‘Individuals who seek to create fear, distrust and divisions in order to stir up terrorist activity will not be tolerated by the government or by our communities.’ So said Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, on Wednesday, when outlining the grounds on which undesirable foreigners can be deported or excluded from the UK.
But you don’t have to create fear and distrust to find yourself excluded. Being Australian will do. Earlier this month, an old schoolfriend of my wife’s was booted out of England for no reason that she — or we — could understand. Julie Hope, a 50-year-old divorcee and mother of three grown-up children, arrived to stay with us in London in March. She had given up her job as a garden designer so that she could take what she called a ‘late gap year’. She has many friends and relations in England and Europe. Her father is an influential New South Wales grazier, and her children were educated at Prince Charles’s old school, Geelong Grammar.
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