A transgender Indian immigrant who is not a British citizen, has been elected as a Green Party MSP
Q Manivannan, a non-binary PhD student, will earn £77,711 a year after being been catapulted into the Edinburgh seat – despite not having a permanent visa to live in the UK.
The self-described “queer Tamil immigrant” was allowed to stand after the Scottish Government relaxed legislation to allow non-UK citizens to represent Britons.
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The candidate won the Edinburgh & Lothians East Holyrood seat on Friday.
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The Telegraph reports: It was reported earlier this week that the former PhD student has appealed to colleagues for £2,089 of funding for a temporary graduate visa.
This would give the anthropologist and poet a further three years to work and live in the UK, picking up the taxpayer-funded MSP salary of £77,711.
Manivannan is said to have told colleagues this would help buy time to save up the £5,047 cost of applying for a global talent visa, the UK immigration category for promising individuals in specific sectors.
The self-described “queer Tamil immigrant” was only able to stand in the election after SNP ministers loosened the rules over who could be a Holyrood candidate.
Foreigners could previously only become an MSP if they had indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
Last year, the SNP government introduced legislation that meant they could qualify if they had leave of any type, such as a short-term study visa.
Manivannan was born in the Tamil Nadu region of southern India and has declared a strong connection with the region’s “significant history of resistance, of social justice, of ecological justice, being inextricable from social justice”.
After an undergraduate degree in Delhi, Manivannan moved to Scotland in 2021 to pursue a PhD in international relations at the University of St Andrews.
‘I am everything that the hateful despise’
The student was elected an MSP on Friday under Holyrood’s complicated electoral system, which assigns 56 seats to parties based on a form of proportional representation.
The Greens made Manivannan their third-ranked candidate in the Lothians region and secured three seats there. Overall, a record 16 Green MSPs were elected, including two trans people.
The student told cheering supporters at the Edinburgh count: “My name is Dr Q Manivannan, I am a transgender Tamil immigrant, my pronouns are they/them.
“I am to some in this country everything that the hateful despise, and I am standing here as your MSP now with care.
“They say politics is the art of the possible. A politics of care expands what is possible for everyone left behind, pushed out or never invited in.”
The Migration Watch group tweeted: “Britain is almost unique in allowing Commonwealth nationals not just the right to vote in our elections, but also to stand as candidates.
“Indian migrant Dr Q Manivannan, who arrived in Britain on a student visa, is now a politician in Scotland pushing for the break-up of Britain.”
The Daily Mail reported earlier this week that Manivannan had sent a message to an internal group chat to party members titled “begging for cash” for a visa.
It said the student had raised £1,575, with other Green candidates donating, including Mridul Wadhwa, the former chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, who lives as a trans woman.
