Most people in modern Britain have little or no
experience of visas. Either we don’t need a visa or else it’s straightforward
to obtain one by spending a few minutes on a computer. Most people don’t want to go to the places,
like Russia or China, which require visas you have to send away for, but with a
little trouble, expense and form filling it’s not that difficult to go to
Moscow, Beijing or even Minsk. There are some places that are genuinely tough
to visit. Bhutan in the Himalayas makes you pay a $250 tax per day just to go
there. They have only relatively recently opened their country to the world at
all. They don’t want to be overwhelmed by the modern world and its people. Still
with a few exceptions if we have enough money we can visit almost any country
in the world. Money opens doors.
What we frequently forget in Britain is that huge
numbers of people in the world cannot travel where they please for the simple
reason that they don’t have enough money to do so. It’s difficult if not
impossible for all but the wealthiest Russians to come to the UK. In order to
obtain a tourist visa to visit the UK you have to demonstrate that you have
enough money to take care of yourself and stay in hotels for the duration of
your stay. You have to show that you have a job and property in Russia and that
it is likely that you will return. It is easier if you have a UK resident who
can sponsor your trip, but the process of obtaining a visa is still expensive,
time consuming and far from guaranteed. For the most part it is practically
speaking impossible for the average Russian citizen to come to live and work in
the UK unless they marry a Brit.
Are we then discriminating against Russians? Yes we
are. Someone who was born in a part of the Soviet Union that is now Latvia has
the right to live and work in the UK by virtue of Latvia being in the EU.
Another person who was born a Soviet citizen doesn’t have that right. This
might seem unfair, but this is the nature of the world. We don’t allow everyone
from the world even to visit the UK because we think that if we did a proportion
would overstay or in some other way abuse their visas
We make a distinction between people from some
countries who find it easy to visit Britain and people from other countries who
find it hard or even impossible to visit. On what basis do we do this? Well
generally we favour people from friendly nations and allies. We also favour
people from countries with standards of living which are similar to ours. Few
Japanese people would want to work illegally in the UK, but lots of Russians
would. This is because the standard of living in Japan is similar to the UK,
while in Russia it is much lower. The likelihood of someone abusing the visa
granted to them is a key part of the calculation of whether the visa is granted
or not.
We are then already discriminating against the vast
majority of citizens in the world. Every Western country does the same. Unless
you favour a world without borders, which is very noble of you, but not very
practical, then it is necessary to accept that we have to limit the right of
most people in the world to travel to the UK.
The Conservative Party for some years has wished to
limit immigration to the tens of thousands per year. One of the reasons why the
British people voted to leave the EU is that it became obvious that the only
way to limit immigration was to leave. You might disagree with attempts to
limit immigration, but this in effect is to get rid of borders. Campaign for
that if you will, but you will find that the majority disagree with you, not
least because our health and welfare systems would collapse.
It is practically speaking much easier for someone
from the First World to visit countries like the UK, Canada and the USA. Every
First World country discriminates against people from other parts of the world.
We also have for many years made it more difficult for people from some
countries that are considered to be dangerous to come to here. It may be
difficult for a Russian to gain a visa to travel to the UK, but it is still
more difficult for someone from Afghanistan. We discriminate against the
citizens of certain countries still more than we discriminate against others. There
comes a point when practically speaking it is almost impossible for the average
citizen of some countries to come here legally.
The principle of preventing people from one or more
country travelling is not new. There are a number of countries that have travel
bans against citizens of other countries. People from parts of West Africa were
banned from travelling during the Ebola epidemic. Israeli citizens are banned
from going to many countries.
In times of war it has sometimes been felt necessary
to arrest citizens of other countries and intern them. No doubt this was unjust
to many innocent people. But the fear of allowing a few spies to live at large
meant that both the innocent and the guilty were punished.
We must accept then that the process of allowing
people to visit our country involves discrimination. Why then has the action of
the United States President caused such uproar? The reason is that Trump
implemented his policy in the worst possible way.
It was unjust to detain visa holders and people with
Green cards. If you apply for such a visa and it has been granted then you
should be allowed to proceed about your business unless there is a good reason
to prevent you doing so.
There was no need whatsoever for Donald Trump to
provide a blanket ban on travel for people from certain countries. All he
needed to do was to advise the embassies in these countries that they should
make it more difficult for people to obtain visas. We already accept the
principle that it is more difficult for citizens of some countries to travel to
the UK or the USA than certain other countries. The reason for this
discrimination is based on the policies of the Government of each country. They
don’t have to justify their reasons.
At various points in the past decades a US President
has made it difficult if not impossible for citizens of Iran and Iraq to obtain
visas to go the USA. The problem then with Trump is that we went about his
attempt to limit the travel rights of people from various countries in a way
that was arbitrary, unjust and contrary to the normal rules by which Western
countries act.
The problem with Donald Trump is that he wants to
shout from the roof tops something that would be far better to be implemented
quietly and without fuss. He could have made it practically much more difficult
for the vast majority of the citizens of the countries he wished to exclude
simply by setting conditions for their visa applications that they would be
unlikely to be able to fulfil. The United Kingdom already does this with regard
to citizens of Russia and many other countries. The United States clearly would
have the same right to do likewise. We are allowed to discriminate on the grounds
of wealth. If this were not the case we could not even ask a visa applicant if
they had enough money for their trip. All President Trump then needed to do was
to set the financial requirement for obtaining a visa high enough that it would
achieve the limitation he was looking for. This need not only have applied to
countries from one region of the world, such as the Middle East but could have
applied to a number of others. In this way there would be no question of
discrimination apart from financial discrimination.
Trump’s blanket ban was foolish also because it did
not take into account other circumstances. There ought to have been exceptions
for people who were highly skilled and had job offers or university places.
People with family members in the United States ought also to have been given
preferential treatment.
It is not wrong to wish to limit immigration. It is
also not wrong to wish to limit immigration from certain countries. If this
were not the case it would be wrong for us to have visas at all. We are after
all limiting the rights of Russians to come to Britain, while not limiting the
rights of people from the Republic of Ireland. We accepted that it was right to
limit the freedom of Germans in the UK in 1939, because we could not tell who
was dangerous and who was not. For the same reason it is not unreasonable to
limit the rights to travel of people who come from countries which at present
are full of violence and terrorism. We cannot tell who is innocent and who is
guilty.
But in trying to protect ourselves we ought not to
behave in a way that is arbitrary and unjust. We should be open and we should
also welcome people from all countries, cultures and faiths. But we do have the
right to limit who can come. By setting the requirement for obtaining a visa
high enough such that we favour those who can invest in the UK, have family
members here, or are highly skilled we will be not be discriminating against
anyone. The reason someone cannot obtain a visa will be objective. It will be
because they do not meet the conditions we have chosen to set. In this way we
will succeed in limiting immigration, while minimising the risks of allowing
people to arrive here who may pose a threat to our security.
Donald Trump has a right to do what he thinks is
necessary to protect the United States. We have the same right here in the UK.
But the way in which this is done must not be perceived to be grounded in
prejudice. A heightened level of security can be obtained without causing
resentment and anger simply by quietly changing the rules by which visas are
granted. Trump could have achieved exactly the same result without any
demonstrations if he had just acted in a way that was more subtle and if he had
thought through his actions more carefully. This unfortunately is not his
nature.
It would be wrong to discriminate against people who
follow the Russian Orthodox faith, but in practice we do make it very difficult
for them to visit the UK. We do this because the UK doesn’t have very friendly
relations with Russia and because Russians are poor. If a large number of Russian citizens came to Britain and poisoned our tea with polonium or carried out other terrorist acts we might make it still harder for Russians to travel here. We
would be doing so however not because they were Orthodox, but because a
proportion of Russian citizens were dangerous and we couldn’t tell who was
innocent and who was guilty. There would be nothing unjust about making it much
more difficult for Russians to obtain visas. Indeed it would be prudent.
