British Immigration Policies - Essay Example

Immigration control is essentially the power of a state to determine who can enter its borders, specifically foreign nationals. Various laws and policies have been designed to restrict entry for a variety of reasons. The reasons may be economic, as when foreign immigrants could take jobs that should have gone to citizens of the country. It can also be for reasons of security, quite relevant in this present time, considering the surfeit of terrorist bombings brought about by religious fundamentalism.

The primary Human Rights document in the United Kingdom is the Human Rights Act 1998. The Human Rights Act 1998 received royal assent on November 9, 1998 and came into force on October 2, 2000. The objective of said Act was to harmonize the domestic law of the United Kingdom with the European Convention on Human Rights and to provide for stricter human rights guarantees to be followed by all states. To reaffirm the commitment of the UK to human rights and civil liberties, it is now possible under the said Act to file a claim for violation of the ECHR without going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Says Weinstein (2000): This ability to transcend national law, and to compel revision of such law to comport with rights guaranteed by the European Convention in a broad range of areas, most often. By treaty, the signatory nations of Europe have granted the ECHR binding authority to decide cases affecting their citizenry and other persons subject to their authority. In instances where state law is found inconsistent with an ECHR judgment, the nation at issue is obliged to amend its national law to comport with the ECHR decision.

These cases illustrate the concept of what is increasingly being referred to as an evolving European supranational identity. The ECHR grants jurisdiction to any individual, non-governmental organization, or group claiming be a victim of a violation of the European Convention by a ECHR signatory nation, and to bring cases before it, as does, in applicable cases, the European Court of Justice (the "ECJ"), the court of the European Union, based in Luxembourg. Equally important, it prohibits any public body from behaving in a manner that is incompatible with any of the rights guaranteed under the ECHR.

(Hoffman & Rowe, 2003). It cannot be gainsaid that one of the most important issues that have to be addressed in this day and age is the issue of immigration control and terrorism. Many have lumped these two concepts together, believing terrorists and terrorist bombings to be the product of poor immigration control. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in November of 2001, a mere two months after the historic 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

Criticized by many for the undue haste in its passage, with concerns of political pressure being raised, the law in its original form contained passages that human rights groups deemed to be violative of established human rights principles. Amidst