Post
by desiguy » Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:33 pm
It's heating up. Following from Times Of India.
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MPs join Indians' HSMP battleAdd to Clippings
Rashmee Roshan Lall
[ 5 Jan, 2007 2347hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
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LONDON: Leading British MPs and peers have weighed into the battle being waged by an estimated 30,000 embattled Indians who claim the British government is victimising them by changing the rules of the Highly-Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) under which they left the mother country to work here.
The Indians, who have instructed their lawyers speedily to file a case in the High Court in London for judicial review of the changed immigration rules, urgently appealed for "intervention" by the Indian president, prime minister and foreign affairs minister on Friday.
In a letter to the Indian government, seen by The Times of India, they said this was the "last resort". They called for the Indian authorities to seek a "discussion with UK prime minister Tony Blair to resolve the burning issue of the very survival of Indians and other commonwealth country citizens against the retrospective changes."
The Indians' case is being supported by a cross-party group of MPs and peers that includes the Conservative shadow immigration minister Damien Green, governing Labour Party MP Andrew Dismore, Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Michael Fallon and the British Indian academic who sits in the house of Lords, Bhikhu Parekh.
The Indians said in their letter to New Delhi, "We have been made targets of undemocratic, illegal and ill-motive changes. Due to these new changes we who have made innumerable sacrifices in making UK our country of habitual residence would be forced to wind up our establishments, careers, schooling of our children, and investments and will be asked to leave the UK. This has caused lot of mental, social and economical suffering to us and our families."
They added, "Our legitimate expectation is we who are invited in UK on HSMP visas should be treated according to the promises UK Home Office made to us when we first entered on the program. New rules are meant for new applicants and shouldn't be enforced on existing migrants."
Conservative front-bencher Green told this paper he could not help but agree the Labour government had been unfair to Indians and other non-European nationals allowed into Britain under the HSMP scheme and now left to suffer. Promising to carry on the fight for justice for the Indians and others by means of parliamentary questions and scrutiny, Green said, "It's just not cricket and it's not fairplay and it's not the image of Britain we want to present to the world".
Added Parekh, "I think the government is guilty of behaving dishonourably towards Indians and others".
He said the British government appeared to have misjudged its labour force requirements and had consequently allowed thousands of Indians and other non-Europeans into the country through the HSMP. "But they found they had east European highly-skilled workers coming in and their own (British) universities were churning out the workers they needed. So they applied the HSMP rules to Indians with retrospective effect. That's wrong and unfair."
The Indians are just days away from a protest rally near the British Parliament, which is expected to be attended by several thousands of those affected by the unfair new HSMP rules, organizer Amit Kapadia told TOI on Friday.
Indians are the largest national group affected by Britain's new HSMP rules, which came into force on December 5 and apply with retrospective effect to render them unfit for the highly-skilled migrant category. The new rules disenfranchise potential non-European migrants over 28 years old and earning UK salaries less than £ 35,000. The Indians insist that their temporary visas make it impossible to get high-earning jobs and the changed rules make it impossible for them to stay on in Britain as previously promised by the government.
Parekh, a long-time and acute observer of Britain's convulsive view of hot-button issues such as immigration and integration, warned that the new HSMP rules and the ejection of Indian doctors in mid-2006 was just one of a series of hardline measures contemplated by the government.
He warned that government studies were currently being prepared to assess a change in naturalisation rules, often used by wealthy Indians, who qualify for British nationality after investing £ 1 million here and creating UK jobs.