Dogwash

Interesting news this morning that Barnardo's are to be contracted to manage the welfare of children detained with their families awaiting deportation at the facility which is to replace the family unit at Yarl's Wood.

Cue the usual bleating about children being "imprisoned", with the impression being actively promoted that the poor terrified little mites are being cast mercilessly into dank dungeons where they are compelled to fight off the rats for possession of their meagre rations of bread and water. Actually, the proposed site looks quite pleasant.

But it's still detention, they say. You promised to end the detention of children whose families are slated for deportation (or immigration removal, or whatever, but let's not get bogged down in legal technicalities that are not pertinent to the issue).

So let's look at the practical possibilities. If a family with children has exhausted the legal paths available to them and has been told to leave, there seem to be five distinct ways of handling the process.

1. The family leaves voluntarily.


2. The family is detained together pending expulsion.


3. The adults are detained pending expulsion. The children are left with neighbours, relatives or the like, or are taken into local-authority care. The family is reunited immediately prior to expulsion.


4. The complete family is collected on the eve or on the day of expulsion.


5. No attempt is made to expel the family, who are allowed to remain indefinitely.

It is clear that only outcomes 1 and 5 are acceptable to the Righteous. Actually, no, scrub outcome 1: the Righteous will see this solely as evidence of the family having been "intimidated" into leaving.

Outcome 5 will satisfy both the Righteous and the affected family. But it is unacceptable to the state and to the British people at large. Why?

• It is unfair. It allows the rule of law to be circumvented. We have the right to control our borders and to decide who we allow to come and live here. It is a right asserted by nations throughout the world, often brutally. There is no justifiable reason why we in the UK should be expected to behave differently.


• It is unfair to those failed asylum seekers and other illegals who do not have a sprog or two in tow. A curious point but a valid one.


• It sends a signal to the many millions of potential illegal immigrants waiting at the gates that if you can acquire a dependent sprog then once you're in the country you can stay for ever. One more weapon to add to the armoury.


• It has potential for some interesting unintended consequences. If we adopt outcome 5 as standard — i.e. that no family with dependent children will ever be deported, however weak their claim — then I can imagine a market in trafficked "dependents" developing, matching trafficked children of the approximately correct origin to illegal adults in the UK. Children who are not only abused victims of trafficking in the first place, but will probably end up abandoned into the care of the British state once their initial purpose has been fulfilled.

OK, so a brief look at remaining outcomes 2, 3 and 4. Outcome 4 (the six o'clock snatch and the van ride to Heathrow) is perhaps the most unnecessarily traumatic of the lot. And error-prone too, with bags of possibilities for people to get separated. Surely you don't want that. Outcome 3 (bang up the parents and put the kids briefly into care) is almost as bad. Separating the kids from their parents at a difficult time and placing them in the care of strangers. Do you really want that? No, if the deportation is to go ahead and it is clear that the family will not co-operate or may attempt to actively frustrate the process, then outcome 2 (detain the family together) is the only realistic and humane approach.

Outcome 5 (let 'em stay) is a dereliction of the duty of the state to its people. It is similar to saying, "OK, Mrs Smith," (or Ms Smith as it might be these days), "your partner Kev has been convicted of armed robbery and GBH, but we're not going to imprison him because we wouldn't want the kids to be deprived of their father." Get a grip.

But we do expect a decent state to treat those in its charge humanely. Spare us the bollocks about the kids being locked up and deprived of their freedom. The freedom of movement of children is routinely circumscribed and constrained by parents or other guardians as part of everyday life. A 2.3m fence at the perimeter of the grounds of what amounts to a rather pleasant-looking country hotel is not traumatic.

The trauma, or to use old-fashioned language, the stress of the situation comes from the reaction of the parents, which is communicated to the children. Perfectly understandable. If I'd been convicted of an offence and was about to suffer the legal consequences, I'm sure I wouldn't be feeling particularly laid back about it either. It is also unavoidable. If we wanted to be nasty, we could say that it was the actions of the parents that brought about this situation and it's up to them to do the stiff upper-lip thing for the benefit of the kids. But being decent folk, we are bringing in a bit of extra support in an attempt to minimize it.

Far better to accept that you've been rejected and to leave quietly and under your own steam. For this country must enforce its laws. Ask yourselves this. You've come to the UK for a better life for yourselves and, in particular, for your kids. If, by accommodating your illegality and the illegal behaviour of the potentially many others in your position, we put into practice what amounts to an open borders policy and people then flow in from the third world until the country collapses into a copy of what you left behind to come here, what then have you gained?

Catch-22, innit?