Immigration is a Racket
And it relies on the business of immigrants; featuring an excerpt from my book proposal for Borderlines
I rocked up to the Grade-II listed, Edwardian front of 57 Church Street, Birmingham in typical Varun fashion. Skidding gently to a stop on my Brompton, I kicked the bike into a folding position and, gently perspiring and breathing heavily from my exertions, struggled with its various latches for a few minutes before the bike and I collapsed into a little heap on the pavement.
It was a moment of calm before the storm. I made a quick checklist in my head: did I have all the right paperwork? Had I scanned them all? Well, I knew I hadn’t, but maybe I could ask the people there nicely and they’d help me out, right? What if they didn’t, though? What if I was too early, and they didn’t let me bring my bike in, and turned me away?
What if, at the end of this all, I’d get sent home - not just home, but home home, back to India?
If you’ve been following along on Substack these past few months, you’d know, dear reader, that I applied to become a naturalised citizen of the UK earlier this year. When completing my citizenship application, I was also submitting another in tandem: for a grant to write my book, Borderlines. Specifically, it was for the Footnotes x Counterpoints prize, that celebrates writers from immigrant or refugee backgrounds and supports them with a monetary and logistical grant. It felt serendipitous, somehow. In the book, I was writing of my experiences of first coming to the UK, in 2013. In 2026, how much had changed?
And how much of the experience, the story and the journey of the immigrant had stayed the same?
Well, let’s see. In the Prologue of my book, the protagonist, Arnavkumar Vadapalani Ramalingam Iyer (but please, do call him Ari) is about to walk past the immigration counter at Birmingham International Airport for the first time. What he sees and hears will shape the immigrant experience for him. Do read on to find out.
There were two queues that led towards the immigration desks that day.
Well, I would have called one of them a queue, anyway - on the right, barely a few people long and treading amiably along on its way out of Birmingham International Airport. The other, stretching haphazardly into the distance, barely had time to settle and put its bags down, open its thermos flasks and reach for those 17-hour-old in-flight snacks, before hurriedly making its way forward towards the desk again.
Guess which one I was in?
At least the Gujarati family at the front were ever so helpful:
“NON EE-YOOH!” said Grandad, presumably, in his loudest possible stage whisper. Above them was that famous landmark of Birmingham International: the sign reminding everyone from outside the European Union to please, fuck off to the left so that the Europeans could scan their smart little cards on those smart little gates and make their smart little way out the airport. And so we did, our ragtag bunch; the endless Gujaratis, the effervescent Nigerians, the sombre Afghans in their long tunic shirts and trousers, one or two sullen Australians and Canadians, and me.
At least I wasn’t explicitly trying to stand out. Not that it would take much to get literally everyone’s attention; I only needed to cup my hands and, in my deadest voice, call out:
“NEXT!”
There was a brief flurry at the front. Grandad double-wrapped his shawl over his mouth and nose, a random auntie stashed her thepla and gallon flask of chai away for the nth time and the dozing men woke up with a start, coughed up a tablespoon’s worth of phlegm and chastised their grumbling children to start moving. Their family-sized void in the queue yawned, scratched its belly and promptly swallowed another half-dozen victims. As one digestive motion, we all shuffled along, tatty bags and all, another few feet forwards.
I dropped my purple monstrosity of a case and tried to think. What was it Thatha had said? Bribe the immigration person, be extra nice to airport security — or was it the other way round? At any rate, none of these immigration folks looked particularly bribeable. In fact, they didn’t seem capable of independent thought at all. As one badly-coordinated dance routine, they did three things: usher people forward, glare at them while shuffling their piles of passports and documents into an even messier pile, and then dismiss the unhappy travellers before starting the process all over again.
This was how I remember it: a procession, or maybe a processing of humans. We were all distinctly aware of the ‘other’-ness of being in a separate line that was largely defined by the contents of our passport. The non-EU queue was separate, longer by definition and came with an intense feeling of inferiority compared to the EU residents. They had slick card-operated gates, whereas we had a creeping, endless wait and the voice of the immigration officials going:
NEXT!
NEXT!!
A significant pause, before what felt like a tree root prodded me in the behind. I risked a glance back. The seven-foot Afghan was poking me with the index finger of one hand, and was pointing the other hand mutely towards the immigration desk. I looked that way. I was first in queue.
I scooped my things, murmured a generic ‘thank you’ sound to the turbaned demigod behind, and stumbled four steps to the desk ahead.
“Hi,” I said in my best Matt McConaughey accent, as I groped about for my papers.
“Sorry, I must have zoned out for a mo’, which is why I didn’t hear you. Well, I did hear you in the traditional sense, and for a given value of ‘hear’, but then I didn’t act on it, but then you see this kind and generous man sai—”
I glanced up at the throned figure. She was not listening. Indeed, all I could see of Her Highness was one pale hand extended just out of reach over the top of the counter. I took it, kissed it warmly, and dumped my paperwork on top. It closed over the sheets like some primeval maw, crumpled them for good measure, and withdrew.
Silence. I twiddled my thumbs, un-twiddled them, twiddled them again and, putting on my best buoyant-but-cracked voice, tried:
“Um, nice weather we’re having in here, eh?”
Silence again. A lightbulb overhead fizzled and died in sympathy.
I bit my lip and waited. Hours, probably. And then, a stirring behind the plexiglass, and the generous goddess finally spoke.
“Is this your passport?”
I wrote this earlier last year, but somehow the significance of checking papers has grown in the interim. The prevalence of ICE’s deportation kidnap squads and the imminent threat of a similar such ‘removals force’ proposed by Reform in the UK makes such a simple sentence…barbed. Threatening. Anyway, Ari is:
Nonplussed, I met the reptilian stare with one of my own. You could have cut the tension with an airline-issue plastic knife. Because they’re shit, and there really wasn’t any. I had come up against a championship-destroying starer. She’d had every hour of every day of her lifetime (in reptile years) to practise, after all.
I deflated. “Why, yes, this IS my paahs-port.”
There was a malevolent stirring. One upraised pencilled-in eyebrow indicated the full extent of emotion I had aroused.
“YOUR passport.”
The emphasis seemed somewhat unnecessary, but I rallied.
“Yes, MY paahse-port.”
“Passport?”
“Yes, paarse-port!” Was I saying it wrong? Was this something I’d missed in twelve years of high school English and the last two months watching British sitcoms? Maybe I should’ve chosen Gavin and Stacey instead of Mr Bean - there’s more dialogue, for one. Wait, did I not get it stamped at the gate in Mumbai, or did I get it stamped too many times, or did the person there run out of ink, or was my passport photo two millimetres too high or… ?
She dropped it on her desk where it landed, face-down with a gentle splat. I picked it up and opened it to the first page, where a gleaming passport photo stared out at me. The sullen face in the photo had my eyes, my smile, and my gentle glow of innocence… but it was seven years too young. The date of birth started with a ‘200-’ rather than a ‘199-’. And the name next to it was not Arnavkumar Vadapalani Ramalingam Iyer. It was my brother’s.
Oh.
And so Ari’s first experience with the UK immigration machine is one of needless panic and worry. His grandfather has filled him with warnings and advice, and he has all the paperwork he needs, and then some. He has paid all the right fees and all the right people, watched all the relevant sitcoms and can just about manage the accent. But, when it comes to it, the only adversity he comes up against is his own forgetfulness, and presenting his brother’s passport instead of his own.
In 2026, I, too had managed to work myself into a frenzy over my appointment. I entered the office prepared for conflict, but like Ari, I found none. The security guards apologetically stopped me from taking my Brompton further, but offered to watch it in the waiting area. The queue was short and moved briskly. The officials I spoke to were courteous and even scanned a document for me that I had forgotten. I left in under ten minutes, a little hot, sweaty and bemused by it all.
Both in 2013 and 2026, and several times in between, I had paid a LOT of money for my right to stay here. This most recent application cost me £1,730, but others have cost me plenty more. I spoke fluently and politely to the staff, and came across as well-read and urbane. And this always led me to question the deceitfulness of it all: were they as courteous to the struggling mother and children, explaining her circumstances in broken English? To those tall, turbaned Afghans, those effervescent Nigerians and chattering Gujaratis who exuded a distinct ‘otherness’ from a westernised British norm? Did they treat me differently, just because I had paid them a lot of money, and was willing to put on a British mask for the day?
I think they did. And therefore, I mattered more. Make of that what you will.
Good luck with your citizenship application.
Three weeks ago I joined a coach trip to the World cyclo Cross championships in the Netherlands. 44 of them were British plus me, an Irish citizen. At the EU border gates they all queued to have photos and finger prints taken, I just presented my passport and was waved through.