Requiring landlords to check immigration status of tenants is racist?
by Andrew Tettenborn, Rebel Priest:
A lot of people didn’t like the government’s new plans for a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants: that is, the provisions of law requiring private landlords to verify the immigration status of their tenants or face penalties if they let to those not entitled to be here. You didn’t even need to be left-wing.
There is a perfectly plausible Christian case for not turning human beings onto the streets, whatever their status. Furthermore, conservatives can argue with some conviction that private property owners, not all of whom are filthy rich, ought not to be dragooned into acting as immigration gatekeepers for a government that won’t or can’t do the job itself.
That said, last week’s High Court judgment declaring the whole arrangement contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights (available here) makes for some interesting reading, even for those who don’t normally dip into law reports for fun. Its essential ground was that the unintended consequence of the scheme was that landlords were less willing to let to those without British passports or whose immigration status was less than clear-cut; that this amounted to discrimination; and that as such it could not be tolerated.
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