Byline: RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

LONDON: Britain has finally indicated it may offer retrospective fairness to an estimated 30,000 Indians who say they have been suddenly and unaccountably disenfranchised by hard-line new immigration regulation. The Indians, who took the British government to

In an unexpected breakthrough late on Monday (March 26), Immigration Minister Liam Byre made his extraordinary promise to review the situation for disenfranchised Indians. Byrne's promised re-think comes nearly three months after TOI revealed that thousands of Indian HSMP visa-holders were intent on taking the British government to court for its allegedly racist, "Idi Amin-style" new immigration policies.

Byrne said he would take into account the dismal situation of the disenfranchised Indians even as he made the unexpected, conciliatory gesture of meeting disaffected HSMP visa-holders on the margins of the British parliament on Monday.

Amit Kapadia, of the recently-formed HSMP Forum that represents those affected by the changed rules and spoke to the minister on their behalf, told TOI on Tuesday "we feel more optimistic now. The British government tried to show it was listening to us, we Indian HSMP visa-holders, who are suffering because they suddenly changed the rules and almost seem to want to force us out of the country".

Goan-origin MP Keith Vaz, who facilitated the meeting, chaired it as well. He said he was "grateful the Minister took the opportunity to listen to those affected by the changes the Home Office has brought in" and added "When you hear of the families affected, job prospects ruined and of children living in an atmosphere of insecurity you realise that the Government must make every effort to secure the future of these people. Britain's reputation as a fair, globally-minded country is at stake. If we are to continue to benefit from the work of highly skilled migrants we must be able to prove that we operate on a basis which is clear, transparent and balanced."

The late-evening meeting in parliament was attended by 13 MPs and lords, who were treated to the tales of woe of 23 affected HSMP visa-holders, who described the effect on their lives of suddenly being told one morning that they were no longer welcome in the UK.

Kapadia said he was confident the government would live up to its promise of contacting him within a week.

Observers said Byrne's willingness even to meet the disenfranchised Indians is significant because till now, he had refused to engage in the issue at all. In December, he peremptorily rejected a request for a meeting on the issue with the Immigration Law Practitioner's Association (ILPA), which represents 1,200 barristers, solicitors and advocates across Britain and recently annoyed the government with its savage criticism of the changes to HSMP rules.

Since then, however, the British government has been forced to take note of the increasingly bad press it has received worldwide for unfairly applying new immigration rules with retrospective effect for non-European nationals.

The new rules, which came into force in December, a month after they were announced, are widely seen to disenfranchise non-European migrants over 28 years old, earning UK salaries less than ? 35,000. They are said to reverse Britain's promise the highly-skilled non-European migrants could enter the country, legitimately to work and with a view eventually to settle.

The changed HSMP rules are the third in a series of stringent changes to British immigration policy, which make Indians unwelcome in the UK. In April, Britain suddenly announced migrants would need to have lived here five years instead of four to qualify for permanent residence. A few months later, it barred Indian and other non-European doctors from arriving to study and work here. By year-end, it changed the HSMP rules.

On Monday, in a rushed but intense 55-minute meeting with the disenfranchised Indians, Byrne patiently listened to their stories and the plea that Britain must cease to apply its new immigration policies with retrospective effect.

All we want, said Kapadia, is for Britain to treat the 49,000 suffering HSMP visa-holders, most of whom are Indian, on the basis of the original promise. He said the HSMP Forum fully expected that non-European immigrants, who arrived in Britain before November 7, the date the new rules were announced, should be treated according to the "old rules of visa extension based on economic activity and not as per the new points based system."

The HSMP Forum told Byrne that the now-renamed Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) had also taken a severe view of the sudden changes to HSMP rules. The CRE, Byrne was told, had declared the changed rules have "relevance to race equality...We are concerned that the new measures will result in indirect discrimination against ethnic minorities in the workplace. The majority of people currently in the UK through the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme are from South Asia, Africa and non-EEA (European Economic Area) countries."

A representative of the Indian government, also present at the meeting, issued a statement on the increasingly bitter controversy over Britain's attitude to non-European migrants. "...Given the genuine human dimension of HSMP status- Indian nationals, who have already entered the UK since 2002, we would urge the British Government not to implement the new points based system retrospectively," the statement said.