The Return Ticket

• A new immigration proposal says a person abroad can be invited by a British citizen only if he has the licence to do so.
  
• It will be the responsibility of the licensed host to ensure his guests return before their visa expires
  
• If the guests don't return, the host will have to pay a hefty fine and even face imprisonment
  
• The new law will mostly impact those who aren't rich enough to stay in hotels.
  
• Group visas for tourists will continue.

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The British government, however, doesn't care much for people like Patel, because they don't spend as much as the rich and professionals who stay in hotels—and usually return. Britain is estimated to have a population of 5,00,000 to a million illegal immigrants (or 'undocumented migrants') who arrived in innumerable ways, as family visitors, and then didn't make the trip back. And among these, too, the majority are almost certainly Indians. Other than the India of Tata and Infosys professionals, there exists an India—particularly in Gujarat and Punjab—scrambling for Britain, anyhow securing the most basic jobs. More than 90 per cent of legally settled Indians in Britain are from these two states, and family visits sponsored by the settled can be an inviting means for informal addition to the migrant population.

Border and immigration minister Liam Byrne placed the particular Indian concern behind a language smokescreen. Through a process of consultation on the new rules, he said, "I travelled around the UK listening to people, and led my own delegation of community leaders and businessmen to India to review first hand some of the issues in one of our most important overseas markets." British politicians have long been hard in action, soft on language.

The new rules will seek to block one of the last visible gaps for illegal arrivals. The riskier route of people smuggling, through many countries in many ways, will always be open. But there too, X-rays of arriving crates and containers (with suspected migrants in them) and closer inspection of coastlines and international trains has tightened protective nets. Few can challenge those measures, but the proposed rules on family visits can become legally controversial.

"This kind of move will need to be tested in a court of law, because it is against natural justice," says Rahman. "People will find their ways of migrating. But for that you cannot create a punitive society, and begin to punish people against natural justice." The UK government might well find itself having to defend this move before the European court.

The EU is debating its own unified law on illegal immigrants that would provide for tracing, imprisoning and deporting illegal migrants already there. British courts do protect illegal migrants who have been there long enough, certainly for as long as 14 years, or even 10. But that places illegally settled migrants in another kind of spot—they must legally prove that they are illegal, and for as long as they claim. The crate route offers no entry stamps, and overstayers have often shed their passports, making evidence of continued overstaying difficult. But if you break the law, it still pays to continue to break it for long enough.