[lg policy] UK: Language and paperwork: Sprechen Sie bureaucratisch?

[Harold Schiffman]

Language and paperwork: Sprechen Sie bureaucratisch?

Oct 24th 2011, 19:23 by L.M. | LONDON

QUESTIONING Britain’s bureaucracy is a fruitless exercise at the best
of times. When it comes to disentangling the rules surrounding
immigration policy you may as well pack up and go home (which is, by
happy coincidence, precisely what David Cameron’s government would
like you to do if you aren’t an EU citizen). But some questions niggle
at you, demanding an answer. Like why, in the face of all logic, does
the United Kingdom issue landing cards in German?

Citizens of the European Union, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and
Switzerland have the right of free movement between each others’
countries. At British borders, they get their own line, where passport
control officers glance at their documents before waving them through.
Citizens of the rest of the world (including Americans, as a signboard
at Heathrow pointedly reminds them) have to queue up in another, much
slower, line. They must also fill in a landing card, similar to the
I-94 at America's borders, listing personal details, length of stay
and a local address. This card is printed in three languages: English,
French and German.

English makes sense. It is the language of the land and a second
language for much of the world. What about French? Fewer people speak
French than Bengali, which is confined to one corner of the Indian
sub-continent. Spanish, with its huge number of native speakers and
status as the official language of nearly two dozen countries (most of
them non-European) as well as several major organisations running from
the UN to the Antarctic Treaty, would probably be a better second
choice. Still, the Francophone world sprawls across four continents
and is widely studied as a supplementary tongue. But German? The only
country outside of Europe where German enjoys any sort of official
status is Namibia, population 2.2m.

The top five non-European nationalities arriving in the UK last year
were, in descending order, Americans (3.6m), Australians (1.1m),
Indians (0.94m), Canadians (0.90m) and the Japanese (0.5m). It is not
publicly known how many Namibians visit, so I asked the UK Border
Agency to explain their peculiar choice of languages. It turns out
they don’t actually print the cards or decide what languages they are
printed in.

    The landing card completed by non EEA nationals on arrival in the
UK is printed, distributed and funded by the carriers (airlines,
shipping companies and train operators) not the UK Border Agency.
Apart from English as the primary language the other languages used on
the cards are at the discretion of the carriers based on the passenger
profiles relative to their various international route networks. About
30 million cards are printed every year and made available by the
carriers to their passengers through a distribution structure focused
on their overseas embarkation locations and UK entry points. The UK
Border Agency is responsible under the Immigration Act 1971, for the
generic content, size and design of the card in consultation with the
carriers and other stakeholders.

According to UKBA, the most widely printed version is in English,
French and Spanish, one that I, in my many hours standing in that
line, have failed to spot. But the question remains: why do these
particular European languages continue to dominate?  If French is
understandable and Spanish acceptable, German is useless, and the mix
is certainly sub-optimal. I'm stuck with a conclusion of bureaucratic
inertia: that this is a holdover from the days when most arrivals came
from pre-EU continental Europe with a steamer-trunk covered in
stickers. Surely today, any of Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Hindi, Urdu
or Arabic would be a welcome addition. After all, this is a landing
card in a city that has a claim to being the capital of the world—and
which, meanwhile, still isn't sure what it thinks of Europe.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/10/language-and-paperwork

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