Red Pepper » Asylum watch

Family attack: The truth about the right to family life

admin — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:33:32 +0000

Theresa May has set herself an ambitious deadline. By the end of the summer, she has pledged to end the ‘abuse of the right to a family life’ by ‘people who should not be here’. She has been egged on by the Daily Telegraph campaign to ‘End the Human Rights Farce’. Along with the Daily Mail and the Sun, the paper has been publishing a flood of stories about foreign rapists and murderers supposedly roaming free, living in penthouses in Chelsea, while their lawyers invent ever more bizarre definitions of ‘family life’, which are then upheld by bleeding-heart liberal judges. These stories are being used by the government as evidence for a full frontal attack on human rights law.
When May first mooted her plans at the Tory party conference, she cited as a salutary example the story of a man who was allowed to remain in the country because he owned a cat. Justice secretary Ken Clarke said at the time that he was willing to place a bet that it was not true. Lawyers corroborated that he would win the bet, but no red-faced retreat was forthcoming from May.
Instead she has announced that by July she will have changed the immigration rules (the UK Border Agency’s policies, which are not binding in law) to state that foreign ex-offenders will only be able to avoid deportation because of the right to family life in ‘rare and exceptional circumstances’. May says she will then order judges to follow these guidelines, rather than the national, European or international law. So not only is she willing to bypass human rights law but also the independence of the judiciary, considered by most to be a cornerstone of the constitution.
Yet so long as the right to family life exists in law, judges can’t disregard it. If they do, it will be immediately challenged in the British High Court and the European Court of Human Rights. May’s response is to say that if that happens she will change the law, although throwing the Human Rights Act into the shredder will not quite be as easy as she suggests. The international ramifications of the UK essentially abolishing a fundamental human right aside, the Liberal Democrats remain committed to the Act, and civil liberties organisations, although often quiet on the rights of foreign offenders, will be forced into action.
If May does succeed, the effects will be greater than a few orphaned cats. Bhavan’s is a typical story. He came to the UK with his family as a refugee at five years old. He considers his home to be Harrow, in north London, where his entire family lives and where he grew up. He did well in his GCSEs but in the summer holidays went off the rails, started hanging out with ‘the wrong crowd’ and got into drugs and crime to pay for them. Despite constant nagging by his mum, he never got round to filling in the papers to become a British citizen. He did stints in a young offenders institute and prison for shoplifting and robbery.
At the end of the last sentence, his friends were released, but he was taken to an immigration detention centre and he realised that he wasn’t quite as British as they were. He received a letter from the home secretary stating that because he is a risk to the public, he will be deported to Sri Lanka. Without a judge who was independent of the Home Office and able to consider Bhavan’s right to family life, he would have been forcibly deported a few months ago to a country he left 27 years ago.
The judicial decision in his favour depended on something else too: legal aid. Theresa May is likely to miss her summer deadline, with the right to family life remaining intact for now and judges will probably snub her orders. But from April next year, access to legal aid funding will be removed for people who are fighting deportation on the basis of a right to family life. The vast majority of people do not have the resources to pay the legal fees to fight their cases. Making it too expensive to afford human rights is a very effective way of removing them.
The people I work with are not trying to scam the system. But they are fighting tooth and nail to stay in a country where they have families. They want to watch their kids grow up, and grow old with their husbands or wives. And they want to be at their grandmother’s funeral. The only people who are abusing the right to family life are those who are working to scrap it.
Kate Blagojevic is a caseworker and campaigner with Detention Action

Mind your language

admin — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 21:43:39 +0000

The ability of migrants to speak English has long been a preoccupation of politicians, from Jewish workers arriving in London’s east end in the late 19th century to the diverse groups of people migrating to the UK today. In the past decade the blame for lack of ‘community cohesion’ (an often used but poorly defined phrase) has been placed firmly on non-English speakers. David Cameron is keen to ensure that’s where it stays, using a recent speech to argue that immigrants who don’t speak English cause ‘discomfort and disjointedness’ in their own neighbourhoods.
Commentators have pointed out the glaring contradictions in Cameron’s words and actions, for at the same time as stigmatising non-English speakers the government is attacking English language provision harder than ever. ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) is the publicly funded English language provision for migrants in the UK. It has seen a funding cut of 32 per cent over the past two years, and if the government’s proposed further cuts go ahead then 100,000 students will be hit with fees of up to £1,000 for ESOL classes – charges that most simply cannot afford.
Between 2001 and 2007, ESOL classes were available free of charge to many of the migrants who needed them. The changes to the funding arrangements mean only those receiving ‘active benefits’ (jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance) will be eligible.
People on other benefits, such as working tax credit, housing benefit and income support, will have to pay fees. In addition, ESOL will no longer be funded in the workplace, penalising low paid people who won’t be receiving ‘active’ benefits.
The consequences of the changes are stark. Cuts to ESOL will be devastating for everyone, but those on low wages, women and asylum seekers will be particularly badly hit. Surveys consistently show that in some areas up to 75 per cent of students currently in a free ESOL class will have to pay fees. These students, predominantly female, will not be able to afford the fees and will be excluded from provision. For many women, taking away their free ESOL class will entail removing a source of autonomy and a key link to the wider community.
Tying eligibility for free ESOL to benefits for jobseekers will profoundly affect refugees who are seeking asylum. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, nor can they claim any benefits that would allow them access to a free class. Some ESOL providers are exploring inventive ways of ensuring asylum seekers can gain access to classes, for example by enrolling them on alternative ‘non-ESOL’ courses, such as those leading to functional skills or adult literacy qualifications. But it remains the case that removing entitlement to publicly-funded ESOL classes further marginalises those who are already on the extremes of exclusion.
The ESOL sector will suffer job losses as a consequence of the cuts. Redundancies have already been announced in many colleges. Responsibility for ESOL is likely to be shouldered more heavily by the private and voluntary sectors, where provision is fragmented, quality is patchy, and funding is ad hoc and difficult to sustain.
Despite the apparent contradictions in Cameron’s words and actions, the government’s cuts to ESOL align all too well with its anti-immigration ideology and are closely linked to its programme of ‘welfare reform’. In the same immigration speech where Cameron blamed poor English skills for disjointed neighbourhoods, he also claimed migrants are ‘filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work.’
In this way, Cameron links his government’s immigration and welfare policies by placing the blame for ‘too much immigration’ at the feet of another group of the ‘undeserving’: benefit ‘scroungers’.
Immigration restrictions aim to prevent people from the poorest countries with low skills (and those most likely to do the jobs that British workers ‘refuse’ to do) from coming to the UK; welfare reform is about the forced inclusion of locals into the job market. Restricting access to free ESOL can be seen as part of this move.
In other words, cutting ESOL is regarded as a means of dealing with a perceived migration pull‑factor. And requiring people to pay for their ESOL classes shifts responsibility for provision of public services from the state to the individual, a hallmark of neoliberal economic policy.
So, far from being contradictory, coalition cuts to ESOL show a disconcerting level of ‘joined-up thinking’. Bearing the brunt, as usual, are people whose voices are rarely heard – in English or any other language. n
To find out more about the campaign against ESOL cuts, go to www.actionforesol.org

State-sponsored cruelty

admin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:15:20 +0000

Abolition of child immigration detention appeared close last year when a decade of campaigning by charities, medical practitioners, human rights lawyers and detainees led to Nick Clegg pledging in the coalition agreement to end what he called ‘state-sponsored cruelty’. Yet despite this promise, one year on the practice is continuing in a rebranded guise with a new, euphemistically-named ‘pre-departure accommodation’ centre.
To the shock of many, one of the UK’s major children’s charities, Barnardo’s, has been hired to run welfare and support services at the site. While Barnardo’s says it still supports an end to child detention, it has endorsed the facility, with chief executive Anne Marie Carrie claiming government reforms add up to ‘a system which has ambitions to be fundamentally different – which seeks to safeguard children and treat families and children with compassion’.
Despite government claims that the centre will be run on a ‘care model rather than a secure one’, families are to be detained there pending their imminent deportation. The site itself will be surrounded by a 2.5-metre perimeter fence with an extra internal barrier creating a ‘buffer’ between occupants and the outside world. It is to be ‘supervised at all times’, with ‘routine observation of all parts of the grounds’ and will be monitored by HM Inspectorate of Prisons. Families held there may be permitted short day trips during their stay, but only subject to strict supervision and individual risk assessments. Security will be provided by the multinational company G4S.
The facility is intended to hold nine families at a time for up to a week, although the UK Borders Agency says ‘stays will normally be limited to 72 hours’. Up to 4,445 children per year could be deported through the centre, according to calculations by Professor Heaven Crawley, director of the Centre for Migration Policy Research and former chief Home Office researcher, who wryly dubbed the site ‘not quite the end of detention anyone had in mind’.
Nevertheless Barnardo’s, which previously campaigned against child detention, argues its presence is necessary to aid the ‘most vulnerable’ families who ‘desperately need our support’. The charity states it will ‘not be afraid to speak out’ if detention becomes routine, a ‘revolving door’ for children, or if its workers ‘witness any member of staff not keeping a child’s welfare front of mind’.
Yet as former children’s commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green pointed out in his 2010 review of conditions at Yarl’s Wood, detention remains inherently ‘harmful to children and never likely to be in their best interests’. In March he further questioned how far Barnardo’s, reliant on service fees and grants for 75 per cent of its income, would be able to maintain its independence, asking ‘how will they do this when receiving government funding for their services?’
Many warn that the charity’s very presence will aid the government’s political agenda in falsely claiming it has ended child detention. Emma Gill, spokesperson for the campaign group Medical Justice, says: ‘The danger with Barnardo’s is they may give the impression to the public that it’s stopped, because they’ve spoken out against it in the past.’
Indeed, many elements of previous child detention policy remain. Raids to arrest families unwilling to move to the centre are still permitted as early as 6.30am according to UKBA operational guidance notes, despite the well-documented traumatic effects of dawn raids. For example, the recent Medical Justice report State Sponsored Cruelty found four out of five children involved with the study who had suffered dawn raids were ‘terrified’ by the experience, with reactions including ‘sobbing, weeping and hiding’.
Child detention doesn’t stop there either, with a slip by Green last March revealing that ‘high risk’ families will still in ‘rare’ cases be held at Tinsley House detention centre, whose family wing is undergoing a £1 million refurbishment. Not to mention the recent condemnation of Heathrow airport’s 24-hour holding centres, exempt from the requirement to end child detention, as ‘degrading’ and ‘unacceptable on grounds of humanity’ by government watchdogs.
With asylum seekers under increasing pressure as a result of changes to legal aid, a government committed to speeding up deportations and the countries of Europe increasingly determined to close their doors to refugees, hopes of a new ‘compassionate’ migration system may have to wait.

Seeking sanctuary

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:45:50 +0000

There are three narratives that dominate the discussion of refugees in the UK. On the right there are the self-contradicting narratives of the ‘scrounging layabout’ and the ‘job stealer’, while the left often succumbs to the liberal view of the ‘victim’ in need of charity.
One project helping to challenge these stereotypes is City of Sanctuary. It is facilitating conversations between people who may hold those right-wing views and the migrants themselves while at the same time ensuring that refugees become active participants in creating a better life for themselves and their peers.
The project started in Sheffield six years ago. Since then it has grown into a network of 15 towns and cities, with the core aim of ‘welcoming asylum seekers and refugees’. But it is now also doing much more.
Structure and dynamics
Each city project shares three main characteristics: to highlight the contribution of asylum seekers to host communities; to form relationships with people in the host community; and to develop a culture of hospitality and welcoming. But key to the movement’s success is the fact that each area has its own ‘structure and dynamics’.
As Penny Walker, co-ordinator of Coventry City of Sanctuary, explains: ‘Each city is set up differently: some as charities, some as loose networks. In Coventry we are a network of organisations… We look at what needs doing and where and each organisation applies for different bits of funding.’
‘It is truly a people-led movement,’ she adds. Local people play a key role – it is their existing projects, clubs and societies that offer a welcoming arm to those who need it.
Sarah Eldridge, Sheffield co-ordinator, says: ‘It taps into feelings that are already there. Sheffield has a long history of welcoming refugees. For instance, in the 1970s many people came from Pinochet’s Chile.’ It’s the simple things like inviting people to local chess clubs or cultural events that make the difference, she explains.
Over 100 groups are now part of the network. They have worked alongside the Children’s Society, who go with refugees into local schools to share their experiences with pupils. They have also worked with Ice and Fire drama group and the Co-op to put on events with asylum seekers so that local people can learn about the experience of refugees.
Refugees lead
It’s the refugees themselves who are taking the lead – and beginning to mould City of Sanctuary into a movement that mixes a DIY ethos with a broad base.
A good example is in Coventry, where a group of migrants and refugees, with the help of City of Sanctuary, set up and now run a hate crime helpline. As well as answering calls from people who have suffered racist abuse, they also help people who have suffered due to disability or other hate crimes, reaching out far beyond their comfort zone. Those involved also visit vulnerable groups and individuals, such as those taking English classes, letting people know they don’t have to suffer alone or in silence.
This trend is typified by Forward, a Zimbabwean refugee. He arrived in the UK in 2002 and is now heading up Bristol’s project. As an English-speaking journalist, he found it relatively easy to make the move the UK, but understands that for others the move is not so simple. He recently helped to organise a human rights day where people talked about ‘their experiences in Bristol and their journeys’. This he felt was important both for local people who could gain a better understanding, and also for the refugees who were able to tell their own stories.
Challenges
The process has not been without its challenges, but these are beginning to take new forms. In past the model sometimes hasn’t translated for cultural or political reasons, while in other cases it has been difficult to instil what has been described as an ‘intangible’ idea.
Now things are different. ‘All the good work done over many years is now under threat due to government cuts and at a really bad time,’ says Penny Walker. ‘It comes on the back of what seems like an increase in the amount of hatred, and the recession has had an impact on this, especially to do with jobs. Good projects are under threat as well as council services.’
Sarah Eldridge agrees. ‘The economic climate is a challenge. People feel insecure and unsettled, losing jobs and money.’ She believes that under such circumstances people find it ‘harder to extend the hand of welcome to people different from themselves’.
But this has only stiffened their resolve. As Penny Walker puts it, ‘the recession means we have to carry on and do even more.’ She believes that City of Sanctuary is and must be one part of something much wider.
‘We need to give individuals practical help, but we also need to be campaigning,’ she says. ‘It’s about more than just the person in front of you. It’s about the global situation, the arms trade, the draconian asylum system and the UK’s role in the world. We need to change people’s hearts and minds – but also the systems that make people destitute.’

Refusing to be silenced

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:21:37 +0000

In 2008, the last year for which figures are available, more than 10,000 women and girls applied for asylum in the UK – nearly a third of the total. The majority were ‘principal applicants’, with a smaller number named as dependents of family members. Despite these significant numbers, women continue to be let down by a framework that, like the 1951 Refugee Convention itself, was designed by men with male (mostly political) refugees in mind.

United Nations Guidelines on International Protection exist to ensure recognition of the gender dimension of persecution and the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) has its own set of gender guidelines, but in practice they are not adhered to with any consistency.

Most claims for asylum by women in the UK are based on membership of a ‘particular social group’ or ‘political opinion’, as defined in the Refugee Convention. Women’s political involvement tends, on the whole, to be at a less strategic level than men’s. Though it doesn’t follow that they are therefore at less risk, this is often presumed.

Women are also more likely to have fled domestic violence, rape, forced marriage, threats of honour killing or female genital mutilation – crimes perpetrated by family members or communities – in contexts where the state is unable or unwilling to offer protection. Their cases succeed or fail on the basis of evidence that the threat is real. This often means a requirement of physical ‘proof’ of injury and evidence that in their country of nationality they would not be able to find a place of safety. Women continue to be denied asylum on the grounds that they should simply relocate to another part of their country, which fails to recognise that, in many places, women without family ties are ostracised from society. They become extremely vulnerable and isolated, even if they are able to find work to avoid destitution.

Failings in the system

The lack of female interpreters and interviewers at UKBA presents further problems and, despite the agency’s own guidelines, women may be required to recall unspeakable events in the presence of their children. As a result, because of the type of persecution they escaping – sexual violence, according to estimates, is implicated in 50 to 80 per cent of cases – they are more likely to avoid or delay disclosing certain details at the point of a claim. This can seriously damage a legal case.

According to Debora Singer of Asylum Aid, ‘It’s difficult for women in this country to talk about rape or domestic violence, let alone those from a very conservative society. If they later pluck up the courage to disclose that they were raped, it often goes against their credibility, and is seen as being made up to support their case … A major problem is women not being believed. For a rape victim, that is very, very traumatic.’

Research has shown that high levels of stress make it difficult to remember traumatic events clearly, and yet any discrepancies within a story will be taken to suggest it is a falsified account.

Things are hardest for those assigned to the ‘detained fast track’ system, which Human Rights Watch and the Refugee Council have denounced as completely inadequate for women’s cases. Not only are legal advice and medical treatment routinely denied but the sensitivity needed to help people establish their cases is often also missing. Women’s testimonies have indicated violent and humiliating treatment by staff.

But there is more at play here than practicalities and poor management. In a world where rich and poor are increasingly polarised and arbitrary power works with arbitrary borders to protect an economic system based on exploitation and division, the global movement of people is not something that will be ‘solved’ through legislation.

The recent ‘end to child detention’ policy is an example of an attempt at reforming a particularly controversial element of the asylum process. Celebrated by some as a positive step towards acknowledging the basic rights of children, it is doubtful that it will go far towards ending the suffering of families. On the contrary, Natasha Walter, founder of Women for Refugee Women, believes that the policy is likely to lead to more forced removals.

Speaking out

Women seeking asylum in the UK are fighting back against the system. In solidarity with comrades from feminist movements, No Borders networks and community groups, and alongside friends and family, they are joining forces to speak out about the injustices encountered both in the UK and abroad. In the words of one Manchester-based group, ‘As women asylum seekers, we have always been made to feel worthless, forgotten and isolated. Together as Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST) we have had the courage and strength to speak out. We refuse to be silenced.’

Women are also coming together to find new ways of challenging asylum policy and of surviving together in an environment that is often hostile and unpredictable. Lydia Besong, a member of WAST, with her own anti-deportation campaign, wrote the play How I Became an Asylum Seeker in 2009. She recalls: ‘When I joined WAST the women there supported me to write this play. We wanted to raise awareness and to offer something back. We wanted to challenge the mentality that asylum seekers are here to take, take, take. We are not empty vessels, we are intelligent women and we have a lot to offer.’

Similarly, Women for Refugee Women produced their play Motherland in 2008, telling the stories of women and children detained in Yarl’s Wood, the main detention centre for women and site of hunger strike action in February this year, highlighting the mistreatment suffered by the women held there.

A few weeks earlier, Motherland was performed in Bedford, close to the detention centre, as part of the organisation’s campaign to end child detention. Natasha Walter says: ‘We wanted to bring the play to a local audience. There were MPs present and local activists, as well as the management from Yarl’s Wood and Serco [the private company in charge of the centre], although they refused to engage in discussions. The overwhelming response from the local people was: Not in our name.’

Fighting back

Reflecting the complexity of the issues facing women asylum seekers, the London-based Crossroads Women’s Centre is home to a diverse mix of campaigns and support groups. The All-African Women’s Group offers practical and emotional support for African women, while Legal Action for Women provides legal support for women with low incomes. Members of the Black Women’s Rape Action Project, formed primarily by survivors of rape and child sexual abuse, speak out against the government’s inadequate policy on rape as valid grounds for an asylum claim. They also offer support to survivors of rape in immigration detention centres.

Speaking at a feminist conference in Manchester earlier this year, a young woman, Helen, from Uganda, talked passionately about her experiences at Yarl’s Wood and the invaluable support that women provide for one another: ‘When I was sent to Yarl’s Wood I had no legal representation and very limited time to make a fresh application. I wanted to submit my case for judicial review but I had no solicitor and no money to get one. A woman I met there told me what her solicitor had done for her, which gave me what I needed to put forward my own case. As women seeking asylum we support each other in so many ways. We give each other hope.’

In Scotland, members of the Refugee Women’s Strategy Group have a direct role in policy making, ensuring that the Scottish Refugee Policy Forum has a gender perspective and that women are properly represented. And as well as asylum seekers themselves, there are national campaigns lobbying for the urgent changes that are needed. A Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum, drawn up by Asylum Aid, has the backing of more than 200 organisations and has led to the appointment of a gender champion in UKBA’s senior management team. The

charter’s Every Single Woman campaign calls for detained asylum seekers to receive at least the same rights as female prisoners and points out that, while the criminal justice system has 26 laws or policies on working with women victims of crime, UKBA has just two on working with women asylum seekers.

From grass-roots political work and mutual aid through to national lobbying networks, women are coming together to challenge the entirety of the immigration system and the specific ways in which women are disenfranchised. This is a powerful combination that allows women to provide each other with the resources, strength and voice to speak out and be heard.

Asylum Aid
www.asylumaid.org.uk

Refugee Council
www.refugeecouncil.org.uk

Women for Refugee Women
www.refugeewomen.com

No Borders Network
www.noborder.org

Women Asylum Seekers Together
www.wast.org.uk

All African Women’s Group and Legal Action for Women
www.allwomencount.net

Black Women’s Rape Action Project
www.womenagainstrape.net

Enforced destitution

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:42:08 +0000

What can you buy for a fiver a day? A coffee and a sandwich, perhaps a newspaper or a packet of mints, and it’s gone. But for an asylum seeker, a fiver has to cover food, clothing, toiletries, travel, stationery, stamps, phone calls (essential to contact legal representatives and the Home Office) – all the expenses of living apart from accommodation.

From 5 October 2009, support for destitute asylum seekers over 25 has been slashed from £42.16 to £35.15 per week, representing just over half of income support – the level of income the government has set as a basic safety net.

Since the Home Office took over responsibility for supporting asylum seekers in the late 1990s, its support has been grudging, mean-spirited and clearly designed to deter rather than welcome.

The level of support was set at 70 per cent of income support if destitution could be proved, but initially was ‘in kind’ – paid through vouchers redeemable in supermarkets, which were enticed to join the scheme with promises that they could keep the change. A campaign supported by the Transport and General Workers Union led to the abolition of vouchers, but they have crept back into use for ‘section 4′ support of refused asylum seekers who can show that they are unable to leave the country. After more campaigning, the vouchers are to be replaced by smart cards.

Compulsory ‘dispersal’ of asylum seekers out of London and the south east for the past decade has led to increased isolation and vulnerability to mental illness and racist attacks. At the same time, a policy that allowed asylum seekers to work was reversed, creating unnecessary dependency and contributing to popular racist myths of ‘asylum scroungers’.

The extreme reluctance of the Home Office to allow asylum seekers to work stems from its institutional perception of asylum seekers as disguised economic migrants seeking to jump the queue to work in the UK. This myth is fostered by its own conduct in excluding so many from even below-subsistence support – such as those who fail to claim asylum within three days of arrival – that they are driven to work undocumented.

Refused asylum seekers too are excluded from all support, unless they can show that they cannot be returned home, and it is this group – including Zimbabweans, Somalis, Iraqis, Iranians, Eritreans and Afghans – who have suffered the most hardship. Research by Refugee Action in 2007 estimated that 20,000 asylum-seeking households were destitute. On average those interviewed had been destitute for 21 months, and 60 per cent of respondents had slept on the street on at least one occasion.

In 2007 the parliamentary joint committee on human rights condemned the asylum support system in devastating terms, observing that ‘by refusing permission for most asylum seekers to work and operating a system of support which results in widespread destitution, the treatment of asylum seekers in a number of cases [is] inhuman and degrading.’

Its report referred to ‘countless examples of Home Office inefficiencies in processing support claims, with severe consequences for desperate, vulnerable people who have no other means to support themselves … The institutional failure to address operational inefficiencies and to protect asylum seekers from destitution amounts in many cases to a failure to protect them from inhuman and degrading treatment.’

The report condemned the inadequate housing often provided, and described the voucher scheme for refused asylum seekers as ‘inhumane and inefficient. It stigmatises refused asylum seekers and does not adequately provide for basic living needs.’ The committee concluded that ‘the government has been practising a deliberate policy of destitution … The policy of enforced destitution must cease.’

But the government refused to implement the committee’s recommendation that asylum seekers and some groups of refused asylum seekers who could not return home be allowed to work, and has appealed a High Court ruling to that effect. It is no surprise, then, that a 2009 follow-up to a 2006 survey into destitution among asylum seekers in Leeds found continuing high levels of ‘serious and prolonged’ destitution (Still Destitute: a worsening problem for refused asylum seekers, JRCT, 2009).

In its treatment of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, the government shows contempt for the basic principles of human solidarity and compassion.

www.stillhuman.org.uk

Border stories

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:08:12 +0000

In the June/July issue of Red Pepper, Alex Clarke from Bristol No Borders reported on the plight of the migrants living in makeshift settlements around Calais. Since then the threats facing these migrants have escalated, from scabies and malnutrition to the imminent destruction of camps by the French police and an increased risk of arrest and forced deportation to war zones.

By the time you read this, the area of wooded dunes near Calais may have been cleared of the shanties that are home to over a thousand migrants and would-be asylum seekers. They come from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, all seeking security in the UK.

In July, French immigration minister Eric Besson denied that the bulldozing of the camps was imminent and pledged that humanitarian organisations would be fully involved in any clearance plan. Calais deputy prefect Gerard Gavory immediately contradicted him, emphasising that the operation was to take place soon, that no notice would be given to the organisations providing humanitarian assistance, and that those in the camps would be forcibly deported if necessary.

Both the French and the British authorities want to get rid of the camps, considering them an embarrassing eyesore for tourists, and an emblem of the ‘disorderly’ movement of non-Europeans who insist on ignoring national borders in search of safety. Proposals include setting up a new detention centre for migrants in the British-controlled part of Calais docks to make control and removal easier.

In July, Gordon Brown announced that £15 million would be spent on more detection devices to search lorries leaving French ports for the UK, and in return French premier Nicolas Sarkozy promised to speed up the removal of undocumented migrants. Efforts have also been made to persuade those seeking asylum to claim in France rather than the UK.

The UN High Commission for Refugees full-time representative in Calais, along with NGOs such as France Terre d’Asile, has tried to disabuse the migrants of their hopeful fantasies about life in Britain; and in May the French authorities made it possible to claim asylum in Calais, instead of in Arras, 100 kilometres away. But the presence of relatives and friends, the enduring belief in British fairness and the Dublin Regulation laying down EU member-states’ responsibility for asylum claims all deter claims in France. The last allows removal to the migrants’ point of entry into Europe – generally Greece. Here await inhuman conditions, a refusal rate of 99.9 per cent and deportations to torturing states.

Whether or not the expected bulldozing happens, the migrants have more immediate problems. Apart from the ever-present threat of arrest and deportation, and the reality of frequent police round-ups and attacks with tear gas, they have to contend with living in utter destitution (since if they don’t claim asylum they are ineligible for any welfare benefits). For shelter, most have dwellings of plastic sheeting, cardboard and ply. There is no running water and no sanitation. In June a 32-year-old Eritrean drowned while trying to wash himself in the canal, and recently the insanitary conditions have led to an outbreak of scabies.

Salam, the main voluntary group working with the migrants, distributes food daily at seven coastal sites as well as providing legal advice and help. It has negotiated with the local authority to allow the provision of showers by a Catholic aid organisation, but no one knows when they will start or what conditions will be attached.

Most of the hostility to the encamped migrants comes from this side of the Channel. The Daily Mail, for example, has run scare stories about human chains of asylum seekers across Calais motorways carrying out knifepoint robberies of British tourists. But these stories have no basis in fact. The border police at Coquelles have had no such reports, and the Calais police denied the Mail’s story that they advised holidaymakers to keep car windows and doors closed.

The No Borders camp at Calais in June brought over several hundred protesters. But solidarity with the migrants attracts police harassment. The camp was blockaded and demonstrations in the town were attacked by police, who made more than 20 arrests. Meanwhile, harassment of volunteers distributing humanitarian aid continues, under French laws that criminalise assistance to undocumented migrants.

The immigration minister denies that this law, designed to target traffickers and profiteers, penalises solidarity. He has promised to meet solidarity groups and to extend exemptions for social and medical workers. But Salam notes that the proposed exemptions don’t cover volunteers, and point to the recent prosecution of its vice-president, Jean-Claude Lenoir. Although he was acquitted in July of insulting a police officer, the prosecution has appealed.

No Borders Brighton’s ‘Mailwatch’ is at
http://nobordersbrighton.blogspot.com

Asylum watch: Losing the plot

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:32:44 +0000

On 8 April this year our television screens showed pictures of the dramatic arrests of 12 students – one British and 11 Pakistani – as alleged ‘terrorists’. Suspects were held spread-eagled on the ground by anti-terrorism officers on campus in Liverpool. We heard Gordon Brown assert that the police had foiled a ‘very big’ terrorist plot, while ‘Whitehall sources’ claimed terrorists were exploiting ‘lax’ student regulations (despite biometric visas and rigorous checks) to come to Britain.

All the suspects were released without charge two weeks later after a thorough investigation found no evidence. But ten Pakistani students remain in detention, in category A conditions, held by the UK Border Agency for deportation as a ‘threat to national security’. An urgent application to release the students on bail was heard on 12 May but was refused pending a full bail hearing in July – too late for them to sit their exams.

Despite rulings from the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights denouncing detention on the basis of secret evidence, the men remain in the dark as to the reasons for their detention and proposed deportation. One of them, Tariq Ur Rehman, returned to Pakistan on 11 June, disillusioned and disheartened about the prospects of making a future in the UK. The British government agreed to withdraw the deportation decision against him but declined to intervene to seek assurances from the Pakistani government that he would not be ill-treated. Pakistan’s intelligence services have a fearsome reputation for torturing terror suspects.

People from across the country who were angered by the treatment of the men met in Manchester in early May to set up the Justice for the North West Ten campaign (J4NW10). This held an immediate protest vigil outside Strangeways prison, and has since organised public meetings, letters, protests and other activities in Islamabad, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and London to draw public attention to the treatment of the men.

On 28 May, the University and College Union (UCU) conference overwhelmingly voted to support the campaign and to demand the immediate release of the students to allow them to continue their education without the threat of deportation. An early day motion (EDM 1453) has been signed by 20-plus MPs, and a letter has been signed by over 70 academics calling on the vice-chancellors of two of the institutions attended by the students to ensure they receive course materials and take their exams in prison. A packed public meeting at SOAS in London on 2 July heard a recording of the brother and father of two of the students speaking by phone from Pakistan of the hopes they carried with them to this country, and the disillusion and anger over their arrests.

The timing of the men’s arrest and detention is interesting, to say the least. The UK Border Agency (UKBA) is currently seeking to bully university and college staff to spy on students through the introduction of a points-based system that changes the way foreign students are allowed into the UK. In future, universities and colleges wishing to enrol non-EU students will have to register as sponsors, and to do this they must give an undertaking to the UKBA to report students who miss lectures. Failure to monitor students who subsequently abscond or breach conditions can lead to withdrawal of the institution’s sponsorship licence. The J4NW10 campaign is part of a wider campaign to keep immigration control out of education.

join the campaign

Campaign website

Online petition

If you are an academic (or know an academic), please write or send an email to the vice chancellors of two of the institutions at which the students were studying:

Ask your MP to support the campaign: Mohammad Sarwar, an MP of Pakistani origin, has submitted an early day motion (EDM) demanding the students’ immediate release so that they can continue their studies

Ask your organisation to support the campaign’s demands. Send messages of support to j4nw10@yahoo.com

Into the abyss

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:43:43 +0000

The depth of the slide from the rule of law and international human rights standards into the secrecy, impunity and cruelty of the national security state was crystallised in recent cases about the deportation of terror suspects.
The House of Lords recently decided to allow alleged ‘national security threats’ to be returned to Algeria and Jordan, where the risk of torture is masked but not diminished by worthless diplomatic assurances. This flies in the face of objections from all major human rights organisations, including the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner and the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur against Torture.

The Algerian government refused point blank to allow independent monitoring of its interrogations. UK government representatives were touchingly sympathetic, murmuring about ‘post-colonial sensibilities’. The Jordanian government agreed to monitoring – by an organisation with no experience or medical expertise.

Desperate to get rid of ‘undeportable’ national security detainees – whose three-year internment in Belmarsh was condemned in 2004 by Lord Bingham’s House of Lords’ judicial committee – the government has allowed the unthinkable to became acceptable.

The new, executive-friendly set of Law Lords, now headed by Lord Phillips, have given the green light. In the case of Abu Qatada, the Lords have also allowed deportation backed by torture evidence to be acceptable, brutally repudiating Lord Bingham’s 2005 judgment that torture evidence taints the whole judicial process.
They also say all this can be done on the basis of secret evidence, concealed from the accused and their representatives. Appellants, say their Lordships, need not know about any secret diplomatic negotiations smoothing the path for their return, nor what their own governments allege against them. It’s hardly surprising that Abu Qatada’s lawyers plan to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

To make matters worse, confidential information about the men’s asylum claims and allegations made against them in the UK will be given to their national governments. States with poor human rights records don’t take kindly to their citizens complaining about them to other governments, and reprisals are likely against the men and their families. ‘National security’ now trumps all such considerations. On 27 January, the high court ruled that confidential information could be handed to officials of the receiving state. Another golden rule of refugee law, the absolute confidentiality of refugee claims, lies broken.

It is worth pointing out none of the men facing deportation on national security grounds have been convicted in the UK of any terrorist offence. The convictions some have, in Algeria or Jordan, were obtained by the methods the Lords are now so reluctant to condemn. Ask what these men have actually done and there is no answer. The judges have presided over a system in which, as criminologist Magnus Hörnqvist warned five years ago (‘The birth of public order policy’, Race & Class 49:1, 2004), the judicial determination of guilt on the basis of evidence given in open court has been replaced by administrative assessments of largely secret intelligence. They are ‘deemed’ a ‘threat to national security’ on the basis of their sympathies, their associations. Neither they nor we know much more than that.

Some of these men have been detained or quasi-detained (subject to lengthy curfews, electronic tags, reporting five times a day, forbidden mobile phones or computers, allowed no un-vetted visitors, etc) for over seven years. They see no end to it, as they cannot clear themselves from unformed and untold allegations.

In ‘Besieged in Britain’ (Race & Class 50:3, 2009), Victoria Brittain movingly describes the human impact on those detained or on immigration bail in the UK. They endure a Kafkaesque process of defending themselves against deportation on the basis of largely unknown allegations, whilst languishing for years in maximum security prisons, or facing stringent bail. Their wives and families, meanwhile, have to live with constant intrusions and searches. They can’t have friends to visit, use mobile phones or computers, and above all live with the daily humiliation and denial of basic dignity which the process entails. And they face the ordeal alone, ostracised by their communities.
It’s not surprising that our security services seek to draw a cloak of secrecy over the methods with which they obtain their ‘operational intelligence’ – including the sub-contracting of torture to friendly intelligence services such as those in Pakistan, as recently revealed in Binyan Mohammed’s case. But it is the judges who have presided over it all that have made such methods possible.

Further reading: International Commission of Jurists’ February 2009 report, Assessing damage, urging action. www.icj.org

Asylum watch: Now what?

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:21:14 +0000

At least two new immigration bills are proposed for the 2008-9 session of parliament. They are the citizenship, immigration and borders bill and the immigration simplification bill. Together they cover the full gamut of immigration law, replacing the ten existing pieces of primary legislation. It is nothing short of a complete rewrite of the immigration laws.

The UK Borders Agency (UKBA), established as a sinisterly-described ‘shadow agency’ of the Home Office, is to gain new customs and visa powers, protecting our borders from ‘impermissible’ substances, commodities and people. Its powers will include detention without statutory limit, including detention of children.

Detention, according to the UKBA, is increasingly important in immigration policy. The ‘detention estate’ has grown from 200 places in the mid-1990s to 2,500 places today, with plans for another 1,300 to 1,500 places in the next three years. This has attracted the attention of Europe’s human rights commissioner, who also objects to the failure to set limits on detention.
Entering the country will become harder. The ‘authority to carry’ scheme will require airlines to perform real-time immigration checks on passengers, meaning no one will legally be able to travel to the UK without prior approval. The stated aim is to stop people using fake passports and visas, but the effect will be to condemn those seeking international asylum to illegal and dangerous methods of travel.

There will also be new powers of detention and questioning away from ports. This power is already applied by officials who raid small businesses daily in search of ‘illegal’ workers (always claiming the raids are ‘intelligence-led’, pre-empting accusations of illegality). Officials sometimes carry hand-held fingerprint terminals to check whether those arrested have applied for asylum or otherwise been fingerprinted.

Such technologies are increasingly important. Biometrics are taken from all visa applicants, and by December 2007 more than a million sets of fingerprints had been taken. On 24 November 2008, the first biometric ID cards were ‘rolled out’. Eventually, everyone subject to immigration control will have to carry one, and show it to do everything from opening a bank account to receiving NHS treatment or getting married. All aspects of life will be subject to immigration status.

The integration of visa, port and internal controls, together with the enhanced powers of examination, arrest, detention and powers of data collection, consolidate UKBA’s position as a powerful, autonomous border police. But structures of accountability are absent.

Alongside enhanced powers for the enforcers, the proposals erode migrants’ rights. Under the cover of ‘simplification’, anyone who is not British or a European Economic Area (EEA) national will need ‘immigration permission’ – including Commonwealth citizens who have the right to come and live here. Other ‘simplification’ proposals could replace deportation and administrative removal processes with expulsion and a re-entry ban, applicable with the same force against students who work 22 hours per week instead of 20 hours as it is against murderers.

The much-trumpeted ‘earned citizenship’ provisions reflect the facile and condescending debate over ‘British values’. They require not only testing on language and life in the UK but also longer qualifying periods, with unpaid community work used to shorten the period. Other provisions – from the requirement of bail bonds to powers to charge above the administrative cost for processing applications and to require deportees to pay the costs of their own removal – show that migrants are seen as at best a source of income.
With this inhuman and instrumental approach to migration in the ascendant, human rights and asylum (already dirty words in some quarters) look set to continue their long downward slide.

New immigration minister Phil Woolas sees his task not as educating the country in the social, political and economic benefits of an internationalist outlook, but as showing the right-wing press how tough he is on immigration. ‘It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,’ he tells the Times. He says employers shouldn’t employ immigrants (‘you should … attempt to fill skills shortages with your indigenous population’) and the NHS shouldn’t treat them (‘it’s not an international health service’). He adds that he has to be tough to pre-empt BNP support: ‘We’ve never had a BNP councillor [in his Oldham constituency] – I hope I’ve had something to do with that.’

But with Labour policies like this, what’s the difference? Opposition to such cynical ministerial soundbites and government policies needs to be loud, determined and principled if universal human rights are not to be undermined by little Englandism.

To view the government’s proposals visit:
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm73/7373/7373.pdf

The Citizenship, Immigration and Borders Bill
Immigration Simplification Bill http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/page2668.asp