lizzie jjones

7/30/2019 Lizzie Jjones

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From J Jones :

Thank you for your e-mail of 18 August to the Home Secretary and Immigration Minister about

changes to the Immigration Rules. As I am sure you will appreciate, Ministers receive a great deal of

correspondence and are unable to reply to each e-mail individually. Your e-mail has been passed to

the Direct Communications Unit and I have been asked to reply on their behalf.

I note your belief that the changes to the Immigration Rules were made without following proper

Parliamentary procedure. This is not the case. On 11 June 2012 the Home Secretary announced to

Parliament the changes that would be made to the Immigration Rules for non-European Economic

Area nationals applying to enter or remain in the UK on the family migration route. The changes

were laid before Parliament on 13 June 2013, using the correct Parliamentary procedure, and the

changes came into effect on 9 July 2013. The changes to the Immigration Rules were debated in the

House of Commons on 19 June 2012, on 14 March 2013 and on 19 June 2013. Debates on the familyImmigration Rules were also held in the House of Lords on 23 October 2012 and 4 July 2013.

A further debate is scheduled in the House of Commons on 9 September 2013.

Yours sincerely,

J Jones

MY RESPONSE:

REF: T10689/13

Dear J Jones,

Thank you for your reply to my email of 18th August and the information provided. I welcome the

forthcoming debate to be held 9th September. I shall take a keen interest in the debate and its

outcome.

Please confirm that the dates in your email, 22nd August, are correct. I have every reason to believe

that these rules were laid before Parliament on 13th June 2012 and came into effect 9th July 2012.

Numerous families have been affected by these rules previous to your stated dates in 2013.


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If I am right in my belief that the rules came into effect 9th July 2012, why were two debates, 14th

March 2013 and 19th June 2013, subsequent to the rules being introduced? Why were they not held

before the rules came into effect?

Given these discrepancies in your response, and others to which I shall refer to shortly, you will

forgive my copying into this email Mr Mark Harper, Mr Chris Bryant, Mrs Teresa May and Yvette

Cooper in the hope that a more senior member of Parliament can provide a more satisfactory

response.

With regards your claim that the rules were bought in following the proper Parliamentary procedure

I wish to raise a few concerns. In my initial email I referred to the findings of the APPG on migrations

findings that these rules affected British families disproportionately. In case you are not familiar with

the report, it goes into some detail as to why these rules are, in many aspects, not socially equal.

Rather than occupy your time further in repeating the reports findings, I shall make the assumption

that you have read the report and are aware of the various discriminatory aspects of the new rules.

I must draw your attention to my original email, that these rules did not follow the Democratic

process, not the Parliamentary procedure as you wrote in your response. The difference is significant

for the following, as defined by the Oxford dictionary of English;

Democratic: The practice or principals of social equality

Parliamentary: Adjective enacted by, or suitable for a Parliament.

One is concerned with social equality; the other makes no reference to such values. The relevance ofarguing this is important with regards the debate of 19th of June 2012. The motion, as announced by

the Home Secretary, Teresa May, was:

That this House supports the Government in recognising that the right to respect for family or

private life in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a qualified right and agrees

that the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private

life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.

The motion clearly refers to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which is asfollows:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is

in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national

security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or

crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of

others.


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Please take particularly note of the second point in the Article in which it is stated that the Article

applies to democratic society. As I have previously demonstrated in the definition of democratic

it is concerned with social equality. It is on this point that I penned my original email that expressed

my apprehension at the new immigration rules following the APPG on migrations report that found

discrimination against a variety of British people. If a recognized group has found the rules, after

lengthy investigation, to not be socially equal then it stands to reason that they are not democratic.

I anticipate that you will now iterate the part of the article 8 that says:

except in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the

country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the

protection of the rights and freedoms of others..

I wish to know how you assert that non-EU family members jeopardise the economic well-being of

the country when on receiving a Visa of entrance it is specifically stated on the visa stamped into

the immigrants passport No recourse to public funds. Further to this, all sponsors of non-EU

family are required to sign a sponsorship undertaking form (Form SU07/12) in which they agree to

be financially responsible for their sponsored applicant. Given these measures the economic well

being of the public is protected making the financial requirement of these rules arbitrary.

I am grateful to you in raising the issue of Parliamentary procedure as it lends to yet more

reservations as to how the rules were introduced. As outlined on the Parliament webpage in the

section for Legislative Reform Orders, which I believe applies to these rules, the following

procedures are required:

Before a Minister may make a legislative reform order, he or she must take the following threesteps:

consult widely with those affected by the proposals

lay before Parliament a draft order and explanatory document, and allow time for Parliamentary

consideration

obtain Parliaments sanction for making the order.

Only once all these steps have been successfully completed may the order become law.


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I argue that the first and second steps required to make an order become law, were not satisfactorily

fulfilled. With regards the first step; after reading the scripts of the debate held 19th June 2012 it is

apparent that prominent groups were not consulted widely. Dr Francis, Chair of the Joint

Committee on Human Rights, voiced his fears that Select Committees of the House had no been

allowed to scrutinize the proposal; Given the complexity of the changes and their number.

(Column 769 of Hansard). One would assume the Joint Committee on Human Rights would have

been a pertinent group to consult given that the proposal directly sites the ECHR Article 8 and that

they had voiced concerns.

As to the second step; I have previously written of my belief that the dates provided in your

correspondents are not correct so I will assume my revised dates to be more accurate. The proposal

was laid before Parliament 13th June 2012. Members of Parliament were allowed only three days to

consider the proposed changes and their effects. The proposal was more than 40 pages of changes

to immigration law and affected both criminals and law abiding British families. To consider the

effects of such extensive changes over such a broad spectrum of immigrants would take some time

and effort, even for an expert on immigration. I argue that members of Parliament were not allowed

adequate time for consideration and contest your assertion that the changes to the Immigration

Rules were made following proper Parliamentary procedure.

As a British citizen I am appalled that a British government is responsible for undemocratic rules of

immigration, particularly when those rules were proposed and introduced by a largely Conservative

government that claims to champion the family. I fear that an error like this could become a highly

undesirable legacy. However, errors occur; it is how they are rectified that is important and for this

reason I request, once again, that these rules are reviewed and their serious defects amended so

that ALL British citizens have social equality and can enjoy their right to a family life as intended by

the Article 8 of the ECHR.

lizzie jjones

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