The ‘Views of Hosts’ were a list of regulations made by a statute of 1439 which required that money made by non-English merchants from sales of imports must be entirely spent on English goods for export, thereby preventing the country’s wealth draining away in specie (coin) and bullion.
The Statute compelled these merchants, known as ‘aliens’, to make full disclosure of their daily business activities to their English hosts, who returned the information to the Exchequer.
Immigration in the medieval period was based on an early version of the ‘Trust Instrument’. That is, the state acted as ‘Settlor’ (organiser of the Trust) and the ‘Beneficiaries’ were the public. The Trustee was the person themself, responsible for good behaviour and contribution to the public good. If not, the Trust was revoked.
Therefore, immigrants were required to register.
Of course there were some irregularities. The 1483 London records include a Roman man named Nichodeus Trumpet, leading the clerk to enter his occupation as ‘musician’. Many years later, a wandering itinerant named Jason Arday recorded his occupation as ‘Professor’. An alien could seek letters of denization from the Crown. Denization permitted greater participation in economic and legal life. The immigrant had an incentive to obey the law and contribute economically. English governments invited Flemish weavers and tolerated foreign merchants because they strengthened commerce. Immigrants could become burgesses, sit on juries, and hold local civic office. One Gascon resident, Edmund Arnold, served as an MP several times between 1395 and 1415 – not as a representative of immigrants, but of his English locality.
Immigrant imports covered a wide variety of prestigious goods – spices, nuts and sugar, sweet wines, fabrics, jewels, and furs. Raw materials for industrial use and military hardware. Purchases for export feature many different types of English cloth, wool, tin, pewterware, and other small manufactures. There was an abundance in trade. Some merchants engaged at subsistence level, while others acted as representatives of multinational companies with huge turnovers and considerable capital at their disposal. Yet one dominant theme jumps out at you like a Cambridge PhD thesis: contribution.
Socio-economic exclusion and control was neither based on race or ethnicity, but upon political allegiance to the English Crown. A Monarch had a paternal role as safeguarding the nation. They had a vested interest in maintaining the health of the nation. In contrast modern notions of government exclude responsibility through a negligent civil service devoid of accountability to the commons. Contribution is not something which worries the Lanyard class of Labour politicians and their foot soldiers – the Civil Service. So immune to the real world of tax and fiduciary duty, that expenditure on Illegal Immigration is fine – because it doesn’t hit their pockets. The Ivory Tower now has a silver lining as well.
Therefore, the first part of good governance, which applies in states such as Switzerland, is that immigration is not a one-way ticket to benefits and housing. It must be balanced by contribution. The second part of policy is the security of the nation state. Most people in Britain think that International Law means we must allow people, without passports, to enter the country. International Law does not establish a general right for anyone to choose and enter another country. States retain broad authority to control their borders. International Law instead places limits on how that authority may be exercised. The Universal Declaration and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognise a right to leave any country and a right to enter one’s own country. They do not create a general right to enter somebody else’s country. Article 13 ICCPR provides procedural protection against the arbitrary expulsion of an alien lawfully present.
One of the main issues is the interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention. A refugee is someone outside their country of nationality who has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and who cannot or will not obtain that country’s protection. Poverty, unemployment, and a general desire for a better life do not, by themselves, establish refugee status. War and violence can support a claim, but the Convention still requires the claimant to fit the legal definition. Most of the ‘refugees’ arriving into the UK are economic migrants, but in that peculiar Labour tradition, benefits migrants. Yet they still remain.
Article 33 contains the principle of non-refoulement. A refugee must not be returned to a territory where their life or freedom would be threatened for a Convention reason. There are narrow exceptions concerning danger to national security or a particularly serious crime (neither of which are even considered by the UK authorities). Hence the bizarre spectacle of Albanians and Romanians arriving on boats ‘sans passports’ when they could simply fly. I wonder why? Article 31 recognises that genuine refugees may have to enter without passports or visas. Another hole in the International Law dinghy.
If the porous holes in International Law were not enough, the ECHR adds another layer of Human Rights. Article 3 ECHR prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The prohibition is absolute. A state cannot remove someone to face a real risk of such treatment merely because that person entered illegally, committed a crime, or poses political difficulty. This goes against established UK law and the idea of ‘Ex turpi causa’ (an action cannot arise from a dishonourable cause or crime). Article 8, concerning private and family life, may affect removal where a person has established family ties. Hence the plethora of cases where familial connections are used to avoid deportation even when crimes have been committed. Therefore, the ECHR apparatus acts as another preventative barrier against national sovereignty and legitimate control of borders.
However, the United Kingdom has a dualist constitutional system. Ratifying a treaty creates only an international obligation for the UK, but treaty provisions do not automatically become domestic law merely because the government ratified them. Parliament normally has to incorporate or implement the obligation through legislation. This creates an important distinction between international responsibility and domestic enforceability. The Refugee Convention has not been incorporated as a single freestanding constitutional code. Its obligations are implemented through the Immigration Acts, asylum legislation, the Immigration Rules, and judicial interpretation. What is often used as a defence to call for strict immigration law is legally inaccurate. The main opposition is political rather than legal; however, the constant mantra of ‘we are confined by The Refugee Convention and the ECHR…’ It is a miasma of deceit.
The Illegal Migration Act 2023 was intended to go further. Its central idea was that people arriving through specified irregular routes would generally be subject to a duty to remove and would not have their asylum claims determined in the conventional way. But that architecture was never fully operationalised and much of it was dismantled. Hence the 2025 legislation selectively repealed core parts of the 2023 regime rather than implementing the original duty-to-remove model.
The Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Act 2025 is aimed more at enforcement, organised immigration crime, dangerous journeys, data sharing, and the Border Security Command. The Home Office itself describes it as creating new offences and enhanced powers designed to deter irregular migration and strengthen border security. However, these are drops in the immigration ocean as they do not deal with the fundamental barriers to national sovereignty. The most important constraint remains Article 3. If removal would expose a person to a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, the UK cannot lawfully remove them due to the Convention. That protection is absolute. Parliament can tighten procedure, change evidential rules and create new offences, but it cannot make the Article 3 question disappear while the UK remains bound by the Convention and the Human Rights Act framework.
Britain is not legally trapped inside the ECHR. The Convention itself contains an exit mechanism. The constraint is political rather than juridical: Parliament and government have chosen to remain within a system whose rules condition the exercise of immigration powers. Article 58 of the Convention expressly allows a state to denounce it. The UK would give notice to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and withdrawal would take effect six months later. Leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act would be the next step.
Britain is not constrained by International Law. There needs to be a reciprocal basis to immigration. Rights are balanced by responsibilities within the idea of a civic trust. That civic trust incorporates peoples historic claims to territory, their grandfather’s contributions (in times of war), taxes paid through generations, working the land and the factory. You do not inherit the rights to the land without contributing. This applies to all citizens, whatever the ethnicity. It is the basis of the Social Contract.
Brian Patrick Bolger. He has taught International Law and Political Philosophy at Universities in Europe. His legal articles have appeared in leading magazines such as the New Law Journal, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review etc . He is an advisor to CEE Law firms.
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