Farrukh Dhondy | Asylum-seekers' tags' intrusive, but there's also a positive aspect

“The Gods were born to keep us straight

--They say there’s one, but I’ve counted eight

However many, they speak with one voice

Telling us-down-here that we have a choice:

We can either embrace the Truth or the Lie

The former ensures a place in the sky.

Has Bachchoo embraced sex, drugs, rock and roll

And are these ‘The Lie’ -- damning his soul?”

From The Second Bungle Book, by Bachchoo

Hedgie Sunak (or Sunoch Powell?), Britain’s PM, and his home secretary Cruella Braverman have made “stopping the boats”, or preventing asylum-seeking immigrants coming to Britain, one of their main political pranks (sorry “planks” -- wretched predictive text!). Cruella’s latest wheeze was to house asylum-seekers on a large barge. Some refused to board the boat but, after some argy-bargy, about 50 were persuaded to take up residence of-shore. But only until it was discovered that the water supply on the barge was contaminated with lethal legionella bacteria.

Housing asylum seekers is, Cruella and Sunoch say, a huge burden on the taxpayer. What they don’t want is for these asylum seekers to disappear into the country and be untraceable so that they can’t be legalised or deported. Cruella’s latest scheme is to “tag” all asylum- seekers with a fixed electronic device around their ankles which can identify their location at any time.

The latest statistic, quoted in the Daily Express -- a paper which supported Brexit on the grounds of keeping “Johnny foreigner” out, and an equally determined opponent of “stop the boats” -- is that Britain in the last year had 79,000 asylum seekers.

Predictions say this number will rise before 2024. This will mean that the home office will have to spend taxpayers’ money on 100,000 or so electronic tags.

The order for the manufacture and delivery of these tags has already gone out. And this should be something of a dilemma if not a scandal for PM Sunoch because the contract for the tags has gone to a company in India called Infosys. And surprise, surprise, the company is owned by Sunoch’s father-in-law. His wife Akshata Murthy is a shareholder in Infosys, which shares bring her £12 million a year. (Err… She doesn’t do shift work in the factory which makes the tags. She … um… lives in London and in a mansion in Yorkshire). Until recently, as a “non-dom” in the UK, she didn’t pay any income tax on this bonanza.

Gentle reader, I am not saying that that there is anything illegal in this whole transaction. I wonder what the British newspapers, the Daily Express and other right-wingers, would make of the fact that an African President’s wife was the massive beneficiary of contracts that his government handed out. Let me count the ways:

A database of Sunoch’s own government, called Contract Finder, tells us that Infosys has been involved in £172 million worth of UK public sector contracts. In all fairness, I have to add that none of these contracts is for the Treasury or the Cabinet Office. Various other state-owned organisations have used Infosys’ services and deemed them necessary and cost-effective. The electronic tag contract is not something that Hedgie himself has handed out.

It’s Cruella and her home office, but the tagging policy must certainly have the approval and endorsement of PM Sunoch, and it may be the closest he has got to being implicated in such a contract.

Again, though all is above board, what would the Daily Express or indeed other head-banging news outlets of the UK make of an African, or in fact any other, head of state being in a parallel situation?

Now, gentle reader, I reluctantly confess that the tagging proposal possibly has a positive aspect.

In the UK today there is a direct connection between illegal immigration and modern slavery. Foreigners who are illegally trafficked into the country have their passports confiscated by the racketeers who “traffick” them and force them into menial or degrading jobs paying them a bare subsistence wage.

Prostitution is one of the practices into which trafficked women are forced. Some desperate women are also forced into performing in sleazy bars and clubs. And then there is constantly commentary about beauty salons and nail-bars using women who have been trafficked as virtual slaves. The threat that keeps them from attempting escape is exposure of their illegal status to the State’s authorities, which would lead to imprisonment or deportation to the countries from which they have fled.

The electronic tags will certainly inhibit this underground slave industry as the State will be able to trace the “disappeared” asylum seeker. I have no idea whether the tags can be removed or fiddled with. If indeed a sex worker or an unfortunate individual in a beauty salon is a trafficked slave, the State should be able to trace them. The reason for tracing them is that, at present, asylum seekers are not allowed to work in this country and if a nail salon manager has such a tagged person working for him or her, it is presumably illegal and the trafficker(s) can be traced, arrested and prosecuted.

So, there you have it -- one reason for approving of the otherwise intrusive and inhuman device. And if Infosys is the most efficient with these devices, good luck with UK taxpayers’ cash… hunh! … But I still don’t approve of Cruella.