MANAGED MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
2.1 Sub-national and regional dimensions of immigration policies Immigration is reserved to the UK Government, hence decisions regarding who enters and remains in the country is the sole remit of the state. For example, the Scotland Act (1998) does not allow for legislative powers that refer to immigration. However, Scotland has a distinct and separate legal system. So while the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) deals with asylum, managed migration and human rights cases on a UK-wide basis, further appeals are made to the High Court in England and Wales and the Court of Session in Scotland. A two-year study of how the Court of Session reviews decisions by the AIT by Craig, Fletcher and Goodall (2008) found that there are distinctive Scottish procedures concerning legal aid funding, which is regarded as being more favourable, and different mechanisms to submit applications to the Court of Session. Although to some extent a separate approach to procedural points was apparent in Scotland, this did not extend to a distinctive approach when applying the law. In this area, the research found that Court of Session judges were anxious to ensure that a UK-wide jurisprudence was maintained. This was demonstrated in the treatment of cases dealing with the right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Though sub-national governments do not have the right to develop their own immigration policies, Scotland’s Fresh Talent initiative enables graduates to remain in Scotland after the end of their studies. This has now been incorporated into the poststudy strand of tier 1 but includes a lower level of educational attainment for Scottish students. At present there is a national conversation being conducted in Scotland about pursuing further devolved powers, including in the area of immigration. For several years there has been concern in the Scottish Government about its future demographic profile, in particular its declining and ageing population and the possibility that the population would fall below five million by 2009. As a result of immigration and higher birth rates, the population is growing. In 2007, for example, 63,000 Scots residents left the country but there were almost 90,000 new arrivals. They included a net gain of 8,800 people from the rest of the UK, 16,800 from overseas and 1,200 members of the armed forces. This was also the fifth consecutive year that the number of births had risen but the only one in which births totalled more than deaths, as a report of the General Registers of Scotland has indicated. Around one third of the babies born in Scotland in 2007 were to mothers born in Eastern Europe, and the Scottish Government revealed that there are 3,347 school pupils whose first language is Polish (Horne, 2008). The divergence between UK and Scottish needs and attitudes in relation to managed migration is becoming clearer (Kyambi, 2008). Discussions have been held with other 21