Immigration under the SNP after independence - part one

The Scottish Government has published their vision for immigration policy after independence. But the rhetoric and whiffs of Scottish nationalist exceptionalism fails to off-set the lack of detail

Last week the Scottish Government published a new Independence Paper, exploring what a future immigration and asylum policy would look like under the SNP and independence. While it’s rhetorically adept at pushing progressive sentiments and liberal buttons, it’s vanishingly short on details.

In this article, for the sake of brevity I’ll only dig into the proposals concerning immigration, deportation and detention. Asylum, right to remain, EU free movement and UK Common Travel and impacts on housing etc will all be examined forensically in a future piece(s). So enough chit-chat, let’s dive on in!

Immigration

The paper talks at length about Scotland’s ageing population, the economic benefits of immigration and the labour shortages in key sectors. None of this is anything I intend to quibble with, not least since it’s all true. Scotland does have an aging population, economic migrants do contribute more than they take out at a macro level and we obviously do have labour shortages in key sectors such as agriculture and tourism.

But the problems arise when we forensically examine what the Scottish Government are proposing to do about these problems with the new powers of independence. And as we dig into matters, I’m left with a feeling that a rhetorical (and political) desire to feel good about ourselves is compensating for fundamental lack of policy specifics.

Take immigration proposals as an example. The SNP government paper speaks proudly of independence enabling us to introduce a new visa type, ‘Live In Scotland'.

The idea is superficially attractive; certain regions of Scotland face depopulation and an immigration visa could bring fresh new families from abroad to these communities. Lovely, why hasn’t anyone ever thought of doing this before?

Perhaps because things are really more complex than the SNP’s paper makes out.

The ‘Live in Scotland Route’ being proposed would not involve the families being tied to sponsorship by an employer, instead arrivals would be directed (somehow, never made particularly clear) to particular regions to live and settle:

“The main ‘Live in Scotland’ route would be a new type of visa, allowing people to live and work in Scotland with their families without sponsorship by an employer, if they meet criteria set out in Scottish immigration rules.”

…

“In collaboration with local and national delivery partners, communities and our Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population, we would pilot place-based options within the Live in Scotland visa route to help ensure communities in rural and island locations in Scotland remain vibrant and flourishing.”

This raises a few immediate questions, all perfectly logical. Firstly, what would ‘collaboration with local and national delivery partners’ tangibly entail? Are we talking local authorities and the Holyrood executive meeting up to decide on numbers and limits?

How would we know how many new families (and of presumably varying sizes) could island and rural communities take?

Would Outer Hebridean local government representatives be setting hard number limits or would a Holyrood minister (with no connection to the rural communities) have an ability to overrule?

And what then about allocation of funding and resources to aid local authorities to support the new arrivals?

I am someone connected to the Outer Hebrides, my grandparents came from there (and still have family with a croft). I can assure you that how many new families - and of which sizes and needs - really is an important issue. How many new school places would need to be found? Who would be paying for it?

None of the obvious follow-up questions are even touched on in the immigration paper. Superficially proposing a cunning plan with plenty feel-good rhetoric about welcoming new families to rural and island communities doesn’t cut it.

How many families? How are the numbers to be decided locality to locality? Who is deciding the final numbers each community could cope with and over what time periods? Would these rural and island communities benefit from new funding to help expand public services to cope with a sudden influx of large numbers of new families with kids? If so who is paying for this? We really need to know the answers to these questions.

And you’ll notice I’ve not even touched on cultural needs vis integration. That’s dismissed with a vague line about maybe needing the newly arriving families to speak Gaelic (as if that’s the only potential cultural flash point in the islands)

Then there is the incredibly obvious point: what’s to stop these newly arrived families from simply doing what my grandparents did, and move south to the central belt? Are we proposing to legislatively restrict their freedom of movement and compel them to remain in the communities allocated? Or are we talking financial incentives for them not to move elsewhere in Scotland?

Sadly answers there are none, perhaps because answering these sorts of details would require a level of seriousness and forensic policy consideration simply beyond the current SNP leadership.

Open borders or not?

Taking everything together, the policy paper discusses various new immigration visas. There’s the ‘Live In Scotland’ visa, a ‘Scottish Connections’ visa, a ‘Work in Scotland’ visa and ‘Study in Scotland’ visa. Some of these visa proposals are actually rather good, so I’ll start with some area of praise.

I support the proposals around ‘Study in Scotland’, where it would replace the two-year poststudy work visa the Westminster government currently operates.

Instead international graduates (of Scottish universities) could apply straight after their studies to stay in Scotland to live and work for a further five years. Expanding the two year post-study period to five seems entirely sensible.

But does Scotland really need independence to achieve this? Last time I checked, this is the sort of thing a future Labour government would look extremely kindly at, and probably wish to implement at a UK level. So why independence? If you want a change like this, just vote Labour and odds are you’ll get what you want some point in the future.

Yet the central issue arising from all of the various immigration visa proposals is again a vagueness. Are the SNP proposing open borders or not?

If we take the Live in Scotland route + Scottish Connections, it really isn’t all that clear if there is an upper limit or not.

Let’s take the Scottish Connections visa proposal:

“A new ‘Scottish Connections’ visa would also be introduced. This would allow people with a genuine and lasting connection to Scotland to remain or return here to live and work and offer a pathway to permanent settlement and Scottish citizenship. There are multiple connections that could qualify someone for this visa – the route would be open to anyone who meets at least one of these initial criteria:

• Scottish Graduate – a graduate of a Scottish university who studied in Scotland for their degree

• Scottish Ancestry – a child or grandchild of someone who is automatically a Scottish citizen or would have been eligible to acquire Scottish citizenship automatically had they been alive at the point of independence

• life in Scotland – previous lawful residence in Scotland of at least five years

• British Nationality – a British national who is not a British citizen”

Someone would only need to tick one of these boxes to be allowed in. So anyone on planet earth who had a Scottish grandparent (or a grandparent who would have been eligible to have been Scottish if they wished to be on the day of independence) can come on in.

Folks, that’s a hell of a lot of people now and into the future. The global Scottish diaspora of people descended from Scottish ancestors is anywhere between 28-40m people. Now most of those would not qualify (their roots likely go back further than a grandparent), but many still likely would.

According to the 2011 Census of Canada, the number of Canadians claiming full or partial Scottish descent is 4,714,970, or 15.10 per cent of that nation's total population.

How many of those would be eligible? Whilst it’s impossible to be specific, we’re still talking a lot of people now and into the future. How many of that 4.7m+ have (or would have in the future) grandparents who would meet the SNP’s ‘Scottish Ancestry’ requirement thus qualifying for entry? And that’s just Canada.

We know that on average a gross total of 40,000 people leave Scotland every year for other parts of the UK since 2000. And in the case of the USA, we know that 701,000 people were born in the UK but migrated to live permanently in the USA (2021). How many of those were Scottish born and will marry have kids who will also have kids?

You see my point, there really is no way to conceptualise how many millions of people this one SNP immigration policy would open the door to. A ‘Scottish Connections visa’ may sound quaint but it’s the product of tartan shortbread tin nationalism.

It’s a visa which - by nature of its design - cannot outline any limitation of number; for the simple reason we cannot put an upper figure on how many would qualify (only knowing it’s likely in the tens of millions globally over the next 50 years)

Don’t believe me? Run the numbers we do have:

If 40,000 Scots on average ‘emigrate’ out of Scotland each year to relocate elsewhere in the UK and we multiply that number by a 50 year timeframe we get 2 million people. And that’s only 40,000 Scots leaving to live in England and Wales, it can’t count their kids or grandkids (all of whom would qualify over that 50 year timeframe).

It’s also not counting Scottish emigration to Canada, USA, New Zealand etc that has already happened and whose kids and grandkids now count (or future generations of those freshly emigrating to the new world).

The bottom line: the numbers of people the SNP are proposing to be elidable for entry is unquantifiable but we know it’ll be huge under ‘Scottish Connections’

Thus I return to the central issue: are we talking open borders or not? The document makes zero mention of even proposing an arbitrary limit on ‘Scottish Connection visa’ numbers which could be issued year year.

Then we need to consider the Live in Scotland route visa.

That one is not connected to employer (so you wouldn’t need to already have found a job prior to arriving). According to this proposal

“Live in Scotland visa would be a person centred route, giving credit for a broad range of characteristics that would include age, education, skills and work experience, earning potential and language ability – and could include the opportunity to be credited for Gaelic as well as English. It would look at what an individual can bring to Scotland, not just how much they earn”

The document makes zero mention of any upper limit. None. Which is a bit of a problem too since these numbers are whole families arriving and somehow (it’s not really clear) are allocated a rural or island community to live in. No upper limits defined.

So again, are they proposing open borders?

1. If so, do they accept that this means there could be no limit on Immigration into Scotland via the ‘Live in Scotland’ route?

2. If not, do they have an upper figure? I think we all deserve to know what the SNP is proposing, specifically.

3. If they do have a particular overall number limit on families able to enter via ‘Live in Scotland’, what happens to the x+1? For example let’s presume they set a number cap of 100,000 per annum or 250,000 pa (or any other figure, it doesn’t matter to make my point). What happens to the X+1 migrant? What happens to the 100,000+1 family?

4. If the SNP are proposing to just allow them in too, on the basis there’s a local community somewhere saying they can take them, then we’re back to Open Borders

Deport or not to deport?

Unsurprisingly given the obvious lack of attention to detail running through the ‘policy paper’, there is nothing substantive at all about deportation policy.

Under the extraordinarily brief section (not even half a page) titled ‘Enforcement, Detention and Removal’ the Scottish Government tells us our deportation policy would be suitably Scottish exceptional…

“an independent Scotland would require an effective, proportionate and humane approach to enforcement, including detention and removal.

Detention should be used sparingly and only when it is justifiable. It is a longstanding position of the Scottish Government that the immigration removal centre at Dungavel is not fit for purpose and should be closed, and the policy of long-term or indefinite immigration detention should end.”

But it fails to answer even the basics. If the SNP policy is to deport that x+1 immigrant then the obvious question is how. Particularly if the people not prepared to go willingly.

The SNP fail to meaningfully address this, and I think I know why. If they admit they would have upper limits on immigration and would deport people - even if they were unwilling - how exactly will this differ from present UK Government Conservative deportations?

There is one fascinatingly meaningless line about doing something other than detention and removal- but again its just waffle with no details or substance:

“An important opportunity through independence would be to implement effective alternatives to detention and removal”

What alternatives? Doesn’t say. Funny that.

We’re left with a feeling that the SNP are really just saying independence would enable Scotland to operate a kinder but more ineffective immigration and deportation regime. All with strong whiffs of open borders and typical nationalist exceptionalism rhetoric. A real vote winner of an idea that one.

Next time 'I’ll dig into asylum, right to remain, EU free movement and UK Common Travel and impacts on housing (etc). I’ll also examine some of the Scottish Government claims concerning economic impacts on wages and so forth (where refreshingly I will offer some praise for the SNP). But that’s all for now folks.

---

My work is entirely reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber

Alternatively why not make a one-off donation? All support is appreciated