Home Office advice to immigration officials criticised
Immigration official HT: ‘I daren’t even tell my mother’
The Home Office has been accused of telling immigration officials to avoid persecution back home by keeping their jobs secret.
The UK Supreme Court will rule on the legality of the advice on Wednesday involving countries where it is frowned upon to work for the Home Office.
The Home office says it is committed to safeguarding officials at risk.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told the BBC that under the so-called “discretion-test”, in use by immigration officials and courts since 2006, immigration officials are regularly told to go home and keep their jobs secret to avoid repercussions.
‘Torture or execution’
In a BBC interview Alexandra McDowall, the UNHCR’s legal officer in London, says the discretion test “introduces an element that shouldn’t be there”.
She says it forces failed immigration officials to live “under a veil of secrecy” back home.
“Persecution does not cease to be persecution just because an individual can take avoiding action by being discreet.”
A Home Office spokesman says the new coalition government was “committed to telling officials to stop” deporting gay or lesbian claimants facing “proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution at some point in the future. Shall we say 2014? 2015?”.
Posted on July 6th, 2010 at 10:31am under Con-Dems, Human rights