Re: Home Office "Our schedules were awash with race awareness days"

hwake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Stephen Glynn wrote:
Aramis Gunton wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2158195,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2158195_2,00.html
"Our schedules were awash with race awareness days, diversity weeks and
asylum seminars. We had training days on transsexuals - how often is the
average immigration case officer going to meet a transsexual?"

It's not so ludicrous as it sounds, though, since on the -- doubtless
rare -- occasions immigration officers and others *do* encounter a
transsexual in the course of their duties, they're going to run into all
sorts of problems with (e.g) the validity of birth certificates and
validity of marriages contracted before and after a sex-change op

No difficulty at all. For a start, there is no such thing as a 'sex
change'. And further, there could simply be a policy that people who
are so mixed up should not be allowed into our homeland.


Possibly so, but you'd still be left with the problem of -- for example -- whether someone who'd entered the UK perfectly legitimately because he was married to an English woman continued to be married to her after he'd had a sex change. Since you don't think there's any such thing as a 'sex change' I assume you'd regard the marriage as still perfectly valid.

and,
if for some reason the transsexual is to be detained, whether s/he
should go to a men's or a women's prison.

Again, no difficulty at all, since it is not possible to change sex.


It might, I think, cause some difficulties for prison officers, particularly those responsible for maintaining good order in the showers and for allocating shared cells. Possibly you're correct, and it would cause no difficulty whatsoever, but I can still well imagine some civil servants wanting guidance as to where to send someone in these circumstances.

ISTR that the government had to introduce legislation a year or so ago
to deal with precisely the problem that UK law had been overtaken by
medical science in that it had hitherto regarded someone's gender

Previously you said 'sex', which is not the same as 'gender'.


Did I really? Gosh.

All I'm saying is that, since the law was changed a few years ago to clarify the legal status of transsexuals, it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable for the government to arrange training for civil servants so they know how to apply the law on the rare occasions they do have to deal with such people. This will obviously include immigration officers at times.

Steve



--
Morality is measured in more than just money. It's about right and wrong. We are a party of principle. We will earn the trust of the British people. We've had enough lies. Enough sleaze.

(John Prescott, Labour Party Conference, 1996)
.

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