A few years ago, I found myself putting together a petition to save an Egyptian friend from deportation. Her husband, with dual UK/Egyptian nationality, had been wrongly issued a student visa, on which she came in. When it came time to renew, the error was discovered, and she was to be deported due to her “fraudulent” visa. Our efforts failed and she was forced to leave. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the absurdities of British immigration law. But I still am surprised by this one.
In the frightening days after 7/7, John Tulloch was the face of Britain’s resistance to terror: bloodied, dazed, clothes in shreds, his picture appeared on newspaper front pages around the world.
Sitting opposite a suicide bomber on a Circle Line train, he had been saved from death by his own luggage. He was visited in hospital by the Prince of Wales, who proclaimed him an example of the “resilience of the British people”.
Prof Tulloch, 70, who traces his ancestry here back to the 14th century, was born to British parents in a British colony. He has a British wife, children and brother. He was raised and educated in Britain from the age of three, has substantial assets and property here and has lived or worked in the UK for most of his life, holding a series of posts at British universities. He even held a British passport. But now, his passport has been confiscated and he faces expulsion from Britain in the latest bizarre twist in this country’s “Kafkaesque” immigration laws.
For more, go here.
Feminist Philosophers 
I’m no real expert on British immigration laws, but my understanding is this _sort_ of thing is a result of racist changes made to UK citizenship laws in the 60’s and 70’s to prevent (what were seen to be) large numbers of immigrants from ex and soon-to-be ex British territories over-seas (esp. Kenya and Hong Kong) from migrating to the UK. (I met the head of economic research for the WTO some time ago at a conference- a man as British as you’d expect to find, born to British civil servants in Kenya, educated in the UK, but also unable to have UK citizenship for this reason.) My impression is that Tulloch is “collateral damage” from the changes made some time ago to the UK citizenship laws to prevent access to UK citizenship from non-white over-seas subjects. A sad legacy.