We’ve got it all wrong: Dungavel is not Barlinnie

Muriel Gray says detained parents are to blame for their children’s tears

I like the cut of Rosie Kane’s jib. She seems sincere, passionate, and judging by her action of taking in strangers to share her two bedroom flat with herself and two teenage daughters – notably a woman and her darling chubby little baby who’ve been held for some time at Dungavel detention centre – she also appears to be terribly kind. It’s a pity then that her undoubtedly genuine gesture is part of the hysterical media circus surrounding Dungavel, lumped in amongst the howling accusations that Dungavel is only a couple of steps up from a concentration camp and that we, the public and our Scottish Executive, are as guilty in our silence as the Germans were when the Nazis did considerably more than discourage the eating of Weetabix in bedrooms.

To anybody who knows the facts about Dungavel, the increasing, and deliberate misinformation is disquieting. Where’s this stuff coming from and why? Let’s get a few things out the way. Dungavel is a short-term detention centre, in other words a removal centre. Immigration officers in Britain have only one power of detention and that’s for removal. Most seeking entry by asylum or any other means are not detained while their request is being processed. Detention occurs when their claim has failed, they have been asked to go and they refuse. The Dungavel occupants, therefore, have claimed asylum, been through a long, complicated but thorough process to determine whether they are in fact genuinely in fear of their lives or are simply optimistic economic migrants. If they are in Dungavel then the immigration authority has decided, after meticulous investigation, that they are not genuine and they must return to their own countries. Should they then wish to apply again from their own domicile to enter Britain as legal immigrants then they can still do so, although given the current UK policy on immigration it’s unlikely they would be successful unless they could fulfil the necessary criteria.

It’s the most profound wish of the immigration officials that the families at Dungavel stay only for a very short time indeed until their deportation, for that indeed is the purpose of the centre. However, it’s largely not the bureaucracy of the service that holds up this process, but the deliberate delaying tactics of the adult detainees, understandably desperate to remain in Britain for as long as possible. While they are trying everything they can to stay put, Dungavel offers them and their children private family rooms, meals, a gymnasium, a library with books in every imaginable language, a nursery, games room and computer room. If a baby gets hungry outside meal times, or indeed anyone has a problem at all, the staff will do everything they can to help, because guess what, they’re not monsters.

Tales are emerging from the staff now of opportunistic and greedy lawyers illegally blagging their way past security to tout for business among these hopeless cases, to soak up some of that juicy legal aid. The result being, of course, that the families who clutch at this last straw only end up staying in detention for even longer periods of time before their inevitable deportation. Meanwhile successful asylum applicants are busy being housed, albeit in the most deprived areas of the city, and trying their wee best to get on with their difficult lives alongside our home grown poverty-stricken citizens struggling to do the same, with a bit of help from the volunteer sector and forward-thinking further education establishments, like the brilliant Anniesland College to name but one, keen to teach them English and get them out into the work place.

But then, that’s not much of a front-page story is it? Let’s see how many more copies our Daily Mail, Daily Record or even our own dear Herald can shift with a headline that reads: “Scotland tries really hard to be nice to people while working through a horribly complicated and difficult UK immigration policy”.

All the well-meaning people who feared for the Ay family because of the length of detention time, which was undeniably damaging to the children, should have taken their protests directly to Mrs Ay, for it was she who made sure they stayed put and not the immigration officers who wanted them quickly returned to where they legally belonged after it was established that they did not, and never would under current legislation, qualify for asylum.

Now the argument as to how our immigration policy should look in the 21st century is a huge debate and needs constantly examined at not just a national level, but also a global one. But this current witch-hunt to apportion blame at a local level, to officers and staff doing their damned best to implement the law as humanely as possible, is getting ugly.

The one-sided argument stems from the fact that those working within Dungavel or in the sharp end of deportation-enforcement are not permitted, or even inclined, to divulge the details of individual cases in public. So we get the starving-baby stories and not the stories of the children howling as they’re removed from Dungavel because for the first time in their lives they were somewhere safe, warm and friendly.

I would never blame a hopeful immigrant from a third-world country for being difficult, aggressive or even being a downright liar just to be able to stay in a country of safety and plenty. Perhaps I would do exactly the same for my children. I do, however, blame an ignoble press, dripping with hidden agendas, for distorting the truth so terribly that the public haven’t the faintest idea what to believe when the thorny topic of asylum and immigration comes up time and time again.

Funny no newspapers are mentioning the fact that before Dungavel, non-criminal, single, failed asylum seekers waiting to be removed used to be held at Barlinnie. Now they wait with families, often from their own countries, in accommodation as comfortable as the authorities can manage on a limited budget. It’s not perfect, but let’s hear that ingenious alternative all those protesters are just dying to share with us.

07 September 2003