As a leader of university research teams who has experience of the costs of visas for foreign research workers for many years, I can confirm your report (Campaigners call for action over ‘disgraceful’ immigration fees, 25 June). I have watched with incredulity the massive inflation that has led to fees out of all proportion to any reasonable administrative costs involved. For obvious reasons, the applicants for such visas are in no position to query these fees, even when they cause acute financial embarrassment to people on whom the UK is relying for the skills they bring to our country. It is shameful.
Denis Noble
Oxford
• If a hard-pressed social worker makes an error of judgment that contributes to the death of a child, they lose their job and are subjected to a vicious campaign of vilification in the press. If a Home Office employee makes a decision (Evidence about Windrush pair ‘ignored’, say MPs and peers, 29 June) – by over-strict interpretation or wilful contravention of regulations – that results in distress and sometimes loss of livelihood or even life, they keep their job and retain their anonymity.
This suggests a woeful ethical imbalance in the culture of government administration. Those who work with a benign purpose but make an occasional mistake, albeit severe, suffer for it, while for those who serve a malicious bureaucracy and appear to be devoid of humanity and indifferent to evidence, nothing happens.
Rev John James
Highbridge, Somerset
• Few people are aware that there were Polish refugees on board the Windrush 70 years ago (The other Windrush generation: Poles reunited after fleeing Soviet camps, 22 June). Perhaps even fewer are aware of the circumstances of their journey to get to Mexico in 1943.
These were mainly children, and travelled by ship from Iran, headed for Mexico. Their route rounded the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, across the south Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro, through the Panama Canal to the Pacific, and finally up the coast of California to Los Angeles. The final stage of their journey, from LA to Mexico, was to be undertaken by train.
The treatment of the children in California was bizarre. The US authorities classified the Poles as “enemy aliens”. They were put under armed guard and transferred to enclosures surrounded by barbed wire in a camp designated for Japanese internees. Two days later they were put on a locked train, still under armed guard, bound for the border. The warmth of the Mexican welcome and their stay in Mexico contrasted strongly with the children’s hostile reception in the US.
It’s back to a hostile environment for the Windrush generation in Britain and disgraceful treatment of children on the Mexican border.
Jack Czauderna
Sheffield
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