British Minister to look into tax issues of immigration

A British immigration minister’s pledge to look into a growing trend in which hundreds of highly skilled South Asians in Britain are potentially facing deportation because of minor tax rectifications has received a muted response from campaigners.

During an appearance before the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes said she would be looking into suggestions that negligible or minor rectifications in tax submissions were being misused to deny individuals, particularly from South Asia, indefinite leave to remain in the UK, using a section of immigration legislation intended to keep out criminals and terrorists.

Following repeated questions by MPs on the select committee, Nokes said she would call for the issue to be looked into that evening, following her appearance. “Many people make errors with their tax returns — but it is crucial that we understand the patterns that are happening,” she told MPs.

“It is a minor victory,” said Aditi Bhardwaj, one of the founders of the Highly Skilled group, whose efforts to bring the issue to light, including through protests outside Parliament, gained ground in recent weeks amid increasing concern about the way in which aggressive immigration policies were resulting in potential injustices to those in Britain legally.

The group awaits an appeal by one of its members being heard at the Court of Appeal in June, in which it is hoped the court could give direction to government policy, independently of any review undertaken by the government. “I still feel there is a long way to go on this issue.”

Case review

Bhardwaj also expressed concern about the minister’s apparent attempt to suggest she had only become aware of the issue in recent days. When asked about why the minister had not asked for a review of these cases for migrants on the highly-skilled tier-I visa, to identify which involved serious cases of fraud and which involved trivial mistakes, the minister insisted it had been just “two working days” since the issue captured the headlines, when British media reported potentially hundreds of people being impacted.

In a letter to an unnamed MP who expressed concerns about the treatment of the migrants this March, shared with this newspaper, Nokes rejects those concerns, and supports the use of paragraph 322(5), the now controversial section of the Immigration Rules, which has been used as a basis for denying individuals the right to remain in Britain. “She was well aware of the issue. We know one of her constituents who has been raising this issue for months,” said Bhardwaj.

“There were hundreds — potentially thousands — of high-skilled migrants who are having their indefinite leave to remain taken away,” said John Woodcock, an MP on the committee, who questioned Nokes, making specific reference to the plight of highly-skilled people of Indian or Pakistani origin.

‘Tax submissions’

“There are cases of people who can no longer get treatment for free on the NHS because they are being told they are going to be detained and people who are sleeping in their clothes because they fear being taken to a removal centre, specifically because of the way that your department is treating what are either negligible or minor mistakes in their tax submissions. Are you concerned about that and what are you doing about it?

Nokes, while denying Britain’s immigration system was causing the country to appear “unwelcoming to people with high skills,” she acknowledged the need for cultural change, and a move away from the “computer says no” mentality. Asked by MPs if she or her family had ever made inadvertent errors in her tax submissions, she responded “probably.”

A freedom of information request to HMRC by the highly-skilled campaign group found that over 500,000 amendments to self-assessment tax returns were made in the year to April 2017.

Also giving evidence, Permanent Secretary of the Home Office Philip Rutnam, insisted that it was essential for the Home Office to see if there were discrepancies between data submitted to immigration authorities and HMRC, given the pressure to overstate earnings to meet the threshold for the tier-I visa (the visa, which those seeking indefinite leave in these cases have been on).

“It is vital that the correct decisions are made, particularly with complex tier-I applications that require detailed consideration and verification of evidence with HMRC. These robust checks are essential to avoid the potential abuse of our immigration or tax system,” the Home Office said in a statement on Wednesday.

COMMENT NOW