Read more about this story here Migrant Voice campaign

The ITV drama Mr Bates versus The Postoffice has had a profound impact in this country. But there is another scandal - which is remarkably similar - that deserves a wider audience; one I have had some involvement with through working with the Migrant Voice campaign MyfutureBack to make the film Inquisition Watch the film Inquisition  .  Guardian investigative journalist Amelia Gentleman (who exposed yet another scandal about Windrush) wrote a series of articles about The English Language Students; you can read more here - Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian

Back in 2014 college students Waqar, Nomi, Nidhin, Amin and Shabbir were just a handful of the thousands upon thousands of young people who had travelled to the UK from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; bright, hard-working, ambitious and, largely from middle-class families - their Fathers had invested in their futures believing that the former colonial power was the best country to be educated in with the finest, fairest judicial system in the world. Their sons and daughters carried the responsibility for the future prosperity of their families back home. The students loved English and American popular culture - Waqar had read Charles Dickens since he was a boy, Nomi liked English pop-music and knew all the lyrics, Amin was inspired by Stallone as fighter Rocky Balboa. Their command of English - the language of business leaders in Pakistan - was already advanced, learnt in their schools and from exposure to popular culture in the West.

Back in 2014 Nazek Ramadan - a former refugee from the Lebanese civil-war and journalist - was four years into tenaciously establishing a small UK charity called Migrant Voice. She had worked - often against the tide of popular opinion - to counter in the media the prevailing ‘Hostile Environment’ that had been championed by Home Secretary Theresa May. Nazek’s life work had been to fight the injustice and prejudice she experienced towards anyone deemed an asylum seeker.

And back in 2014, as the students attended their classes in business studies, one of the BBC’s investigations teams were putting the finishing touches to that week’s Panorama. After that programme was broadcast Amin, Waqar, Nidhin and the other thousands of unsuspecting students had no idea how their lives and their families lives back home would be turned upside down. None of them would ever be the same again. Some would die and others attempt to commit suicide as a result. The honour of their families would be ruined, Father’s would condemn their own sons, thousands of pounds would be lost, and many young people’s lives would be traumatised - losing their opportunity to be educated over here and losing their own liberty.

Nidhin had no idea she would be imprisoned for weeks on end after been chased across Shepherds Bush Green by police officers who pulled up in a white van.

That - in series of dawn raids - fifteen private security guards accompanied by police officers would knock on Nomi and Amin’s doors at five in the morning and arrest them, escort them out in handcuffs and then confine them to a cell and henceforth to a detention centre.

Because the story 2014s Panorama told was how a major act of fraud had been committed by 56,000 foreign students who had cheated the compulsory English Language Test - a prerequisite to obtaining a visa and studying in the UK - outsourced by the Home Office to the American tech giant TES (English Testing Services). But the truth is that virtually everyone accused was innocent and what eventually followed was a David vs Goliath fight for justice...