9th December 2021
An exponential expansion of the number of people in the UK with precarious status: one potential implication of Clause 9 of the current Nationality and Borders Bill
‘“It’s a horrible Clause”. Frances Webber, Institute of Race Relations, London.
The idea that ‘an uncommunicated decision can bind an individual’ is ‘an astonishing proposition’[1].
In August of this year Sky News published analysis[2] of the last three years of ‘complete’ Home Office data relating to migration. Demonstrating that the people who arrive in the UK in small boats and who generally claim asylum are only a small fraction of the number of migrants arriving in the UK each year, it admitted that ‘These numbers are based on estimates. The real number of unauthorised people in the UK is not known as official figures cannot capture the true reality.’ Sky News then fell back onto the much-cited Pew Research figure dating from 2019 that describes there being between 0.8-1.2 million migrant people in the UK who are ‘unauthorised’[3]. The Status Now Network favours the term ‘precarious’ to describe everyone in the UK without secure status.
On 11th November 2021, a number of media outlets carried the Institute of Race Relations exposure[4] of ‘the dangers posed by a clause inserted quietly into the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will allow some British citizens (mainly dual nationals) to lose their citizenship without being notified in a wide range of circumstances, which could put them at grave risk.’ As of 6th December this Clause, number 9[5], is one of several that make up an additional 88 pages of amendments that have been tabled[6] as the Bill passes through its procedural stages.
Here, IRR’s Frances Webber explains more of the history of Clause 9:
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