Family Visitor Visas

Faisal Rashid Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington North (Helen Jones) and for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) for putting the case very eloquently and for giving us information and examples. We are debating this petition because, across the United Kingdom, the relatives of British citizens, who want nothing more than to visit their family, are being prevented from doing so. My hon. Friends have given examples of constituents who have contacted them, and I have been contacted by many constituents who are victims of the Government’s cruel and inhuman approach to immigration. I am pleased that we have the opportunity to raise their plight today.

My constituent, Mr Sul, came to the United Kingdom in 2006 to study for his masters. He has worked in the United Kingdom ever since and was granted citizenship in 2015. He owns a home in the United Kingdom and his children were born here. How did the Government choose to thank him for making this country his home, for contributing to our economy and for his family’s contribution to their local community? They denied his wife the opportunity to have her mother present for the birth of their first child, and they denied his father the opportunity to travel to the UK to meet his grandchildren and take pride in the home his eldest son had built. That is absolutely inhuman. My constituent is not alone; many others have contacted me and my hon. Friends.

Unjustly refusing visas causes unnecessary emotional distress and keeps families apart, preventing them from sharing important moments together. The practice of preventing visitors from entering the country is not only deeply unfair to those UK citizens and their families, but harmful to the UK’s tourism industry. Those people are potential tourists who would spend their money on local goods and services, boosting the local economy.

We all recognise the need to secure our borders, reduce illegal immigration, tackle organised crime and protect national security, and I commend the work of the vast majority of Border Agency officials who work hard daily to do just that, but let us be clear: denying those visas is not about border security. It is an ideological choice by the Conservative Government to create a hostile environment for immigrants and their families, which was first launched by the Prime Minister. The Home Office is misusing immigration rules to prevent honest people from visiting the country, and is so afraid of any challenge to its unjustifiable decisions that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West said, in 2013 the Government removed the right of appeal for family visitor visas. They have allowed the Home Office to become judge, jury and executioner in relation to the lives of the families of British citizens. This gross misuse of immigration rules is similar to an issue we debated in Westminster Hall last month, at which the Minister was also present—the use of paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules to deport honest, hard-working immigrants.

The rejection of family visit visas and the refusal to hear appeals in cases such as that of my constituent are yet another manifestation of the hostile environment policy. We have a new Secretary of State, but we appear to have the same old problems. Will the Minister tell us that things will be different under the new Secretary of State? Will he tackle the hostile environment policy, which has infected the Home Office since the days when the Prime Minister was Home Secretary, or should we expect more of the unfair mistreatment of British citizens and their families that we have witnessed since 2010? I second the positive suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West and urge the Minister to look at them seriously.