Scientists Decry "Horrifying" UK Border Test Plan

cremeglace writes "Scientists are dismayed and outraged at a new project by the UK border agency to test DNA, hair, and nails to determine the nationality of asylum seekers and help decide if they can enter the UK. 'Horrifying,' 'naive,' and 'flawed' are among the words geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the 'Human Provenance pilot project.' The methods being used to determine ancestry include fingerprinting of mitochondrial DNA and isotope analysis of hair and nails. ScienceInsider blog notes that it is 'not clear who is conducting the DNA and isotope analyses for the Border Agency,' and that the agency has not 'cited any scientific papers that validate its DNA and isotope methods.' There is also a followup post with more information on the tests that are being used, and some reactions from experts in genetic forensic analysis. This story was first reported in The Observer on Sunday."

Comments

1984

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't even funny anymore.

Re:1984

[mrrudge]

As an Englishman, and a Yorkshireman to boot, I can say with absolute certainty that I'd rather live in a predominantly multiracial area ( I do ) where my genetic heritage is a footnote compared with my interactions with other human beings, my values and my ability to do things, than to be categorised in any way as similar to someone ( you ) who has no idea of their own history ( you absolutely sure your genetic makeup is *pure* anglo-saxon, oh hang on ) and who feels they are able to judge many others based entirely on the differing colour of their skin.

You didn't build this country, and as you're very unlikely to be old enough to have actively participated in the wars, empire or any period when this sceptred isle was ( questionably ) glorious, you're actively blaming others for your own lack of success, whilst triumphing and extrapolating your smallmindedness to others who do not agree.

Anecdotal evidence for your argument; -1.

( And apologies for feeding trolls. )

What is this hoping to achieve

[Chrisq]

They had a TV program last year when they did some genetic tests on people who considered themselves to be 100% English. I remember that out of 12 one had mitochondrial DNA that would have had his female line originating in Eastern Europe, one had Jewish ancestry and another Indian - and these were all people who did not know of any non-British relatives.

Add to that the millions of people who have known foreign ancestry but British citizenship and the whole idea becomes useless.

The problem

[Toonol]

The problem isn't the scientific validity of the test; the problem is the idea that an emigrant's nationality should factor into whether they should be allowed residency.

The science is horrible, but the root of the problem is primarily political and perhaps moral.

Re:The problem

[Alioth]

For what reasons do you think this should be so?

My next door neighbour is Albanian. She has a degree in electrical engineering, and speaks four languages fluently (her native Albanian, of course, as well as English, Italian and German). She is precisely the sort of person we should be biting our own arms off to get into the country.

But she describes the whole experience of the immigration process as "Kafkaesque". She would have gone to Canada where people with her qualifications are welcomed - except she was engaged to marry my neighbour. The UK Embassy treated her as sub-human, with little manners, and tried to make the entire process humiliating.

What I have to ask is this: what is fundamentally different between, say, someone from Yorkshire moving to Hampshire, and someone from Albania - who speaks English fluently - doing the same thing? Why don't we have immigration controls in every county to keep people in the same place and stop them from moving around? Also, why do so many UK citizens want to emigrate to sunny places without bothering to learn the local language, but get bent all out of shape when people from other countries arrive in the UK?

Re:The problem

[Darinbob]

The article says this is about asylum seekers, not regular immigrants. Ie, those from Somalia are allowed entry because they are fleeing a war zone, whereas there is concern (unfounded or not) that some Kenyans are claiming to be Somali. Currently some other techniques are used for helping figure this out, such as languages known.

The science is a problem because it's completely bogus. You can't tell what country a person is from this way; you can only tell generalities, such as what region they've been living in the last year, or what their ancestry is. It's pseudo-science.

My guess is that someone in the home office is an idiot (more so than usual), and has seen some abstract of some papers, decided that the techniques could be used for certain purposes, and then told someone about the plans without actually verifying the plausibility.

Re:The problem

[Oxygen99]

Christ on a bike. See. This is the problem with you people. Frankly, if someone appears on my borders having travelled thousands of miles, with little money and no knowledge of the native language yet can pick up local customs and prejudices well enough to game a complicated system that intelligent people put in place precisely to stop them then who cares whether they're "genuine refugees"? That level of motivation and energy is welcome in any society I'm part of because it's precisely those qualities that create the milk and honey you're so fond of! Don't you understand? Geographic and social mobility is good! Stasis is bad! Change is good! How is that difficult? Gah! And double Gah! I'm sick of being exposed to this puerile nonsense day after day after day. Maybe you're right. Maybe we should be more draconian. I just hope that if we are, the powers-that-be make it as hard to leave as it'll become to enter. That way you can live in the economic, social and demographic backwater you create. It's a shame most people are shrieking fools nowadays as otherwise we might be able to construct a meaningful dialogue regarding the best way to manage immigration. That way English classes for migrants wouldn't be first on the altar of economic sacrifice, limiting their ability to integrate and compounding the us-and-them mentality that strangles any debate at birth. Immigration does raise complex question but it is beneficial and if people would just drop their belief in their god-given right to do whatever the fuck they want to poor people in other countries without the burden of consequences ever dropping in their lap then perhaps we could step out of the handbasket and head upwards rather than downwards for once.

Re:PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. They just want SCIENCE to take away all that awful guilt.

Unheared of in history

[Errol backfiring]

You mean like Franks, Saxons, Walloons/Welsh and Frisians all living in one country?

Re:PR

[draco664]

Firstly, nationality is not the same as skin colour.

Nationality is not the same as DNA either.

Re:PR

[RegularFry]

Given that it is my capital, and my home, yes.

Re:PR

[DangerFace]

The population of London is expected to drop below 50% English by 2012.

From what I can see from a quick wiki of the last census, more than two thirds of the population of London is British born, and quite a few of the foreigners are from British families that emigrated and then moved back.

Would you want to let that happen with your own capital?

Assuming your premise is right, yes, I would let that happen to both the city I live in and the capital of my country. But these tests have nothing to do with 'Britishness' - they are about genetics and poorly-formed pseudo-scientific analysis. If you want to define Britishness go ahead and give it a try, but we're less ethnically pure than pretty much anyone, so that's a no go.

For example, I'm British, and there is no one that would contest that (well, very few). However, my ethnic heritage back to my grandparents is one quarter white British, one quarter white German, and one half European Jew. Additionally, I can parle un petit peu Francais, sprechen Deutsch, and make stabs in the dark in Spanish and Italian. My area is fairly white, for London, but the main types of takeaway / restaurant nearby are focused on Chinese, Thai, Indian, and American cuisine. This is not a country where ideas of purity work well.

Re:PR

[the_womble]

What I would really like to do is to is to expel anyone who cares from the country.

Also, you do realise that that is precisely the reason that most people like London?

Re:PR

[DrEldarion]

Would you want to let that happen with your own capital?

54% of people in Washington DC are of African descent. 40% are of European descent. 9% Hispanic descent. 3% Asian descent.

We seem to be doing just fine.

Re:excuse me...

[Anonymous Coward]

100% of the people in Washington DC are of African descent.

Re:PR

[kinnell]

Aparently, simply discrimating by skin color is not cool anymore.

It's not about discrimination based on race, it's about verifying whether someone is from where they say they are from to prevent normal emmigrants passing themselves off as refugees to bypass the emmigration system. It's stupid of course because it's based on the assumption that there is a tie between nationality and genetic ancestry. A fairly large proportion of british citizens would test as Indian under this scheme.

Imagine the outcry

[Kleiba]

...if the country announcing such plans wasn't the UK, but Germany.

Re:Emigration is a Privilege, not a Right

[Anne Thwacks]

While I agree that Britain has a serious problem with over population, and that recent immigration is a major contributor to this, I cannot accept that expensive DNA related tomfoolery funded by me is a sensible or meaningful response.

There will be huge problems with the technical side, massive incompetence by the people charged with operating the system, and large numbers of people who have trivial "skeletons in the cupboard" will fall foul of the system. (eg "your daddy aint your daddy, but your daddy dont know" to quote the old song, people trying to escape abuse, warlords, crime syndicates, or whos distant ancestors were rape victims being asked to explain things which their parents know nothing.)

And, as we all know, any information gathered by the UK government is normally in the hands of random Indians, Nigerians and Russians, etc within days, and the information on database so corrupt as to be worthless in less than a year. (According to official data, about 30% of data on the police national computer system is just plain wrong - but nobody has the authority to delete it.)

This is what it looks like, a crazed Orwellian government, who have lost touch with reality, hell-bent on absurd control-freakery.

PS enquiries at your Local Hackney pub will reveal a contact who can bypass the system for a large number of used fivers in a Safeway bag.
Just ask for £$+*@ ... [no carrier]

Re:Antithesis of an empire?

[smoker2]

1) We are not running out of land to build houses on.
2) You appear to read too much of the Daily Mail. The official figures for asylum seekers as as follows :

Total applications for asylum Q2 2009 = 6,045.
Total people refused asylum in Q2 2009 = 4154.
So assuming that the figures are average for the whole year, you are only looking at a total of 7564 successful asylum seekers PER YEAR ! Hardly flooding the country.

Also, the population of the UK in mid 2008 was around 61,383,000. That's 8.5 million less than you quoted. It would take over 1100 years for the "influx" of successful asylum seekers to make up the error in your figures. More people pass through Heathrow in a year (68 million) than actually live in the country. 7564 staying on is hardly significant.

Maybe the problem is the same as always - divide and rule, and you're falling for it.

Figures gained from the ICAR site referencing the official Home Office quarterly report.
Population figures from the National Statistics site.
Heathrow figures from the BBC.