IBELIEVE that in the coming years, maybe faster than that, people in Scotland are going to have to choose (some more willingly than others, and we need to be sensitive to that) between two unions: the UK Union with Westminster or the European Union with the rest of the continent. The “best of both” argument is, I suspect, long gone.

We’ve already proven in the EU referendum that Scotland has a sufficiently different attitude to Europe and our place in the wider world, but I think it is fair to say that we also have a different attitude to immigration than we see from the UK.

The heartbreak we have heard in the last months about the Windrush generation has been shocking as individual stories have come to light, but as readers of The National will know, they are the tip of the iceberg.

Fact is, the UK has been operating a spiteful, petty and cruel immigration policy for years, driven by a political agenda that owes nothing to economic need and everything to pandering to a few right-wing media outlets.

I just can’t see any circumstances under any party in which Scotland’s immigration system would be anything like the one of the UK we’re part of now, because our debate is different.

The grim spectacles we have seen last week have shown just how venal the UK debate is, with precisely the people who voted for the policy now crying crocodile tears at the effect of it. They’re not horrified by the policy, they’re horrified they’ve been called on it.

So Amber Rudd, who I have to say I feel some sympathy for, has gone and the new Home Secretary has promised to ensure that UK immigration policy is fair and treats people with “dignity and respect”.

If Sajid Javid truly means that I wish him all the best. Frankly he will need it since his first job will be to have an enormous row with his boss Theresa May. She made the hostile environment what it is and it is not possible to have a hostile environment and treat people with dignity or respect. As Diane Abbot put it “you can’t make a hostile environment for illegal immigrants without making it tough for people that look like immigrants”.

Migration is and always has been part of the human experience. Mercifully, many people leave for positive reasons, a new adventure, falling in love or simple curiosity.

Status within one new home is often the least of the problems – everything changes when you cross a border. You face rules and checks which at their best are a benign inconvenience that must be dealt with: forms, passports, log books, letters of introduction.

Indeed, it is the complete removal of these from the process of crossing borders that is the single greatest achievement of the EU.

But the UK has developed, deliberately, a system designed to be awkward, and at times humiliating. The UK Government has been very open about this, by making a system that does not treat people with dignity and respect they hope people will leave, it is that simple.

This is shown up if a UK citizen has the audacity to fall in love with a non-EEA citizen. They must spend thousands of pounds, submit hundreds of pages of proof that the relationship is real and earn more than a series of moving targets depending on how many children they have. The result is heart-breaking but obvious: the “family-first” Tory government splits up families with regularity, as men and women are thrown out of the country or leave because the process is too hostile.

This all stems from the fact that the modern Home Office is built upon a central target of Theresa May to reduce migration to “the tens of thousands”. The hostile environment is the policy designed to achieve this and so long as civil servants are given a vested interest in the removal of migrants, dignity and respect will be far down the priority list.

This system is what caught the Windrush generation. This was not an accident nor incompetence.

The only difference between the Windrush generation and the countless cases before is that they are the first group to have gained the sympathy of the right-wing press. No elected representative of any parliament in the UK can claim to have been ignorant.

Cases cross our desks on a regular basis and representatives of almost all the parties have at some point said something.

The bottom line is simple, if we want to treat people with dignity and respect the immediate changes are obvious: scrap the target, end indefinite detention, empower immigration officers to make kinder, common sense decisions and massively reduce the outrageous Home Office fees. That is just the beginning. Ending the hostile environment will take time but it should start now. My fear is that it won’t and that Sajid will either lose his argument with the Prime Minister or indeed never actually try. Theresa May started this and I suspect it cannot end until her time in No 10 is at an end. But perhaps that will be sooner than we think. I do not believe it is for nothing that Rudd, a firm Remainer and ally of the Prime Minister in the Cabinet, was removed by a series of leaks and press pressure just as Brexit is coming into focus.

Like many things in the UK right now, immigration policy and Brexit are sideshows to the parlour games of a Tory party dancing to someone else’s tune. Either way, Scotland can do better than this shower.