Theresa May's Hostile Environment legislation ruled unlawfully racist

In 2014 Theresa May was the Tory Home Secretary who introduced the vile Hostile Environment legislation that ultimately led to the Windrush scandal, but on March 1st 2019 a key plank of that legislation was ruled unlawful by the High Court because of the way it has unleashed a disgusting wave of racism.

The aspect of Hostile Environment that's been found unlawful is the "right to rent" policy that essentially turned private landlords into untrained freelance immigration agents by threatening them with jail and unlimited fines if they were caught renting property to people who couldn't prove their right to live in the UK.

The combination of this policy, and the Tory government's unwillingness to monitor and oversee the system they'd put in place created a massive increase in racism amongst private landlords.

Instead of implementing time consuming checks on residency status, huge numbers of landlords simply decided to not rent to any blacks, Asians, or foreigners, regardless of whether they had the correct paperwork or not.

The Home Office's own research showed that 25% of landlords would refuse to rent property to people unless they had British passports, yet despite their own department providing the compelling proof that their policy was being used to impose racist discrimination in the housing market, the Tory Home Office issued a statement saying that they were "disappointed" with the ruling, and that they're considering an appeal.

So after having one of their flagship policies being declared racist and unlawful by a British court of law, the Tory response isn't to apologise, it's to issue a statement that they're disappointed in the legal judgement against them!

It's important to remember that the "right to rent" policy is only one aspect of Theresa May's barbaric Hostile Environment. She also used similar threats to try to deny employment, banking services, social security, and even medical treatment to people who couldn't immediately prove their right of residence (like Windrush Brits who moved to the UK prior to 1971 and their descendants).

Theresa May and the Tories didn't just legislate to turn landlords into unwilling and untrained immigration enforcement officers, they did the same to bank clerks, teachers, medical professionals, and millions of ordinary employers too.

The attitude was that the Tory government couldn't be bothered to enforce their own immigration laws, so they would offload the task onto ordinary untrained members of the public, with no concern whatever for the fact that proportions of these ordinary people were always going to be racist, or incompetent, or just too damned lazy to bother doing things fairly, or at all.

And then there's the fact that scores of black British citizens have been refused reentry to the UK, including several who ended up dying in exile overseas.

But the Tories and the appalling "centrists" who colluded with Theresa May to impose this racist legislation by abstaining (Labour right-wingers) and even voting in favour of it (most of the Lib-Dems) can't pretend that they didn't know that these Hostile Environment policies would end up unleashing a sickening wave of racism and discrimination against Windrush Brits because they were warned.

Diane Abbott warned them during the parliamentary debate, but they ignored her. Immigration and anti-racism charities warned them from the beginning that these policies would end up stoking racism, but they ignored them. Even the Residential Landlords Association warned that turning landlords into unwilling and untrained immigration enforcement officers would lead to racist discrimination, but the Tories and "centrists" ignored these people too.

But if Tories and "centrists" are talented at one thing in particular, it's completely ignoring concerns over their own policies (just look at the fact that they're all still pushing ruinous austerity dogma even after 9 years of such wanton devastation that even right-wing economic organisations like the IMF and OECD turned their backs on the austerity ideology years ago).

So every time you see the mainstream media fixating on their agenda of portraying the Labour left (who were amongst the tiny minority who actually voted against Theresa May's racist Hostile Environment in 2014) as a hotbed of racism, just remember that the Tories have actually been condemned in court of law for ignoring all the warnings and imposing racist policies that have breached the human rights of thousands of real people.

Just remember that the mainstream media agenda of smearing the Labour left will always take precedence over reporting the observable reality that Theresa May and the Tories are a proven bunch of racists who ignored all the warnings and deliberately implemented unlawfully racist policies.

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