Over the last few years, the spectre of deportation or some other form of expulsion from the UK has hung over my head. On most days it is unnoticable, a sword of Damocles that over time gathers dust and becomes a banality. On other days, however, this mundane aspect of my life gathers terrifying reality when a change in the wind makes it wobble, or when the passage of time begins its inevitable wearing away of the thin thread that holds the sword off my head.

For example, though on most days I do not think about it, I ended a meeting last year by telling my Scout Troop that I did not know if I would be here beyond April 2017 as without a job that was the expiry date on my Tier 4 visa and whether they loved me or not, I could not stay beyond that.

Today, in the process of applying for a new visa with the UKBA/UKVI for the fifth time in the last decade, I had cause to reflect on the sundry trials and terrors of the one-sided negotiation of the terms of my life with this government agency. Core among my thoughts is simply how little appears to be known about this particular institution or the process of applying for a visa. Wherever popular pundits like Nigel Farage appear on television campaigning for Brexit or defending the bigotry-turned-policy of Donald Trump’s “muslim ban”, the rhetoric of “taking back control” appears. While the obvious answer for this discourse is that we as a society overestimate the numbers and impact of outsiders precisely because of how conspicuous being an outsider makes them, one also has to wonder whether a significant part of the population of the UK simply have no idea what kind of “controls” there are on the country’s borders.

Furthermore, while the news regularly bears out stories of the UK’s increasing xenophobia and generally unwelcoming disposition towards foreigners, the stories do not usually detail the legislative changes that reinforce and react to this, enabling and empowering the ostracization and stigmatization of foreign nationals.

There is a long history of this (particular for people from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds), which I do not know enough about to speak authoritatively on, nor do I wish to co-opt that particular struggle. Rather, I wanted to give some general reflections on the process, of interacting with this organization.

Tightening Controls

The first time I applied for a visa was in 2008. In order to get a visa to study in the UK,  I had to already have a place at a UK University. To get a place at The University of Manchester, I needed to get at least AAB on my A levels. Obtaining these grades was, no easy feat, even for someone from a good school and a middle-class background. The agents at the embassy screened my application for inconsistencies,  checked to make made sure that I had no affiliations to any terrorist organizations, took my biometric data and that I had sufficient funds/funding to pay for my studies (so that there was no risk of me becoming a burden to the Crown). It is worth noting here that sufficient funds means cover for Room and Board as well as tuition fees which, as an international student were £12,900 at the time (fees for some programs are now nearing £20,000 for international students). Already we’re beginning to identify major obstacles to entry, even before I have left my home country, including academic skill and access to funds.

Since that time, immigration rules have increasing tightened, making it more difficult for a student like I was to enter the UK and stay for any significant time. In 2011 the Conservative government removed post study work rights for international students, meaning that after spending three years completing an undergraduate degree or one year completing a masters degree, students would be required to return to their country of origin and could not- as they were previously allowed, take time to seek employment in the UK. PhD students, under what is referred to as the Doctoral Extension Scheme (for which a new visa application had to be completed), were allowed to spend a year in the UK after the completion of their studies in order to develop relevant job skills.

Further crackdowns and reforms came as the result of a 2014 Panorama investigation which may have embarrassed then head of the Home Office, Theresa May into hastening reforms to the visa system including the founding of the UKVI and dissolving of the UKBA, a change that have brought review of existing rules, with each modification making access and staying with access more difficult.

To wit, as of November 2017 I have applied for four visas, pumped over a hundred thousand pounds of tuition fees into UK universities in order to complete three different degrees  and sent thousands of pounds to the UKBA/UKVI (current Tier 4 visa fees are £335 and Tier 2 is £677). I have no criminal record and indeed, spend so much time sitting alone in a room and reading that I do not know what crime I could be accused of (barring book piracy). I consider the UK my home and have not visited Trinidad since 2009. However, in order to complete the rest of the employment contract that the University of Kent, I need to apply for a Tier 2 visa and receive further “leave to remain”.

In order to qualify for this Tier 2 visa, one of the few avenues for workers to enter the UK, I have to:

• Have an offer of a job from a “valid sponsor”- As an aside, the notion of “sponsorship” here is interesting. The UKVI has effectively deputized my university/employer to monitor my attendance or absence, under threat that if they do not do so, they will not be able to grant visas to their staff/students. As a doctoral candidate, this meant that once per quarter I had to appear at the PGR offices and sign a form to say that I was present. Under my Tier 2 visa, I have to report any absences and receive a monthly email reminding me to do so.
• Show that I either have enough money to support myself until my first paycheck or that my employer will support me
• Show that I earn an appropriate salary (the value of which continues to rise, excluding “high demand professions”, but currently sits at £30,000 after rising from £25,000 earlier this year).

There are other criteria attached to the role, including the fact that a job has to be advertised for a certain period (a “resident labour market test”) as well as interesting catch 22’s like, for non-PhD jobs, if a British national applies for a job and meets the minimum criteria then, even if a migrant is more qualified, the job must be given to the British national. But needless to say, these are not easy criteria to meet. The overwhelming majority of organizations will not be “valid sponsors” and, furthermore, the salary qualifications disqualify the vast majority of jobs in Britain.

Kafka’s Dreaming: The DES

The Tier 2 process that I am currently staring down, however, has not proved even remotely as painful as that of applying for the Doctoral Extension Scheme. The DES is ostensibly designed to ensure that Britain isn’t immediately ejecting highly skilled and educated professionals and academics after they finish their studies. It is a small indication that at a governmental level somebody understands the importance of academic collaboration for innovation and scholarship. However, I learnt that only a small percentage ever apply for it and the reason isn’t difficult to understand.

For reasons that no one could explain to me, I had to have an “end date” for my PhD before beginning the DES process.  In order to get an end date,  I have to notify my department that I want to submit my thesis post-viva (I have to notify them before a deadline that they give me) following which they will open an “Electronic Submission Window”. I will then have a fixed period of time to upload my thesis. The final date on the “Electronic Submission Window” is my course end date and once the window is created various administrators communicate and put this on a Confirmation of Acceptance (CAS) letter, necessary for completing the DES application.

I then use the CAS to fill out a Tier 4 application (which involves filling out forms, being screened by the UKVI,  paying more fees- as an aside, perhaps as a way to fund the privatization of the NHS, as of 2015 immigrants have to pay a health surcharge in addition to any application fees–  having my picture and fingerprints scanned at a Post Office- for which more fees must be paid etc.) and submit that application after it has been checked by a school administrator. I must then submit my thesis before the Electronic Submission Window closes.

I can say conclusively that there were chapters of my thesis which are easier to understand than that particular Kafka-esque nightmare.

This, to me, is a system under control and with controls that are getting tighter;  perfectly reflecting the increasingly insular and nationalistic public mood. The message that all of this conveys to the hopeful Trinidadian teenager is simple: “You are not welcome here”- it does not matter if you are indeed the venerable “best and brightest”- do not come.

Hope and Evil

It is worth noting that there is some hope within this dizzying miasma of bureaucratic navigation. In 2012 when my first visa expired, Cardiff University, where I was doing my MA at the time, offered some comprehensive assistance and helped to make the whole process relatively pain-free. I remember doing everything by mail through their administrative offices, which an assigned advisor helping me throughout the process. In applying for my Tier 2, the University of Kent is among a small group of employers that offer to pay for the cost of the visa; a very generous gesture. More broadly, we’ve seen some of the lies around immigration figures recently unmasked and there may be increasing pressure to exclude students from net migration targets. Indeed, many others have recounted more painful journeys than mine so I should perhaps be grateful that my confusion and anxiety were not worse, that I did not have a marriage or dependents or urgent travel needs to complicate matters.

However, in speaking of the summary trial of Adolf Eichmann, noted scholar Hannah Arendt writes of the “banality of evil”; the idea that, reading beyond Arendt’s purpose, the worst horrors of the last hundred years of human existence were not carried out by monsters, by deranged murderers, by hateful and contemptible creatures devoid of the moral concern and compassion that we all too often recognize in other humans- rather, they were carried out by people following rules, bureaucrats and servants of the law and order of the times. It is here worth considering that Eichmann’s actions were legal by the letter of German law at the time.

Thus we perhaps arrive at the point that I have been trying to get to, as an organizational scholar I am interested in the ways in which organizational policy reflects and produces a given national discourse. Here the UKVI can be understood conservatively to at once adopt policies that tighten immigration control and thereby provide institutional legitimation for the vilification of foreign nationals. A logic of “if so much is being done to control them and either keep them in check or keep them out, surely they must be as bad as we think and more should be done.”

None of this is to direct resentment at the UKVI or indeed to challenge the limits of the sovereignty of the UK’s government and right thereby to police its borders. Rather, it is to consider the implications of an organization’s policies on a collective conversation or national mood. I cannot help but reflect on this as I fill out my visa application. How many people in the UK right now live under the shadow of the threat of deportation, wanting stability, wanting to be with their families, wanting a life in the UK and are kept at bay by bureaucrats empowered by xenophobic policies.