of money. Therefore, the civil penalties are very important. You have to have the core practice whereby all the employers know exactly what they are employing. Mr Lee: I really want to have a day when we can normalise or regulate the catering business. At the moment, because of the severe shortage of chefs, in my experience, it is not very good. Because of the market force, they manage to demand a high salary. It is a very heavy burden on running costs. If we had more new chefs, then we would not have to face these threats all the time. Q579 Mr Winnick: Arising from the last questions, it is rather ironic, is it not, that a lot of people in this country who complain about asylum seekers, illegal workers and the rest, are quite happy to go and have a Chinese takeaway, where in fact the people involved are in that category? That has occurred to you, has it? Mr Lee: Does it imply that we are all engaged in this facilitating ---- Q580 Mr Winnick: No, I am not suggesting anything other than a lot of people - we have just heard evidence - employed are here illegally. Mr Lee: I think that in this country, not just Chinese restaurants or takeaways or catering - in general, a lot of sectors are employing illegal staff. If I can quote from my personal experience, during my university days when I worked part-time as a caterer, when I worked part-time in one of the posh areas in London - they were selling turkeys to the Queen - I had loads of illegal colleagues with me, working there. Mr Winnick: That is not in dispute, Mr Lee. More people are likely to have a Chinese takeaway ---- Chairman: I am sorry, we are going to have to make some progress. We have another group of witnesses. Q581 Chairman: Ms Lee, you have an office. Is it one office in China? Ms Lee: Yes, we have one office in China, our headquarters in Birmingham, and we have a branch in London as well. Q582 Mr Winnick: How long have you had an office in London? Ms Lee: May 2004. Q583 Mr Winnick: That would have been unthinkable, would it not, say 30 years ago? Ms Lee: Yes, it would be. It took us a lot of time to set it up anyway. Q584 Mr Winnick: How many people do you employ in your office in China? Ms Lee: Five. Q585 Mr Winnick: Their responsibility is obviously to give as much advice as possible about the legal way of coming to the United Kingdom. Ms Lee: Yes, entry clearance. We work very closely with the British Embassy. We are in the British Embassy building. They are on the second floor; we are on the seventeenth floor. So every time the British Embassy has a problem, they send the people up to us and we can explain to them in Chinese what is going on there. Q586 Mr Winnick: What do you see as the main administrative or legal problems in China for those people who want to come to the United Kingdom legally? Ms Lee: First of all, we deal with the business immigration. We do a lot of business investors. We do a lot of £1 million investors, and we do a lot of work permits; but anything else - we just concentrate on business immigration, more than the ones that you are talking about. People know that to come over here they have to have money or skill. Therefore, a lot of people only come to our China office if they have the money or they have the skill. Anybody else, we will not be able to help as far as the Chinese ---- Q587 Mr Winnick: And your colleagues in China make that perfectly clear, do they? Ms Lee: Yes, everybody knows. Q588 Mr Winnick: That, without money or skills, it is pointless trying to come? Ms Lee: Yes. It is not what we wanted to do but that is how entry clearance officers see it. If you are unemployed or if you have low skill or if you have no money, and you have absolutely nothing, then they will not entertain you anyway. Therefore, we are very particular that the person who is actually coming here is either skilful or they have money. Therefore, we concentrate on business investors, as well as entry clearance and work permit purposes. Obviously, business visitors come over as well and we help them also - as far as family, independents - but we do not deal with any asylum seekers whatsoever. In my 17 years as an immigration lawyer, I have never touched that side of it. Q589 Mr Winnick: As far as money is concerned, in English terms how much would be the minimum which one would expect the British immigration authorities to expect a person to have? Ms Lee: Do you mean a chef? Q590 Mr Winnick: No, you said skills or money. In British currency, how much would be the sort of sum we are talking about? Ms Lee: Are you talking about the tier system? Each category is very different. Q591 Chairman: For business is a minimum of £200,000, is it not? Mr Lee: That is right. The business investment is £200,000. They have to employ two people in the UK. A £1 million investor has to have £750,000 in this country and with £250,000 they have to buy a property in this country. The £750,000 has to be in UK bonds and UK trusts. We are sending these people over at the moment. We are working with the Trade Department of the British Embassy on the second and fifth floors. Q592 Mr Winnick: Your client on your left is here on what basis? Ms Lee: She is an employee. The employer is at the back, and she came over as a manager - as a Chinese manager working in the Chinese restaurant. Because, in the Chinese environment, she needs to know the Chinese food and be able to communicate with the Chinese chefs as well as the restaurant floor. She came over on the.... Do you want to ask her? Q593 Mr Winnick: I was going to ask, how long has she been in Britain? Ms Lee: (Interpreting) 13 October 2004. Q594 Mr Winnick: Could you ask her, because you are doing the interpreting, what difficulties if any she had in coming to Britain legally? How did she apply, and the rest of it? Ms Lee: First of all, we applied for the work permit for her. As soon as we got the work permit, the employer gave her the work permit and asked her to apply for the entry clearance in her region. She put in the entry clearance in her region and she got refused, because the ECO - entry clearance officer - phoned the hotel that she worked in. They said that they did not know this person, and that is because it was new management. She left the place. That is why she can take up the job in the UK, but the ECO did not want to know that. As soon as they found out that she was not working there, or nobody knew her - the reception who was answering the phone did not know her - that is it. As far as they are concerned, she was not genuine. We had to go to court, and the court determination was that she was a genuine restaurant manager. So she was able to come back here. Q595 Mr Winnick: Obviously the Immigration Court in the United Kingdom? Ms Lee: Yes. Q596 Mr Winnick: You represented Ms Hong ---- Ms Lee: Yes, we represented the employer. Q597 Mr Winnick: ...at the appeal hearing, and the Home Office lost the case? Ms Lee: The Home Office lose 90% of their cases, as far as we are concerned, on the entry clearance front. Q598 Mr Winnick: The cases that you represent from China - 90% are won by you? Ms Lee: Yes. Only our office; I cannot say about anybody else. It is 90% are won by us, yes. Q599 Mr Winnick: You must be quite a nightmare for the immigration authorities! Ms Lee: You would be surprised. If you talk to a lot of other lawyers, they will tell you exactly the same. Q600 Mr Winnick: You have mentioned, Ms Lee, in the very useful paper that you were kind enough to send to us, that the ECO's decision, as far as your firm is concerned, is sometimes based not on objective evidence but on a subjective view. You provide one detail which is interesting. You say that a Chinese chef, a female one, was granted a work permit and then was refused, presumably immediately afterwards, because she had long, painted fingernails. Ms Lee: Yes, that is right. Q601 Mr Winnick: Any comment on that? Is that a unique, one-off, or what? Ms Lee: No, it is just an example of a subjective view. Sometimes they do not even like your face. If they look at you and say, "You don't look like a chef", they can refuse you; or if you have a really nice jacket on or whatever, they say, "A chef doesn't have a nice jacket". These are subjective views. That is what we have been telling the Government all along. I think that the Government concede it and say that from now on they will let the employer make the decision. Last week, we went to another meeting with Tony McNulty, and it seems that they are going to use the ECO's subjective view again. We are very concerned about that. So if there is anything you can do about that, it would be very helpful. Q602 Mr Winnick: Ms Lee, with all your experience, do you have any advice about the training of ECOs? Do you believe that the ECO - it is like on the Indian subcontinent - think that, say, a quarter of the Chinese, given the opportunity, would come to the United Kingdom? Ms Lee: Yes, they are all saying that. Q603 Mr Winnick: Therefore they act as the barrier - or are there other explanations why ECOs are not coming to the right decisions? Ms Lee: Number one is that ECOs' immigration law is not very good, because ---- Q604 Mr Winnick: I am sorry, I could not get that. Ms Lee: Immigration rules and immigration law is not very good. Q605 Chairman: You mean their knowledge of it? Ms Lee: Their knowledge of the immigration rules is not very good, because they just refuse on a subjective view. If you go to court with that kind of thing, the court will reject you straightaway. Therefore, three weeks of training is not enough. The Government are proposing three weeks of training. It took me seven years to be qualified as a solicitor. How could you think that in three weeks you can become an ECO? It is a nightmare. The reason why it took me seven years - it is normally six years - is that I did part-time for a few years! Q606 Mr Winnick: The Chairman mentioned the horrifying tragedy at Morecambe. Do you feel that if there were improvements as far as entry clearance officers were concerned, genuine applicants would stand far more chance of coming without appeal? There would be that number fewer illegal immigrants coming from China? Ms Lee: Yes, I think so. The problem is that, because every single Chinese takeaway, every single Chinese restaurant, is looking for chefs, if they cannot find chefs they have two choices. Either, like Mr Lee, they close the business down. Number two, they pretend that the document is the genuine document and they put it through their books. Therefore, a lot of these illegal people are entering into the catering trade and, because they enter into the catering trade, they are making lots of money. They send that money back to China and they start building houses; that is when they get the perception in China, saying, "Wow! Look! I will send these people to the UK because they are making a lot of money". If we can stop all this by introducing a very good tier system, like Tony McNulty is doing now, if they can recognise the shortage in skill, if the employer themselves can have the subjective view and tell the ECO, "These are the persons that we need", then all this will be stamped out. Obviously, you would have a check as well. We would have the checks and you would have the checks, so we are able to get these people in - not with the ECO's subjective view but the objective view. We will bring the money up to £18,000 per share or whatever. At the moment it is £16,000 to £18,000 anyway, and that is including accommodation and food and all the rest of it. So it is very good money. If you are not going to allow the chef to come in, if you are not going to let Tier 2 have the head chef, and the Tier 3 have the low skill, then you would have a lot more problems than what you have now. Q607 Mr Winnick: Mr Lee, you wanted to come in; but can I ask you this, and perhaps you can combine that with the answer that you were going to give? It is quite clear that you are a responsible employer. No one is disputing that for one moment. However, would you accept that there are many employers in the catering trade employing illegal people, exploiting them, paying them very little money and, in some cases, almost blackmailing them that, if they do any protesting, then the employer will report them to the authorities? Mr Lee: Speaking in my own capacity, I cannot really give an umbrella statement indicating that that is the case for everybody. It would be a bit irresponsible in a Parliament building like this. But I would say that it is right across the board in most of the professions in this country - not professionals, of course. I mean like the construction industry. I talk to people, I interact with customers - nursing home, caring business, and catering - and it is the case. Can I go back to the Morecambe Bay incident? I read a report in The Times newspaper. Lancashire police have been informed of that, but they have been turning a blind eye because they were saying that they had something more urgent to deal with. Talking about illegal immigrants, I think that the Chinese Government have to bear a big responsibility, because of their border control - that is my personal view - letting people out like that sometimes. I have been trying really hard locally, and you can check me out. I contacted the university hospitality department, talking about possible placements for trainee managers. I have just started to talk to a local college of further education about possible placements for trainee chefs, regardless of the country of origin. So I would hope that may form an avenue for us to resolve this problem, if the Department for Trade and Industry can do something about the funding. I read a report from somewhere, saying that there are several chef schools in this country, churning out good-quality chefs; but they charge quite a lot, maybe from £8,000 to £18,000 just for six months. Chairman: Mr Lee, I am going to stop you because I think that we have got the gist of what you are saying. We can follow that through in our written report. Q608 Mr Winnick: Arising from what you said about Chinese authorities, the feeling here, Mr Lee, is that from the tyranny of the Mao period, when hardly anyone could be allowed out, you now have a situation where - and this is in the form of a question - do you agree, the Chinese authorities are probably turning a blind eye because of the surplus population? They are only too pleased to see people leave, particularly if money is coming back from those who manage to find work in western Europe, including Britain? When you say the Chinese are guilty, it is simply that they see it as a way of getting rid of a lot of people who otherwise could not be employed in China. Do you agree with that? Mr Lee: I know but, if I say that, they would not allow me to go into China! Q609 Mr Winnick: That is sufficient answer to my question. I understand entirely. Mr Lee: They would classify me as a dissident. Can I say that it is just a big irony for the business world and he leading economies in the world: they all gear up to go to China for the ready market - like India - but somehow in China there is a big chunk of the population who want to come over to developed economies, to get work here. It is two big contrasts, if you like. Chairman: I think that observation is really at the heart of the whole reason why we are having this inquiry because we are dealing with global pressures to move, which are very difficult indeed. Other members have questions, but we need to keep to time, unfortunately. Can I just thank you very much indeed for your time this morning? It has been very helpful. Also, thank you for your written evidence, which we will take into account. Witness: Mr Bobby Chan, immigration caseworker, Central London Law Centre, gave evidence. Q610 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Chan. Thank you for joining us. It is a session which I hope will complement the previous session, but we struggle to have more than three witnesses at any one time! Would you like to introduce yourself briefly? Mr Chan: First of all, my name is Bobby Chan. I am an immigration caseworker at the Central London Community Law Centre. I would probably be slightly different to Christine. She works with the higher end of the immigration system and I work with the lower end, which is people who have no money and nowhere to go. I have been working at the Law Centre for over 20 years. Ever since I finished university I have been working at the same Law Centre, which is based in central London. Ninety per cent of my clients are Chinese, because we are actually based in Chinatown. Over the years, I have seen changes in the immigration rules which affect the nature and the clients who come to our Law Centre. Before 1989 - that is the pro-democracy movement - the majority of our clients were from Hong Kong and Malaysia. Q611 Chairman: Mr Chan, could you make this a very brief overview, because we have some questions to put to you. Mr Chan: Basically, before 1989 they were people from Hong Kong and Malaysia and, after 1989, they are mainly refugees from China: firstly from the cities - Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai - and from 1994 onwards mainly from Fujian and the north east. I have never been to a Committee like this, so I am not sure how it is actually being done: if I give you my examples of what I know, or you ask me questions. Q612 Chairman: What we would like to do is this. The Committee have agreed beforehand different areas of questioning that each member will follow through. We hope that our questions will cover all of the major issues. So if you could try to give relatively brief responses to each question, hopefully by the end of the session we will have covered all of the areas of concern. We have obviously had a chance to look at previous evidence we have received on this. Can I start by asking you something particularly about visas? We have been told that the visa refusal rate has risen every year since 2001. Is this the experience of your own clients and, if so, what do you think that reflects? Mr Chan: What I can say is that visa applications for the Chinese community, because 90% of my clients are Chinese, are on the increase, particularly over the last few years, in relation to family reunion, visits, and students. Perhaps I could give you an example why I feel that it is a very bad determination - for example, a client of mine who wanted to apply for his wife to come and join him in this country. His application for his wife was refused. One of the major reasons it was refused was that during the interview they asked the wife, "Can you tell me the name of your husband's work colleagues?". She has never been in this country. They met in China and they decided to get married in China. She had never actually met anyone in this country. I believe that to some extent the questionings are very subjective questioning and it is part of the problem. They are looking for a reason to refuse, rather than actually looking at whether they are genuine or not. That is the difference. Q613 Mrs Dean: Mr Chan, do you consider that applicants from China face any particular difficulties in coming to or indeed in staying in the UK because of their nationality? Mr Chan: Yes, in a sense, but it is not only from China. I also deal with a large number of Bengali clients. We find that there is a big difference if you come from a so-called Third World country, which is a poor country like Bangladesh, China, you face very tough obstacles in getting people coming into this country. When you come from Japan, Korea, there is a big difference. The example I can give you is that we have experience of a Japanese client, a student applying for a work permit, who was refused, went back to Japan and applied to come back as a student. That person had absolutely no problem. If it is the same situation from China or Bangladesh, you have no chance coming back into this country at all. Q614 Mrs Dean: Is this because the Chinese applicants and others that you have mentioned are considered to pose a particularly high risk, in that it is felt that they may not go back after their agreed stay? Mr Chan: That is the opinion of the Home Office but not necessarily the case, because in actual fact the majority of the cases we have from China or Bangladesh actually do have the adequate finance and accommodation. It has all been sorted out. It is not someone who suddenly wants to come here to study. They have a history of studying in their own country; they usually come from a more middle-class background, and they have still been refused. Q615 Mrs Dean: In your opinion, people do generally go back when they are supposed to, do they? Mr Chan: You can say about 90% of them. A large number of people actually stay on after their study, when they find jobs in this country and contribute to the economic development in this country. A large number of highly skilled migrant workers are, as far as I know, from China - which is the same as in America and other highly developed states like Canada. Q616 Mrs Dean: The UK now has airline liaison officers posted in Beijing and Shanghai to help airlines prevent inadequately documented passengers from travelling. Have you noticed any impact from this initiative and, if so, do you think that the right people are being stopped? Mr Chan: I can only say that it has become more of a hassle for people to come here. Perhaps I could give you an example. I have a case where the client arrived in this country on a visa to join his family. He entered this country and then, after one year, returned to China to visit his grandparents. On his way back, in Turkey, he was arrested. Looking at the passport, they said, "Oh, by the way, your visa has not been endorsed; so you never came into this country". He was deported back to China and spent three years trying to come back into this country. We had to complain to the Parliamentary Ombudsman and we won the case. We are actually looking at the possibility of taking the Home Office to a compensation claim. The problem is that the airline people do not necessarily understand immigration. They are not highly trained on the immigration rules and half the time they make mistakes, in terms of looking at passports. They are actually stopping a lot more people coming in who are genuine, because they are worried that they will have a fine of £2,000 every time someone arrives here and applies for asylum. Q617 Mrs Dean: In that case, where does the fault lie? In the airline liaison officer or the fact that the visa was not ---- Mr Chan: I think that there has to be much better training for all the staff. I remember that last year we had a student from Sussex University coming to us, to do research on immigration. That student made an appointment to see the Home Office. She was supposed to see the expert on China, and the person does not speak a word of Chinese. The person from the Home Office is actually an expert on China, Korea, Japan and South America. How can he be an expert on all these four areas? To be able to operate the system a lot better, you need better-trained people, in the sense that they are able to understand the culture and the politics of that country in the first place. Without those staff, you cannot operate a proper system. Q618 Mrs Dean: Can you give us any examples of how the Chinese community who want to secure permission for family members to come to live in the UK face difficulties? Mr Chan: From my experience, I have one example that I am doing at the moment. I have assisted the client to put in an application. All the forms have been filled in and sent back to China; they went to the agent who is now the appointed agent by the British Embassy. They look at the form and say, "You need to fill in a new one". So, filling the form for them, instead of applying to come here as a dependant they changed it to be a visitor. I wrote a letter saying that he has come here as a dependant. They ring up the actual applicant; the applicant confirmed that he is coming here as a dependant, and the Home Office refuse him on visitor's grounds. The client who completed the form is not the actual person; it is the agent. There is some sort of misunderstanding. It is quite clear that our letter from the Law Centre and the person, on the phone, confirmed that he is coming here as a dependant; but, for whatever reason, even after that confirmation.... My view would be that they should inform the person, "If in your form you say that you are coming here as a visitor, if that is not true, I would advise you that we do the form, put in the application and we will consider it"; but instead they just refuse it. I have advised my client to put in a new application again. That means it costs them another few thousand RMB to put in a new application. I have been told quite a few times that this sort of thing happens. It is not the first time that clients have been misadvised by officers from the embassy to come into this country. For example, particularly elderly clients who come here to visit their children, their daughters, granddaughters, and all sorts of things. They have been told, "Since you have been here the first time, the next time you come here you can come for a year" - not necessarily six months, which is the maximum period. They put in an application; they are immediately refused. Then they are told, "Sorry, you want to come here for a year, but the maximum period is only six months; so we refuse your application". The grandmother said, "In that case, I will change my application to six months". They said, "Okay"; then they refused it because, "You have an intention to come into this country for more than six months". Realistically, this is not a one-off affair. Over the last year to 18 months we have been hearing complaints from clients that this sort of bad advice has been given to people in the embassy, particularly in Shanghai. If you look at Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, Shanghai seems to us to be the highest refusal rate, with the most ridiculous refusal reasons. Q619 Mrs Dean: Looking at family visit visas, in Beijing it seems that a very high proportion are turned down and yet the decisions are rarely appealed against. Do many of your clients seek legal advice to help family members visit the UK or to appeal against a negative decision? How do we make it more widely known that appeals are possible? Mr Chan: From my experience, it is quite clear that the majority of the clients do not understand English. I have a case where the person was refused and given back all the papers. She was under the impression that she was waiting for a determination. So six weeks later I was asking the client, "What happened to your application?". I asked them to send all the papers; I looked at it and said, "I'm sorry, you have been refused. That was eight weeks ago. Your right of appeal has passed. You have to put in a new application again". The cases we appeal - we assist a number of clients to appeal - the success rate has been quite high. Like Christine said, 90% of our appeals, both oral and written ones, have been successful - only if they actually come to us. Unfortunately, as the Law Centre, we are unable to deal with that amount of cases. We have only two immigration caseworkers and I am the only Chinese‑speaking one. So I deal with all the Chinese cases and my other colleagues deal with all the others from the central London area, which is Bengalis, Somalians - all different types of people. We can only do that much. For example, over the last three weeks - I am not sure if you know - the Chinese community is in a panic. There are new changes in the rules. On 3 April there will be new changes in the rules on work permits. 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. |