Theresa May to 'kick out foreign graduates' in new immigration plans

Foreign graduates could face being sent back to their home countries under plans to “move towards zero net student migration” reportedly being considered by Home Secretary Theresa May.

Students from non-European Union countries would have to subsequently apply for a work visa while abroad in order to continue living in the UK after finishing a course of study, The Sunday Times reported, instead of being able to apply for one while still on British soil.

A source close to the Home Secretary told the newspaper: “Making sure immigrants leave Britain at the end of their visa is as important a part of running a fair and efficient immigration system as controlling who comes here in the first place.”

Mrs May is also pressing for the power to be able to penalise colleges and universities that would have low success rates in ensuring the departure of foreign graduates and to deprive them of their right to sponsor overseas students, the source added.

Under current rules most students can apply for a work visa while still living in the UK, rather than having to leave the country to apply for one before potentially returning.

Global tremors: bure sitare can bring bure din i.e. bad stars can bring bad days

Swaminathan Aiyer in the Times of India

Narendra Modi’s first six months in office reflected “achhe sitare” (lucky stars) more than “achhe din” (good days). But luck can turn nastily. Suddenly, dark global clouds over Russia (and maybe even China) signal the risk of “bure din” (bad days) ahead.

Is last week’s rouble collapse the start of a debacle like the 1997-99 Asian Financial Crisis? Will the Chinese slowdown end in a hard landing? The chances are probably no more than 10-15%, but India could suffer serious pain.

The 1997-99 crisis was sparked by the exit of foreign investors from all emerging markets, causing currencies and commodity prices to crash. Russia and other countries defaulted on foreign debt. The crisis spread globally, exposing all emerging markets as brothers in vulnerability.

Last week, the Russian rouble, once worth 30 to the dollar, collapsed to 70 before recovering a bit to 60. The slide began with western sanctions, was exacerbated by falling oil prices, but became a debacle only when panicky investors (and Russians) began fleeing roubles for dollars. This crisis is one of finance more than oil.

Other emerging market currencies have also fallen, from 5% for India to 15% for Turkey. Crashing oil prices threaten to bankrupt Venezuela and Nigeria. If any countries default on foreign debt, the contagion could infect many emerging markets (as in 1997).

China has slowed from 12% growth to a projected 7.5% this year. Even this estimate looks inflated, says analyst Ruchir Sharma: growth of car and electricity sales is just 2%, and demand growth for steel and oil is zero. This is the biggest reason for the halving of prices of iron ore, coal and oil. China’s high growth boosted all world economies in the 2000s. Its slowdown may sink them.

Indians are delighted with the fall in oil and food prices. Wholesale price inflation is zero. What’s not to like? Alas, if commodity prices fall enough to wreck important economies, panic can cause global finance to flee all emerging markets, sinking country after country. What started as a Thai financial crisis in 1997 snowballed into a gigantic collapse of all emerging economies. This caused India’s GDP and industrial growth to crash, many companies went bust, and the Sensex halved from its peak. The rupee fell from Rs 35 to 49 per dollar between 1997 and 2001.

Today, India and all other emerging markets today are much better prepared to face a financial crisis. They have substantial forex reserves, lower current account deficits and foreign debt ratios, and bigger contingency borrowing arrangements. Yet some (notably Russia, Nigeria and Venezuela) look vulnerable.

West Asian oil exporters are major destinations for Indian exports and labour, so crashing oil prices can mean a steep fall in India’s exports to and remittances from the Gulf. This will be offset by cheaper oil imports, but the equilibrium may be reached at a slower GDP growth rate.

Foreigners find western bond yields very low, and so have invested over $5 trillion in higher-interest bonds in emerging markets like India. But when the local currency begins to depreciate, bond investors rush out: their potential currency losses far outweigh potential gains from higher interest rates. That outflow was evident last week.

Global finance may be poised to exit from emerging markets anyway with the end of quantitative easing and expected rise in US interest rates in mid-2015. Remember, when the Fed indicated higher interest rate in August 2013, a tidal wave of dollars exited all emerging markets. This took the rupee from Rs 55 to Rs 68 per dollar and the Sensex crashed. That panic subsided in a few months. The Fed said it would not raise rates for quite some time. Money flooded back into India and other emerging markets in 2014. Modi’s victory and the promise of reform made India a global favourite, and dollars flowed in.

Can global events now spark another panicky outflow of 2013 magnitude, driving down the rupee and stock markets? It’s possible, though not probable. Of the $43 billion of foreign financial inflows in 2014, $36 billion went into bonds. So a bond outflow could be very large. India is much better paced to withstand this than it was last year, yet could suffer a lot.

Let’s not overdo alarmism. Today’s financial panic may subside and be reversed, just as in late 2013. The US Fed may decide not to raise interest rates in 2015 given ultra-low inflation. So, emerging market currencies and stock markets may rise again.

Yet we stand warned. Optimists like finance minister Jaitley predict 6.5% GDP growth for India next year.

But none should assume a painless upward path. We can hope for achhe din, but must prepare for the possibility of bure din.

The effects of a fall in the price of oil

Hamish McCrae in The Independent

It looks very much as though 2015 will be a good year for the world economy, after all – and, if it is, that will be thanks to the fall in the oil price. It won't be good for everyone and we have already seen the pressure it puts on the Russian leadership – though, before you conclude that sometimes there is natural justice in the world, remember that the people who are hurt are not leaders such as Vladimir Putin. Other oil- and gas-exporting countries are damaged, too, and I think we will see further fallout in unpredictable ways. But the net impact is strongly positive, more so than most commentators at present acknowledge. The winners far outnumber the losers.

If that sounds overly optimistic, consider this. We have a lot of experience of sudden increases in the price of oil but very little of sudden falls. Oil has tended to go up in big jumps and come down in small, incremental notches. We know that, when the oil price suddenly doubles, this gives world growth a huge blow. The global recessions of the 1970s, the early 1980s and 2008 were all triggered by an oil-price shock. So if oil gives the economy a blow on the way up, surely it must give a corresponding boost when it is on the way down?

How much of a boost? It would be nice to have a ready-reckoner on the lines that x per cent off the oil price would lead to a y per cent rise in growth. But that isn't possible. First, we don't know what the oil price will do in the months ahead. And, second, the fall in price can come about either from an increase in supply or from a broader trend of deflation around the world. If the former, the lower oil price is undoubtedly positive; but if the driver is general deflation (and in Europe and Japan inflation had plunged before the oil-price fall), the argument is more finely balanced.

There is a spectrum of views on this. Here are a couple, from each end of the scale. The more cautious comes from HSBC, which has just put out a paper emphasising deflationary concerns. It notes that the world is saddled with high levels of debt and that years of very low interest rates and quantitative easing have failed to get credit growth moving. It concludes: "It's increasingly difficult to ignore the echoes from Japan."

At the optimistic end is Berenberg Bank, which reckons that lower oil prices will increase demand in Europe and America by at least 0.5 per cent over the next 18 months. It acknowledges that there are losers and that the damage to Russia may spill over into Germany and Italy. But the conclusion is upbeat: "Cheaper oil, if it lasts, should provide a persistent tailwind to growth for oil consumers over the next few years even beyond the short-term boost to real incomes."

My feeling is that the fall in the oil price comes just in time to sustain and broaden an uneven recovery. Continental Europe and Japan have been the two main laggards in the developed world and both depend heavily on imported energy. If the price drop adds 0.5 per cent to eurozone growth next year, that would be enough to double the performance of 2014. We must be aware that cheaper energy cuts headline inflation and it is quite possible that this will go negative early next year in the eurozone.

But the problems of the eurozone go far beyond simple deflation, for they concern the rigidities imposed on Europe by the single currency and the lack of structural reforms, especially in Italy and France. In any case, underlying inflation will pick up once cheaper oil has worked through the system; meanwhile, the dip will nudge the European Central Bank to have yet another shot at boosting demand.

And for Britain? As a net importer of oil, we are a net beneficiary. This is bad news for the North Sea oil industry and for the Scottish economy, but the UK as a whole is a modest winner. If Europe perks up a bit, we become a bigger winner thanks to higher exports. British consumers are clear winners, as we have seen, and the idea that the economy can have another year of 3 per cent growth, maybe a bit more, seems a decent bet. Next year's uncertainties are political, not economic.

We can, as a country, make a mess of things. We know how to do that. But whereas for most of the past five years we have been butting into a global headwind, now we have a tailwind. And that is a huge change that I don't think we fully appreciate.

Tribunal fees deter four out of five employees pursuing claims

From The Independent

Employment tribunal fees have been branded "a barrier to justice", the high charges discouraging four out of five workers from pursuing claims against their employers, according to Citizens Advice.

The charity has found that nearly half of workers with employment issues would have to save for six months in order to afford employment tribunal fees, which in some cases can reach £1,200.

Citizens Advice has called on the Government to align tribunal fees with county court charges in order to widen access. It has also asked for greater promotion of available financial support, and more research to assess what measures could be taken to protect employers without deterring legitimate claims.

Employment tribunal fees were introduced by the Government in July 2013, aiming to transfer the £74m cost of running tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal from the taxpayer to those using the system. Fees range from £160 to £250 to issue a claim, and £230 to £950 for a tribunal.

Before the fees were introduced, Employment Tribunals (ETs) received an average of 48,000 new claims per quarter. However the most recent ET figures for July to September 2014 show that this had dropped to 13,612 new claims.

Last week the trade union Unison, which wants to abolish the fees, lost a second bid to have the fees legally reviewed. Despite the dismissal, the Court of Appeal has granted Unison permission to appeal the decision.

Employment barrister, Harini Iyengar

The Citizens Advice survey found that the fees made more than four out of five workers less likely to claim, or deterred them from claiming at all. Over four in 10 of those with employment troubles had a household income of less than £46 a week after essential bills, highlighting the gulf between the high fees and working wages.

Only three in 10 were aware that financial support is available for those on low incomes. Half of those surveyed believed that they were not eligible for support when in fact they qualified.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: "The employment tribunal system is imbalanced against claimants. Fees are pricing people out of basic workplace rights and a justice system that is supposed to protect them.

"The Government needs to take an urgent look again at how the fee system benefits those workers who feel the prices are a barrier to justice."

Labour has promised to abolish the fees, and reform the employment tribunal system if the party is elected. Sadiq Khan, Labour's shadow Justice Secretary, said: "At a time when people need support and legal advice more than ever, the Government has slashed legal aid, leaving thousands of people adrift without any support whatsoever … This policy has denied justice to thousands of people, yet all it does is displace costs on to other branches of government. It's a short-sighted policy that has far-reaching and negative ramifications."

Sadiq Khan, Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary; Labour has promised to abolish the fees, and reform the employment tribunal system if the party is elected (AP)

Damian Brown QC, a sports and employment lawyer and former chair of the Employment Law Bar Association, said: "Most of the profession believes access to justice should be free … Most businesses have insurance or the opportunity to join an employer's federation for a small fee, so the idea of tribunal fees being a protection against frivolous claims is not a significant problem."

Harini Iyengar, a barrister who specialises in employment and discrimination law, said: "The drop we've seen in employment tribunal cases has been extremely striking; I've not seen anything like it in 15 years of practice … It is important in a democratic country we respect working people and tribunals are essential for the British economy and to a vibrant working community."

Justice Minister Shailesh Vara defended the fees saying: "Small businesses can be hamstrung by unfounded employment tribunal claims and taxpayers should not have to pick up the £74m bill for running the service. We've made sure fee waivers are available for those who can't afford to pay, as well as diverting people away from potentially acrimonious hearings, where possible, through a new early conciliation scheme which has already been used by 37,000 people in its first six months."

Immigrants - Confusion of Unknown Origins

Interview with Tahir Gora on his book Rangmahal - a story of confusion among the Indian diaspora

Yes, Pakistanis are united against terrorism. But not on terrorists

Militants who target India will always be good Taliban. So an alleged architect of the Mumbai attack can be released two days after Peshawar

• 
• • Cyril Almeida
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 18 December 2014 20.10 GMT

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, one of the alleged architects of the 2008 Mumbai attack, has been granted bail days after the horror of Peshawar. Photograph: Reuters

On this Pakistan is united: the men who killed 132 children in a Peshawar school are terrorists. On this too Pakistan is – temporarily – united: terrorism must be defeated. After that the trouble begins. With something as seemingly innocuous as who, exactly, is a terrorist. Pakistanis can’t seem to agree.

Neither can the media. A day after the Peshawar carnage, after the Pakistan army had announced that the slaughter in the school had been operationally coordinated by Afghan-based Pakistani militants, an outraged analyst on local TV asked what the world’s response would have been had India been attacked by militants from Pakistan.

India, the analyst claimed indignantly, would be contemplating bombing Pakistan and the Indian army would already have been mobilised on the Pak-India border. The world at large, the analyst continued, would have pounced on Pakistan for its terrible behaviour. But, the analyst lamented, because Pakistan is weak, it could do no more than send its army chief to Afghanistan and politely seek the Afghan government’s cooperation.

For many in Pakistan, the analyst’s anger would have resonated. His fulminations against the international community’s perceived discrimination against Pakistan would have garnered much sympathy. To much of the outside world, the analyst’s comparison would have triggered incredulity.

For exactly that scenario – Pakistanis slipping into India to mercilessly kill civilians in a major city – had infamously already occurred. In Mumbai. In 2008. Had the TV analyst simply forgotten? Surely not.

But there the analyst was, on one of Pakistan’s most popular news channels, suggesting that the world does not share Pakistan’s pain. Unsaid, though not uncommunicated, was a darker theory: Pakistan is a victim of an international conspiracy, an innocent victim of geopolitics, alone and vulnerable in a Hobbesian world full of militant proxies.

Ultimately, Pakistan’s problem with militancy is not denial. It is not even ignorance. It is something quite different. Simply, it is the widespread belief that militants fighting the Indian state, militants fighting to free “Indian-held Kashmir”, militants fighting the Afghan government and militants fighting to “free” Afghanistan are not militants. They are the good guys. The righteous ones brave enough to take on the world in the name of the one true God.

The problem was never denial. The problem is the paradigm. The Afghan Taliban are not militants. Lashkar-e-Taiba – LeT –are not terrorists. And, even more insidiously, there are those within Pakistan who do not believe that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is in the wrong.

Instead, the belief is that the Pakistani state itself is on the wrong path. A democratic path. A path that keeps it in thrall to American, godless, anti-Islam interests. A path that takes Pakistan far from that of the religion in the name of which it was ostensibly created.

That’s really why it’s possible for Pakistan to stun the outside world – two days after the horror of Peshawar – by granting bail to one of the alleged architects of the Mumbai attack, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi of the officially banned LeT. That’s why it’s possible for Pakistan to confound the world by rejecting global sympathy over the Peshawar attack and embracing LeT instead.

The Lakhvi bail is not a surprise. In truth, it is the inexorable outcome of recent events in Pakistan. Consider just what happened in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab and the heart of political power in Pakistan, on 4 December.

Imran Khan, the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had been trying to oust the government of Nawaz Sharif via street protests since August, and threatened to shut down Lahore that day. But within hours of Khan’s announcement on 30 November, the PTI appeared to realise it had made a mistake: the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a hardline Islamist organisation, was holding its annual congress in Lahore on 4 and 5 December. And so the PTI quickly postponed its protest.

Pause on that for a moment. The business of toppling a national, elected government had to take a back seat to the annual Lahore pilgrimage of Hafiz Saeed, the chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. It was perhaps inevitable. With the Narendra Modi government in India taking a hawkish line on Pakistan, pro-Kashmir, anti-India jihadis in Pakistan were always going to take centre stage.

There is though at least one thing that Pakistan remains wilfully blind to. Every single one of the militant groups fighting the Pakistani state today was once at some point in recent history considered to be a good militant/good Taliban. Just like Hafiz Saeed is today.

Pakistan must live in Peshawar

Reem Wasay in The Hindu

Time and again, the country has moved on and forgotten about the dead. But not this time

For the last decade or so, Pakistanis seemed to have lost the ability to be easily moved by news of tragedy and misfortune — so frequent have been the numbers of dead, injured and displaced. However, what transpired on Tuesday, December 16, in Peshawar has shaken this country more than any earthquake, attack or battle ever could. The massacre of 132 children, who must have thought they were safe in the impenetrability of their school, by Taliban militants, has left a gaping wound that continues to splutter the rancid blood of our collective failure to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Storming the Army Public School (APS) and Degree College premises in a hail of gunfire and explosives-laden suicide vests, the militants did not enter to take hostages and negotiate with power brokers and members of the government; they came to kill and strike a fatal blow to the last remaining vestiges of humanity left in this Pakistan, and they succeeded. Every passing minute, with the death toll rising and red tickers on television screens changing their statistics, left onlookers gasping for air, parents wailing for their trapped angels, newscasters fighting back tears and Special Services Group (SSG) commandos at the ready wondering how things could have gone so horribly, bloodily wrong.

Brave teachers evacuated panicked students and were pumped full of bullets and the principal was burned alive in front of the children to instil maximum terror. Dressed as paramilitary personnel, the militants duped the children to reveal who among them were from army families; they naively shot up their little hands, thinking they were going to be rescued, but were instead shot between the eyes. Others played dead and cowered under desks and behind chairs only to be dragged out and gunned down. More than a dozen explosives rang out during the eight- hour-long siege — say that to yourself again: eight hours of defenceless children ambushed without the protective cover of a mother or father’s undying love, shielding their darlings from any and all harm. There is no greater human tragedy.

Not a ‘blowback’ attack

Running parallel to this calamity was the gloating statement from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claiming responsibility for the carnage, justifying it as revenge for army operations against them and their families. They were talking about Operation Zarb-e-Azb, a Pakistan military offensive being waged in North Waziristan since June this year, after the same militants attacked Karachi International Airport, killing some 36 people.

Such excuses will simply not do now; this is not a ‘blowback’ attack for the deaths of militants’ families in drone attacks and military operations; it is an ideology that must be realised by the entire nation and eliminated.

Some may argue that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam, and that debate will rage on for many more years to come, but what stands as clear as the pools of unblemished blood in the grounds of APS Peshawar is the fact that Islam is being used to destroy this country corner to corner, person to person. These militants did not fly in here overnight nor did they scale the walls of ironclad fortresses committed to the preservation of the Pakistani nation in a surprise attack. No, they have been allowed to fester and rot at the very core of what should have been a National Security Policy, a policy that only resulted in the limp bodies of this nation.

No effective counterterrorism measures have been taken to root out a terror of our own making: a proxy scourge that has penetrated every city, every mind. It is the mindset in Pakistan that is the problem. From shrinking space for moderate voices on every platform to the public outpouring of sympathy we see for the killers of those accused of blasphemy, from minorities and anyone with secular, liberal leanings to the infantile projections of “my sect is bigger than your sect,” Pakistan is not surprised by the horror that unfolded in Peshawar — it has finally been numbed and struck down by the chilling awareness that this is a monster of our own making, the culmination of our Machiavellian pact with the primitive and the poisonous.

We can lay blame on the TTP all we want, but the real criminals are those who apologise for their ideology by footing the blame on “foreign hands”; who seek excuses when they should have sought retribution; who move on when Ahmedis and Shias are ruthlessly burned, beaten, murdered for their faith; who offer media space to orthodox clerics to air their views for public consumption; and who allow the communal gathering of the likes of Jamaat-ud-Dawa Chief Hafiz Saeed riding in on a white stead, like some sort of repugnant messiah of the people, at a symbol of Pakistan’s newly found hope and pride all those years ago (Minar-e-Pakistan) that are to blame.

For too long now, journalists like me have been urged to self-censor, to throw in the towel lest extremist ire is sparked, to tremble at the mere mention of change, repeal or amendment of the current mindset where sectarian differences cancel out universal convergence on humane notions of good and evil.

Why a school was targeted

The school was targeted because it was one where military officers sent their offspring and because it was a symbol of everything the Taliban are opposed to: enlightenment and freedom. Where their lies and propaganda brainwash ignorant minds, schools liberate future generations from their draconian claws. Malala Yousafzai (you either love her or hate her in Pakistan) was shot in the face by the same mentality in 2012 and many here sneered at her, calling her a U.S. agent. Were all 141 fatalities in Peshawar agents and were they 141 reasons to give up our misguided notion of strategic assets and proxy panhandling?

“The school was targeted because it was a symbol of everything the Taliban are opposed to: enlightenment and freedom.”

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty the day after the attack, after widespread public backlash and media frenzy demanded that all terrorists on death row be executed immediately. This is a fragile first step; it is a belated response to a plague that runs woefully deeper. Battered, bruised, bleeding and gone are our children — their hands shown grasping their copies and bags in photographs splashed all over social and other media. It is a harrowing vision, but it is necessary. We have, time and again, moved on and forgotten about the dead, swept away the fragments of their bodies by our own apathy and forgetfulness. Not this time Pakistan; do not forget this time. The pestilence of extremism must be purged, we must say this freely now, we must never think twice. Pakistan must live in Peshawar until this war is won.

(Reem Wasay is Op-ed Editor of Daily Times, Pakistan.)