sometimes I dread telling people what I
do for a living
now don’t get me wrong I’m incredibly
proud of my job and I feel privileged to
be able to do it but what I didn’t
realize when I started practicing
immigration law what no one tells you is
that when your job has the words
immigration in the title you’ll be
expected to defend it in all sorts of
situations at a party in a black cab
when taking out the rubbish this defense
takes place in a in a climate where the
words that we see here represent a lot
of the rhetoric on immigration let me
give you an example as anyone who’s
taken a black cab in London will know
London cabbies are insatiably curious
and one of the first questions they ask
after checking where it is that you’re
going if what you do for a living love
now I will generally try to answer this
question with the suitably generic I’m a
lawyer and I’ll admit this an of in and
of itself can be enough to turn your
listener against you but it’s the answer
to the follow-up question which has
gotten me into real trouble what area of
law my answer immigration on one
occasion led to the cabbie responding Oh
to help keep him out to which I had to
delicately respond that no actually I
helped keep him in what followed was a
cab journey where I attempted to undo
years of misinformation about
immigration while travelling back from a
wedding at midnight I’m someone
duty-bound to defend immigration I
ensure that I’m always well armed with
lots of statistics about it on this
occasion the conversation went something
like this the taxi driver would say oh
we don’t have space for any more
immigrants and they’re all claiming
benefits anyways I would respond with
some information about how immigrants
are in fact much less likely to claim
benefits than their UK counterparts and
some stats about the billions of pounds
of income generated by immigrants in the
UK he would respond by telling me a
story his friends friend to told him
about a European family who’d recently
moved into the area and were already
claiming benefits and just like that he
believed that he had won the argument
and so it went on until thankfully the
journey came to an end now I sometimes
relish the opportunity to counter
commonly held misconceptions about
immigration but to be honest with you
after a friend’s wedding at midnight it
can be exhausting it can also often feel
pointless
we’ll have discovered from these
interactions is that I could share all
the information in the world about the
amazing benefits that immigration brings
but people’s own perceived experiences
and anecdotes they’ve heard will trump
any factual analysis in other words
telling stories and not statistics would
be a more effective way to get my point
across people believe what they have
seen and heard even if it’s not
reflective of a broader truth this can
be reflected in surveys of public
opinion in 2009 the British social
attitudes survey asked people to
estimate what percentage of the
population was made up of non-western
immigrants the most common response was
25 percent and yet in reality
the actual percentage of total
immigrants in the UK was 11% less than
half of what people believed it to be
well and why does it matter if anyone
believes the real statistics over their
own stories it matters because what
we’ve seen is that in the world of
immigration what people believe about it
is what matters to the politicians
tasked with doing something about it we
don’t even have to look very deeply to
see that what the public believes has
this kind of influence in 2016 the
Secretary of State amber Rudd told us
that we had to reduce immigration in
order to change the tide of public
opinion what she’s telling us
the public believes immigration is too
high therefore we must act as if it is
too high and we must take steps to
reduce it
she doesn’t seek to analyze that the
public is right or even why the public
feels the way that they do
she doesn’t seek to contrast the
public’s view with the facts that we
have about immigration she just takes a
reading of public opinion and bases
policy on it and so the prime motivating
factor for immigration law in the UK has
been to reduce the number of people
coming here
in order to do this we’ve seen changes
across the board if you’re a student
it’s harder to get the to get a visa
even though there are estimates which
suggests that international students
contribute anywhere from between 13 to
18 billion pounds to the UK economy if
you’re a worker it’s harder to get a
visa despite the fact that UK businesses
tell us that they need access to
international talent in order to
continue to compete in an increasingly
global market if you’re married to a
British person it’s harder to get a visa
although this has meant that families
are increasingly likely to be split up
and children could be separated from
parents at years four years at a time
one way of looking at these changes
would be to say that by implementing
them we’ve deprived ourselves of income
from international students we’ve
hampered the opportunities of
international of UK businesses in an
international market and we’ve
destabilized families
another way of looking at them would be
to say that we’ve helps to reduce the
immigration and therefore we’ve
satisfied public demand we can see that
the stories that people come across
whether in the press in their personal
life or from a friend in the pub can
reinforce negative ideas about
immigration and help to substantiate
views that people hold that don’t
necessarily reflect reality this leads
to a public who are increasingly hostile
to immigration with immigration itself
now one of the single biggest issues of
concern to British voters all of the
time with the benefits of immigration
are as real as ever it leads to
to the negative rhetoric about
immigration that we see represented
behind me worth of oka sense that
immigrants are different they are the
other and they are to blame these
negative views of immigration then feed
into public policy leading to
immigration rules which are tougher and
more restrictive because the public
concern that were seeking to address is
that immigration is too high by seeking
to address fears that immigration is too
high without looking behind public
opinion we actually run the risk of
failing to address the real concerns
after all if the public is concerned
that immigration is too high because
immigrants disproportionately claim
benefits that suggests they have deeper
concerns about pressures on public
finances but if in reality immigrants
aren’t claiming benefits on any
significant scale then reducing
immigration won’t actually have any
impact on public finances and it could
actually make things worse after all we
have an aging population we may need the
tax contributions from younger
immigrants in order to fund the pensions
health and social care of our aging
native population simply acquiescing to
public opinion also ignores the moral
and legal obligations we have with
regard to taking in refugees to
facilitating family life and protecting
the most vulnerable in society I dare
fall in love to simply argue for an
immigration policy which ignores public
opinion one rooted in fact yes but also
compassion and respect for human rights
unfortunately the ripples of public
opinion on policy seem too strong to
ignore so instead of just advocating for
a barrier between unfounded public
opinion and the policies that it creates
I think we need to learn to be better
immigration defenders we need to learn
how to tell stories and not just
statistics I think we’re starting to see
that although public opinion remains
overwhelmingly anti-immigration there
have been some glimpses of
pro-immigration sentiments and these
have largely been the results of human
stories
most heartbreakingly we can look at the
at the story of Alan Kurdi the Syrian
refugee child who was found dead on a
beach his image and the unfiltered image
of his death that it represented to many
showed this very human suffering at the
heart of the refugee crisis and
generated compassion for an issue which
up until then had been lacking it scenes
of families being split up at airports
following the imposition of transfers
travel ban generated public vocal and
global support for those immigrants and
global condemnation for the ban the
story of a Singapore woman irene canal
who’d been married to a British man for
27 years but was removed from the UK
recently because she didn’t hold a valid
visa attracted considerable press
attention and public support including
significant financial support as we can
see on this particular story I was asked
by a number of family and friends how
could this happen
wasn’t it outrageous I thought well yes
it’s outrageous but in UK immigration
terms it wasn’t unusual in the slightest
I see the sort of thing all the time and
then I realised this was it this was my
story the next time I’m called upon to
defend immigration I would draw
attention to stories like this for this
is how I think we begin to actually turn
the tide of public opinion not by
pandering to a false narrative but by
telling stories that people care about
by informing people of the facts with
nonfiction stories for stories seem to
have a sticking power in people’s minds
in a way that statistics simply don’t we
can see this on a broader scale with
reference to the British social
attitudes survey which in 2014 asked the
public for their view on the impact of
immigration they divided their results
up based on whether the respondents
considered themselves to have friends
who were migrants among those who said
they had several friends who were
migrants 70% had a positive or neutral
view of the cultural and economic
perhaps of immigration by contrast
amongst those who consider themselves to
have no friends who are migrants sixty
percent had a negative view of
immigration people therefore with lived
experience of migrants stories are much
more likely to have a positive view of
immigration and what do we stand to gain
if we can begin to tell the stories of
immigrants rather than the statistical
impact of immigration we can change the
trajectory of public opinion on
immigration and if negative public
opinion ripples into policies aimed at
reducing immigration it must be the case
that positive public opinion could have
the opposite effect removing the
pressure of negative opinion would also
free politicians to take a more
compassionate stance on refugees and
families separated by the UK immigration
rules in 2016 it was suggested having a
slight tech issue if you bear with me
that the UK could take up to 3,000 of
the approximately 90,000 unaccompanied
child refugees across Europe in late
2016 some of these children began
arriving in the UK and their arrival was
accompanied with headlines like this
news stories which focused on their age
and cast doubt on whether they could
really be under 18 these stories didn’t
tell the stories of the arduous and
dangerous journeys that these children
had made the headlines didn’t detail the
lives that these children were fleeing
instead they cast the children as
threatening as liars and as a burden in
the negative light cast by these stories
the government has announced that the
programmes will now close with only 350
children barely 10% of the original
estimate having benefited from it how we
see these children and the stories we
hear about them matter stories about
immigration in all its forms matter and
they can make a difference because
ultimately it is these stories which
have the capacity to transform how we
think about immigration these stories
are the way we change public opinion and
public debate about immigration and the
influence that those debates have on
policy
Irene Finnell the Singaporean woman
recently removed from the UK wrote about
her experience shortly after removal she
concluded with an appeal to those who
have made migrant a term of abuse to
consider the human cost of their actions
I think Irene has perfectly summed up
the challenge that lies before us the
prize though in successfully changing
attitudes and humanizing views on
immigration is clear we can change the
rhetoric on immigration from this to
this for all of us who believe it is
important to have an immigration policy
rooted in fact and underpinned by
compassion and respect for human rights
the time to start telling these stories
is now for I believe if we want to
achieve this goal we all need to learn
to be
better immigration defenders thank you
[Applause]
you
do for a living
now don’t get me wrong I’m incredibly
proud of my job and I feel privileged to
be able to do it but what I didn’t
realize when I started practicing
immigration law what no one tells you is
that when your job has the words
immigration in the title you’ll be
expected to defend it in all sorts of
situations at a party in a black cab
when taking out the rubbish this defense
takes place in a in a climate where the
words that we see here represent a lot
of the rhetoric on immigration let me
give you an example as anyone who’s
taken a black cab in London will know
London cabbies are insatiably curious
and one of the first questions they ask
after checking where it is that you’re
going if what you do for a living love
now I will generally try to answer this
question with the suitably generic I’m a
lawyer and I’ll admit this an of in and
of itself can be enough to turn your
listener against you but it’s the answer
to the follow-up question which has
gotten me into real trouble what area of
law my answer immigration on one
occasion led to the cabbie responding Oh
to help keep him out to which I had to
delicately respond that no actually I
helped keep him in what followed was a
cab journey where I attempted to undo
years of misinformation about
immigration while travelling back from a
wedding at midnight I’m someone
duty-bound to defend immigration I
ensure that I’m always well armed with
lots of statistics about it on this
occasion the conversation went something
like this the taxi driver would say oh
we don’t have space for any more
immigrants and they’re all claiming
benefits anyways I would respond with
some information about how immigrants
are in fact much less likely to claim
benefits than their UK counterparts and
some stats about the billions of pounds
of income generated by immigrants in the
UK he would respond by telling me a
story his friends friend to told him
about a European family who’d recently
moved into the area and were already
claiming benefits and just like that he
believed that he had won the argument
and so it went on until thankfully the
journey came to an end now I sometimes
relish the opportunity to counter
commonly held misconceptions about
immigration but to be honest with you
after a friend’s wedding at midnight it
can be exhausting it can also often feel
pointless
we’ll have discovered from these
interactions is that I could share all
the information in the world about the
amazing benefits that immigration brings
but people’s own perceived experiences
and anecdotes they’ve heard will trump
any factual analysis in other words
telling stories and not statistics would
be a more effective way to get my point
across people believe what they have
seen and heard even if it’s not
reflective of a broader truth this can
be reflected in surveys of public
opinion in 2009 the British social
attitudes survey asked people to
estimate what percentage of the
population was made up of non-western
immigrants the most common response was
25 percent and yet in reality
the actual percentage of total
immigrants in the UK was 11% less than
half of what people believed it to be
well and why does it matter if anyone
believes the real statistics over their
own stories it matters because what
we’ve seen is that in the world of
immigration what people believe about it
is what matters to the politicians
tasked with doing something about it we
don’t even have to look very deeply to
see that what the public believes has
this kind of influence in 2016 the
Secretary of State amber Rudd told us
that we had to reduce immigration in
order to change the tide of public
opinion what she’s telling us
the public believes immigration is too
high therefore we must act as if it is
too high and we must take steps to
reduce it
she doesn’t seek to analyze that the
public is right or even why the public
feels the way that they do
she doesn’t seek to contrast the
public’s view with the facts that we
have about immigration she just takes a
reading of public opinion and bases
policy on it and so the prime motivating
factor for immigration law in the UK has
been to reduce the number of people
coming here
in order to do this we’ve seen changes
across the board if you’re a student
it’s harder to get the to get a visa
even though there are estimates which
suggests that international students
contribute anywhere from between 13 to
18 billion pounds to the UK economy if
you’re a worker it’s harder to get a
visa despite the fact that UK businesses
tell us that they need access to
international talent in order to
continue to compete in an increasingly
global market if you’re married to a
British person it’s harder to get a visa
although this has meant that families
are increasingly likely to be split up
and children could be separated from
parents at years four years at a time
one way of looking at these changes
would be to say that by implementing
them we’ve deprived ourselves of income
from international students we’ve
hampered the opportunities of
international of UK businesses in an
international market and we’ve
destabilized families
another way of looking at them would be
to say that we’ve helps to reduce the
immigration and therefore we’ve
satisfied public demand we can see that
the stories that people come across
whether in the press in their personal
life or from a friend in the pub can
reinforce negative ideas about
immigration and help to substantiate
views that people hold that don’t
necessarily reflect reality this leads
to a public who are increasingly hostile
to immigration with immigration itself
now one of the single biggest issues of
concern to British voters all of the
time with the benefits of immigration
are as real as ever it leads to
to the negative rhetoric about
immigration that we see represented
behind me worth of oka sense that
immigrants are different they are the
other and they are to blame these
negative views of immigration then feed
into public policy leading to
immigration rules which are tougher and
more restrictive because the public
concern that were seeking to address is
that immigration is too high by seeking
to address fears that immigration is too
high without looking behind public
opinion we actually run the risk of
failing to address the real concerns
after all if the public is concerned
that immigration is too high because
immigrants disproportionately claim
benefits that suggests they have deeper
concerns about pressures on public
finances but if in reality immigrants
aren’t claiming benefits on any
significant scale then reducing
immigration won’t actually have any
impact on public finances and it could
actually make things worse after all we
have an aging population we may need the
tax contributions from younger
immigrants in order to fund the pensions
health and social care of our aging
native population simply acquiescing to
public opinion also ignores the moral
and legal obligations we have with
regard to taking in refugees to
facilitating family life and protecting
the most vulnerable in society I dare
fall in love to simply argue for an
immigration policy which ignores public
opinion one rooted in fact yes but also
compassion and respect for human rights
unfortunately the ripples of public
opinion on policy seem too strong to
ignore so instead of just advocating for
a barrier between unfounded public
opinion and the policies that it creates
I think we need to learn to be better
immigration defenders we need to learn
how to tell stories and not just
statistics I think we’re starting to see
that although public opinion remains
overwhelmingly anti-immigration there
have been some glimpses of
pro-immigration sentiments and these
have largely been the results of human
stories
most heartbreakingly we can look at the
at the story of Alan Kurdi the Syrian
refugee child who was found dead on a
beach his image and the unfiltered image
of his death that it represented to many
showed this very human suffering at the
heart of the refugee crisis and
generated compassion for an issue which
up until then had been lacking it scenes
of families being split up at airports
following the imposition of transfers
travel ban generated public vocal and
global support for those immigrants and
global condemnation for the ban the
story of a Singapore woman irene canal
who’d been married to a British man for
27 years but was removed from the UK
recently because she didn’t hold a valid
visa attracted considerable press
attention and public support including
significant financial support as we can
see on this particular story I was asked
by a number of family and friends how
could this happen
wasn’t it outrageous I thought well yes
it’s outrageous but in UK immigration
terms it wasn’t unusual in the slightest
I see the sort of thing all the time and
then I realised this was it this was my
story the next time I’m called upon to
defend immigration I would draw
attention to stories like this for this
is how I think we begin to actually turn
the tide of public opinion not by
pandering to a false narrative but by
telling stories that people care about
by informing people of the facts with
nonfiction stories for stories seem to
have a sticking power in people’s minds
in a way that statistics simply don’t we
can see this on a broader scale with
reference to the British social
attitudes survey which in 2014 asked the
public for their view on the impact of
immigration they divided their results
up based on whether the respondents
considered themselves to have friends
who were migrants among those who said
they had several friends who were
migrants 70% had a positive or neutral
view of the cultural and economic
perhaps of immigration by contrast
amongst those who consider themselves to
have no friends who are migrants sixty
percent had a negative view of
immigration people therefore with lived
experience of migrants stories are much
more likely to have a positive view of
immigration and what do we stand to gain
if we can begin to tell the stories of
immigrants rather than the statistical
impact of immigration we can change the
trajectory of public opinion on
immigration and if negative public
opinion ripples into policies aimed at
reducing immigration it must be the case
that positive public opinion could have
the opposite effect removing the
pressure of negative opinion would also
free politicians to take a more
compassionate stance on refugees and
families separated by the UK immigration
rules in 2016 it was suggested having a
slight tech issue if you bear with me
that the UK could take up to 3,000 of
the approximately 90,000 unaccompanied
child refugees across Europe in late
2016 some of these children began
arriving in the UK and their arrival was
accompanied with headlines like this
news stories which focused on their age
and cast doubt on whether they could
really be under 18 these stories didn’t
tell the stories of the arduous and
dangerous journeys that these children
had made the headlines didn’t detail the
lives that these children were fleeing
instead they cast the children as
threatening as liars and as a burden in
the negative light cast by these stories
the government has announced that the
programmes will now close with only 350
children barely 10% of the original
estimate having benefited from it how we
see these children and the stories we
hear about them matter stories about
immigration in all its forms matter and
they can make a difference because
ultimately it is these stories which
have the capacity to transform how we
think about immigration these stories
are the way we change public opinion and
public debate about immigration and the
influence that those debates have on
policy
Irene Finnell the Singaporean woman
recently removed from the UK wrote about
her experience shortly after removal she
concluded with an appeal to those who
have made migrant a term of abuse to
consider the human cost of their actions
I think Irene has perfectly summed up
the challenge that lies before us the
prize though in successfully changing
attitudes and humanizing views on
immigration is clear we can change the
rhetoric on immigration from this to
this for all of us who believe it is
important to have an immigration policy
rooted in fact and underpinned by
compassion and respect for human rights
the time to start telling these stories
is now for I believe if we want to
achieve this goal we all need to learn
to be
better immigration defenders thank you
[Applause]
you
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