Sukhwinder Singh

Lots of people seem to have been touched by the story of 31-year-old Sukhwinder Singh, who was stabbed to death in East London after confronting two youths who had just mugged a young woman. The Daily Express described him as “the bravest and most selfless man”, The Mail on Sunday labelled him “a hero”, while others have used his story to illustrate general points about society.

A senior police officer cited him as an example of how police should not just “allow” but “encourage” people to intervene when they see a crime taking place; the Sikh clergy embraced him as an example of the selflessness that is a central tenet of the faith and announced that his portrait would be put up in a religious museum; and David Cameron used his story to illustrate a point about broken Britain.

But the other day the Evening Standard published an investigation into Singh’s life, which emphasised a single but very important detail. It turns out that the reason Singh had not visited his family in India for a decade — not when his son Gurinder was born in 2000, nor even when his three-year-old daughter Gurpreet died in 2002 — was that he was one of Britain’s estimated 750,000 illegal immigrants. If he had left these shores, he would have never been allowed to return.

I’d like to think that this would not have changed the generous and emotional response to his story. But I suspect it would have, given The Mail on Sunday and the Express position on immigration (sample headline: “Any amnesty for illegal migrants is simply surrender”), and given that illegal immigrants are among the groups that the Conservative Party blames for breaking Britain (“Only when we have a border police force will we be able to start making Britain safer,” says the party in an online statement).

This revelation, though, if anything, makes Singh’s story even more pertinent and poignant because it illustrates a very important policy point…

Read atTimes Online