The Home Office may have falsely accused as many as 7,000 foreign students of faking their proficiency in English and ordered them to leave the country, with some of them saying they were detained and made homeless as a result.

英国内政部(Home Office)可能错误地指控多达7000名外国学生伪造他们的英语水平，据此勒令其离开英国，其中一些学生表示，此举导致他们遭到拘留和无家可归。

A large majority of the students who were accused of cheating have not been allowed to appeal against the Home Office decision, obtain the evidence against them, or meet officials face-to-face so the quality of their English can be assessed.

绝大多数被指作弊的学生不被允许对内政部的决定提出上诉、获得证明他们作弊的证据、或由官员对他们的英语水平进行面试评估。

The harsh treatment of the foreign students, who were in the UK legally, showed the extent to which the “hostile environment” policy, introduced by Theresa May, the prime minister, during her time as home secretary had taken root at the department, according to Patrick Lewis, an immigration barrister.

移民案子大律师帕特里克•刘易斯(Patrick Lewis)表示，在英国合法居留的外国学生受到的严苛对待，突显英国首相特里萨•梅(Theresa May)在担任内政大臣期间推行的“敌意环境”政策在内政部生根发芽的程度。

The approach — which has also been blamed for the harassment suffered by some members of the Windrush generation of pre-1973 Commonwealth migrants to the UK — seeks to make life so tough for illegal immigrants that they leave the country of their own accord.

这项政策——也被归咎于导致1973年以前由英联邦国家迁往英国的所谓“疾风移民”(Windrush generation)中的一些人受到骚扰——的本意就是想方设法让非法移民的日子难过，促使他们自愿离英。

In a judgment on the case of one Bangladeshi student, published last year, an immigration tribunal judge said that the Home Office’s behaviour was “so unfair and unreasonable as to amount to an abuse of power”.

在去年公布的围绕一名孟加拉国学生的案件的判决书中，移民审裁庭的一名法官表示，内政部的行为“如此不公平、不合理，简直相当于滥用职权”。

“The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices that I have encountered in over 20 years of practice,” said Mr Lewis from Garden Court Chambers, who has represented several of the affected claimants and overturned the Home Office’s ruling in each case.

“这些指控所依据的证据质量非常可疑，而且没有任何有效的司法监督，由此带来了我执业20多年来遇到的一些最严重的不公正，”在Garden Court Chambers执业的刘易斯表示，他曾代表数名受影响的上诉人，在每起案件中都推翻了内政部的裁决。

The plight of the foreign students began after the BBC’s Panorama programme aired an investigation in February 2014 alleging systematic cheating at some colleges in the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), one of a number of tests that students can take to meet visa requirements on English proficiency.

外国留学生的困境始于英国广播公司(BBC)《全景》(Panorama）节目在2014年2月播出的一项调查，揭露一些高校在国际交流英语考试（Test of English for International Communication，简称TOEIC）中存在系统性作弊，该测试是海外学生为满足签证英语水平要求而可以选择参加的多种考试之一。

Mrs May responded by asking Educational Testing Services, the US-based company that ran the system, to analyse voice files to work out if students were using proxies to sit the tests for them.

梅的回应是，要求主办这项考试的美国教育考试服务中心（Educational Testing Service，简称ETS）对语音文档进行分析，以确定考生是否使用枪手替考。

After analysing the files, ETS said it was confident 33,725 test takers had used someone else to sit the test for them. It added that it had “limited confidence” that there had been fraud in another 22,694 cases.

ETS在分析了这些文档后表示，他们确信有33725名考生请人替考。ETS还表示，对另外22694起个案是否存在作弊行为“存疑”。

By the end of 2016, when it stopped reporting the figures, the Home Office said it had revoked the visas of 35,870 people as a result. Most were told they had no right to appeal and should leave the country.

根据英国内政部公布的数据，截至2016年底该部停止报告数据，其已据此撤销了35870人的签证。这些人中的大多数被告知，他们无权上诉，应该离开英国。

But an immigration appeal tribunal in 2016 heard that when ETS’s voice analysis was checked with a human follow-up, the computer had been correct in only 80 per cent of cases, meaning that some 7,000 students had their visas revoked in error.

但在2016年的移民上诉庭审理中浮出水面的证据显示，在对ETS的语音分析进行人工跟进比对后发现，计算机仅在80%的个案中是正确的，这意味着约有7000名留学生的签证被错误撤销。