Liberal Democrat Immigrants exists to represent those members of the Liberal Democrats who have chosen to come to live in the UK from elsewhere. It also seeks to represent the interests of immigrants to the UK in general and to highlight those issues that disproportionately affect immigrants.

The challenge for Liberal Democrats should not be “how do we make a broken and inhumane system work a little bit less badly?”, but how we discard the broken system and in its place build something better, so that Britain can reclaim the reputation of an island of hope and welcome.

As you may have seen, the party is asking for members’ opinions on immigration. As Lib Dem Immigrants, we are fully committed to a liberal immigration policy. This should have been great news.

Sadly, on reading the consultation document, all that excitement faded, to be replaced with frustration at the nitpicky, timid mess of leading questions.

Expecting current policy and structures to be made fit for purpose with the barest of tweaks.

Failing to distinguish between actual problems and perceived problems — and naively assuming that addressing perceived problems with more “robust” policy will somehow placate tabloid-fuelled xenophobia. (hint: it won’t).

Focusing almost entirely on the benefits of immigration to the host country and barely at all on the benefits to the immigrants and their families.

Worst of all, and poor practice for a document that is supposedly a consultation prior to developing policy, it continually asks about details while ignoring broad questions of principle.

They asked:

Is the current earning threshold [to be allowed to have a non-British spouse join you in the UK] of £18,600 fair? If not, what would you do to change it?

They didn’t ask:

Is it right that the state should be separating family members at all?

They asked:

If an employer is found to be systematically employing illegal immigrants, what additional fines and penalties should be levied on such employers?

They didn’t ask:

Is it the job of employers to be enforcing the immigration system?

They asked:

What loopholes exist in the current system of border control that need to be closed?

They didn’t ask:

Are there aspects of the current system of border control that lead to people being wrongly excluded, detained, or harassed?

They asked:

How can we maximise the benefits of economic growth via migration and minimise the pressure on public services via migration?

They didn’t ask:

How can we convey to the public that migration is not a significant pressure on public services? How can we avoid dehumanising migrants by treating them purely as economic units?

We deserve better than the hair-splitting policy that a consultation written like this is doomed to produce. We should be leading with Liberal principles, not supplying our policy pre-compromised.

We need to be unafraid to make radical change in areas where current government policy falls short.

We need to show that we understand that — as written in our party’s Constitution — freedom of movement is a freedom, and one which we value.

We need to show that we have a vision of a Liberal pathway to a fairer world where closed borders are unnecessary.

This consultation will get us no nearer to any of this. It is written with the assumption that the current system needs only minor adjustments; it is written to elicit only minor adjustments from respondents. It should never have been allowed to go out in its current form, and we call upon Federal Policy Committee to retract it, so we can have the consultation we deserve.

* Liberal Democrat Immigrants exists to represent those members of the Liberal Democrats who have chosen to come to live in the UK from elsewhere. It also seeks to represent the interests of immigrants to the UK in general and to highlight those issues that disproportionately affect immigrants.