Intemperate language around immigration needs to be dropped - Yorkshire Post Letters

In any discussion of any topic, intemperate language and hostile posturings are invariably unhelpful.

This is especially true concerning the current debate over immigration to this country, and in particular with respect to the word ‘Illegal’.

Instead of the accusations and counter-accusations that are flying around, we desperately need clear facts and simple logic to enable us to find a way through this difficult dilemma.

At the start of the debate, I find two distinct problems with the use of ‘Illegal’.

When I was a child, male homosexuality and attempted suicide were both declared to be unlawful, and anyone found ‘guilty’ of either was liable to punishment under the law.

Attitudes have progressed (as surely they must), and neither is now deemed to be unlawful; the point being that what is, at any time, considered illegal, can quite easily be made legal by a simple changing of minds, and the right to ‘Change our minds’ is a fundamental tenet of our democracy.

There is nothing eternal or ‘written-in-stone’ about what our laws may at any time declare.

My second problem is that, as far as I am aware, no-one can be deemed to be guilty of a crime until a properly constituted court of law has declared it to be so.

Even the most heinous and obvious murderer benefits from the principle of ‘Innocence till proven guilty’.

It is unlikely that people seeking refuge into this country, fleeing from war-zones and other threats to life and security, will be in possession of a full set of formal documents; it is unlikely that they will have been able to apply to the appropriate British embassy officials for prior approval; and it is unlikely that they will be able to claim legitimacy through our formal channels.

I recognise, of course, the scourge of the criminal gangs who seek to exploit these unfortunates, and who, in some cases, actually extend their activities to village communities in their own countries by seducing and persuading young people to believe their promises.

This is a separate matter which demands its own separate solution.

But those who, of their own volition, arrive in this country by means which our laws do not currently formally recognise, have the right not to be branded criminals until our formal processes have properly considered their cases.

The boat people have the absolute right not to be referred to as ‘Illegal immigrants’. They also have the absolute right not to be threatened by our law-makers and our law enforcers with consequences for putative future ‘crimes’ without the slightest reference to due process.

Our democracy and our law-giving is rightly admired and emulated globally; any deviation from fundamental principles, however slight or however skilfully justified, can only be seen as the start of the process sometimes characterised as the ‘slippery slope’ in which the next step is justified by the acceptance of the first.

Above all, we must be very careful not to embark on this course.