We're a mixed race couple

applying for a partner visa.

What's not to be afraid of?

Harry McGrath

The pavements that lead from the Cessnock subway station to the United Kingdom Border Agency office in Govan don't seem to have had rubbish collected for a while. There are mattresses and headboards, broken chairs, three-legged tables. The wind suspends polybags and chip packets in the air before driving them in to our faces.
     Early for our appointment, we sit on a wall and contemplate the Stalag. Brand Street UKBA won't be winning any prizes for design or decoration. The building seems to symbolise the dread that we have been feeling for months in anticipation of this day. Cameron says that multi-culturalism is dead, immigrant bashing fills the newspapers, and we're a mixed race couple applying for a partner visa. What's not to be afraid of?
     Paradoxically, there's comfort in the newspaper I've just read. A Scottish columnist who normally trades in 'best or buckie' Glasgow stereotypes has filed a piece on immigration. Every race, colour and language, he writes, is gathered on Glasgow streets. The census has Glasgow at an ethnic minority percentage of 4.5% which is lower than anywhere else I've ever lived, but I forgive him his wee exaggeration for what comes next. The city, he says, is all the better for being diverse. A few years back his point would be too obvious to bother with but in Britain in 2011 it seems almost radical. I make a mental note to thank him for it.
     This is my second brush with an immigration system. Many moons ago, I was looking to confirm my exit from Scotland and shuffling along at the tail end of a snake-like queue outside the Canadian citizenship and immigration office in Vancouver. At the door I was given a number – 500 and something – and instructed to sit in a cavernous room with as many people in it as the number suggested. I was called within 10 minutes and walked shamefaced to the front and through a curtain. There an officer was flicking at my file. 'I noticed that you applied in Glass-cow. I was curious. We don't get many applications from Glass-cow. My grandfather came from there.'
     Now back in Glass-cow and our number is 421 but it seems to be a run-on from the previous day or even days before that. The holding room is about a twentieth of the size of the one in Vancouver and there are, perhaps, 30 people in it. Four of these have an 'I' on their identification cards which we assume stands for 'Interpreter'. Two people look like lawyers. There are several international students, a few other couples and three families with young children. The whole operation is monitored by an affable Weegie who patiently issues the same instructions to everyone who comes in, pats backs, jokes and smiles a lot. One point of similarity with Vancouver is that I am the only white face or, at least, the only one not in uniform.

 

     We are directed to a booth where we pass a folder full of tenancy agreements, electricity bills and so on under a glass partition. They show that we have been together for the last two years. We offer a second folder with evidence for the past five years but that is deemed unnecessary. A third folder attests to our solvency. A fourth contains back-up material in case anything is rejected but it doesn't leave the bag. One of the additional pieces of evidence – and I am not making this up – is our cat adoption papers. Puma is from the Lothian cat rescue in Bonnyrigg but inadmissible anyway according to the home secretary.
     Everything looks fine to the man behind the glass but it is his 'colleagues in the back' who will make the final decision. In the meantime, he says, my partner has to have her biometrics done again. He then provides a long explanation about how many days it will take to receive the new biometric card and how it will be delivered. I think this is way of saying that we should relax.
     In the 'Biometric Enrolment Room', the man with the camera and the finger printer wants to go to Vancouver one day and wishes he had done a PhD in Scottish literature. He knows at least two people that we know: one a professor at Glasgow University, the other a poet. When it's all done, he shakes us both by the hand and wishes us luck. An hour later we are called again and a 'colleague from the back' says us our application for a partner visa has been successful.
     Not everyone got what they came for. One of the families left in distress which reminded me of how little I had to lose in either of my immigrations compared to the people around me. Failure in Canada would have resulted in removal to Cumbernauld which isn't that much of a threat though it seemed so at the time. Failure in Glasgow means we return to Vancouver which is still licking its wounds from having been reduced to the third 'most liveable' city in the Economist's annual survey from its customary position at number one. In retrospect, failure in either case was unlikely anyway.
     I felt desperately sorry for the departed family and, indeed, anyone looking to immigrate to Britain against the cacophony now rising against them. Even the normally sober Scottish Review recently ran a piece in which the author warned of overcrowding and pending 'armies of immigrants'. There may be overcrowding somewhere but it's surely not in Scotland where the population is about the same as it was 70 years ago. And if there are armies of immigrants on the way they haven't reached UKBA Glasgow where, as far as I can tell, relatively small numbers of applicants are being treated with the utmost dignity and respect.
     To avoid accusations of Glasgow exceptionalism, I should point out that not everyone that we dealt with at Brand Street was from Glasgow. And, for all I know, UKBA agents all over Britain may treat the nervous people before them the same way we were treated. Still, staff attitudes in Glasgow seem to me to be closer to those that informed the local campaigns against Dungavel child detentions and in favour of Precious Mhango than they are to the remote and negative judgements of London-based press and politicians. Unfortunately, it was the latter that we were exposed to for months before our appointment and it was those that clung to us as we picked our way through the rubbish-strewn streets beyond Cessnock.
     One final thought. Does Scotland really want to be subject to immigration policy forged in the home counties and honed in the pages of the Daily Mail? If not, what to do about it? With all the talk about increased fiscal powers, I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion about the need for a Scotland-specific immigration policy to reflect our different circumstances, requirements and (perhaps) attitudes. Forty years ago, Canada placed a commitment to multi-culturalism at the heart of its new rules on immigration. That would be a good place for Scotland to start, but I think it had better hurry up.

Harry McGrath is the former coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He is now based in Edinburgh and runs the Scottish Canadian Agency