Let's give the UK Border Agency the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe it just didn't understand Jilda Clark's accent. The agency refused the Turkish academic entry to Scotland on the grounds she did not offer proof she had a basic grasp of the language, even though she is married to a Scot and has a BA and an MA in English language teaching. She has also been teaching English as a second language in Istanbul for the past nine years. It is another depressing example of a Government-inspired suspicion of immigrants, one that also found painful expression in the posters recently displayed in Home Office premises in Govan encouraging asylum seekers to go home.
Dr Clark is not an illegal immigrant. She has gone through the correct procedures and, more importantly, she was applying to move to Scotland with her husband Philip and her children so they could be closer to her husband's ageing parents. She has, through marriage, every reason to move here.
Furthermore, she would bring with her great academic experience and expertise; in short the educational foundation we keep being told we need in our country's workforce. Instead, she has now been separated from her family and will have to "prove" her proficiency in English in a test organised by one of the agency's approved providers. Let us overlook whether this is a useful way to spend Government money in a time of severe economic difficulty. And let us even set aside the emotional cost of dividing a family for six months. The question is: what are we gaining from barring Mrs Clark entry to Scotland? On the evidence, a skilled, experienced potential member of the national workforce. And to whose advantage is that?
There are no easy answers on the thorny issue of immigration. Indeed, it is a problem that is likely to grow in the coming years. But in this particular case the Border Agency's approach is not only rude but frankly inappropriate. More worryingly, it is another distressing example of the mood music coming from both the Border Agency and the Home Office. It reflects an approach to the problem that is dubious, potentially dangerous and, if not racist in itself, likely to encourage racist sensibilities.
Of course, it doesn't help that the Government's crackdown on illegal immigrants feels, to some degree, like a Conservative sop to disgruntled voters who might be thinking of switching their vote to Ukip.
The fact is all of us know Scots who have come to this country from abroad - from England, from Europe, from America - who now play a full and worthwhile part in our society. Scotland is a more vital and more cosmopolitan place for their presence.
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