Prince of Wales says at summit any move by members to become a republic can be ‘without rancour’
The Prince of Wales has told Commonwealth leaders that keeping the Queen as head of state or becoming a republic is “a matter for each member country to decide”.
Charles made the comments during the opening ceremony of a summit of Commonwealth prime ministers and presidents in Rwanda. He said he believed such fundamental changes could be made “calmly and without rancour”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: new visa scheme to attract staff to ease the chronic shortages in the sector has left many open to exploitation
Read full story: Migrant workers trapped in debt bondage
Care workers recruited from overseas to look after elderly and disabled people in Britain are being charged thousands of pounds in illegal fees and forced to work in exploitative conditions to pay off their debts.
An Observer investigation has uncovered a network of agencies supplying workers to care homes and homecare agencies that charge recruitment fees to candidates.
Continue reading...Investigation: Britain called out to workers around the world to ease a staff crisis. But many have to pay thousands in illegal fees to recruitment agencies
Read exclusive story: Migrant care workers charged thousands in illegal fees
Meera Stephen came to Britain with a big suitcase and even bigger dreams. The 27-year-old had left Kerala in south India to work at a care home in Manchester, one of thousands of migrant workers to come after a government recruitment drive to fill more than 100,000 vacancies in social care.
The job would pay £10 an hour – just above minimum wage. But it came at a price. In exchange for securing her employment, she would pay a recruitment agent 1.3m rupees – about £13,700.
Continue reading...‘Mentally exhausted’ expected deportees launched last-minute legal bids to avoid removal from UK
An Albanian asylum seeker and suspected victim of trafficking has told the Guardian he is in a “very bad mental state” as he expects to board a deportation flight to Rwanda, a country of which he knows “nothing”.
The 26-year-old Albanian man is one of seven asylum seekers who have launched last-minute legal challenges to avoid being forcibly flown to the east African country. Others include three Iranians, one Iraqi and one Vietnamese asylum seeker. All arrived in the UK on small boats in the middle of May.
Continue reading...Final remaining asylum seekers understood to have been taken off the flight following legal intervention
You can watch the Sturgeon press conference here.
Sturgeon is now taking questions.
Continue reading...Home Office source says individual legal cases mean too few people may be able to board plane anyway
Two last-ditch legal challenges that attempted to halt the inaugural flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda have been rejected by judges.
The court of appeal upheld a previous decision to reject an injunction blocking the first flight, which was due to take off for the east African state on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Children’s and refugees charities raise concerns after detention of three children misjudged as adults in offshoring programme
Concerns are mounting that children wrongly assessed as adults by the Home Office could end up being offshored to Rwanda.
The Guardian understands that three age-disputed children who the Home Office declared to be adults and detained in preparation for offshoring to Rwanda have now been released. It is understood that concerns have been raised about whether at least three more detainees threatened with removal to the east African country are children rather than adults.
Continue reading...Covid, climate, stability and violence contributing to young people feeling pessimistic about future, survey of 15 countries suggests
African youth have lost confidence in their own countries and the continent as a whole to meet their aspirations and a rising number are considering moving abroad, according to a survey of young people from 15 countries.
The pandemic, climate crisis, political instability and violence have all contributed to making young people “jittery” about their futures since the Covid pandemic began, according to the African Youth Survey published on Monday.
Continue reading...Prime minister says ‘Australia can’t be proud of’ detention of Nadesalingam family for four years
Nothing is stopping the Nadesalingam family seeking permanent residency in Australia, Anthony Albanese says, following the Tamil asylum seekers’ return to Biloela.
A full weekend of celebrations is under way in the central Queensland town after Priya and Nades Nadesalingam and their daughters, Kopika and Tharnicaa, returned on Friday for the first time since being detained in March 2018.
Continue reading...Nadesalingam family arrive back home to Biloela; New Zealand ‘heartened’ by Albanese government’s climate stance; Australia records at least 40 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed
Jacinda Ardern will be raising Australia’s controversial deportation policy in today’s meeting. Asked if she has knowledge of whether the government is prepared to “water it down a little bit”, she replies:
Just to be clear, the issue we have is not with deportation. We deport as well. If a New Zealander comes to Australia and commits a crime, send them home ... but when someone comes here and essentially, hasn’t even really had any connection with New Zealand at all ... have all their connections in Australia and are essentially Australian, sending them back to New Zealand, that’s where we’ve had the grievance.
I’ve heard the prime minister prior to winning the election speak to his acknowledgement that that is the part of the policy that we’ve taken issue with. Even that acknowledgement says to me he’s hearing us, he knows it’s a problem.
It’s been a bugbear for us for a long time so I would like to see movement on it.
We talked about music on occasion but I’m not sure I would’ve picked necessarily the right music if I think I was given that task.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern welcomes ‘reset’ in trans-Tasman relationship after years of tension over visa cancellations on character grounds
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has vowed to consider changing how the government handles visa cancellations in an olive branch to ease longstanding tensions with New Zealand.
The pledge to look at tweaking the scheme prompted the visiting New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to declare the talks in Sydney on Friday allowed for “a reset” in the trans-Tasman relationship.
Continue reading...Wait time for 476 visa, for overseas graduates who want to work or study in Australia for up to 18 months, has blown out to 41 months
Australia’s vast visa backlog is trapping engineering graduates out of the country for up to four years, compounding the skills shortages and causing heartache, frustration and depression among applicants.
The engineering job vacancy rate has increased 97% in 12 months, something the main industry body, Engineers Australia, fears could have a “catastrophic” impact, including by delaying major infrastructure projects relied upon for the nation’s economic recovery.
Continue reading...About 30 asylum seekers expected to be sent to Rwanda on 14 June
Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as soon as next week is facing a legal challenge under emergency proceedings launched in the high court on Wednesday.
An application for a judicial review claims that the home secretary’s policy is unlawful. Claimants are also seeking an injunction that will attempt to stop the plane from taking off.
Continue reading...High number of first 100 people to be sent to Rwanda are from Sudan, despite being small number of those crossing the Channel
The Home Office is offering to fly asylum seekers back to the conflict zones they escaped from if they do not wish to be sent to Rwanda, the Guardian has learned.
Documents issued to the first group of asylum seekers facing removal to the east African country state that the Home Office voluntary returns service can help them go back to their home country.
Continue reading...Lawyers for bereaved relatives say ‘serious failings’ in rescue operation may have contributed to deaths
The government has agreed to launch a full investigation into the drowning of at least 27 people trying to cross the Channel in a small boat last November.
The decision by the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, to agree to what is known as an article 2 inquiry – an independent investigation – is revealed in correspondence between his lawyers and eight relatives of 11 of the victims.
Continue reading...Federico Soda said there needed to be ‘more condemnation’ of the conditions in state-run detention centres in Libya
Europe has been accused by a senior international official of acquiescence over the plight of thousands of migrants in Libya held in arbitrary detention in “deplorable conditions”.
Federico Soda, chief of mission at the International Organisation for Migration’s mission in Libya, said not enough was being done by outside actors to try to change the war-torn country’s “environment of arbitrary detention and deplorable conditions” for migrants.
Continue reading...Group includes children and pregnant women as exodus from crisis-hit Haiti grows
A ship carrying more than 800 Haitians who were apparently trying to reach the US has landed instead in central Cuba, in what is thought to be the largest group yet in a swelling exodus of people from the crisis-stricken Caribbean countr.
The Communist party newspaper Granma quoted Red Cross officials in the province of Villa Clara as saying the 842 people crammed on to the vessel had been given medical attention and were being housed at a tourist campground.
Continue reading...Cards branded with Australian government’s ‘Zero Chance’ logo and QR code to border force website distributed in Indonesia
Playing cards adorned with the Australian government’s “Zero Chance” campaign against “illegal migration” were distributed to refugee children in Indonesia by people trespassing on school grounds, the charity running the school alleges.
The playing cards were allegedly given to children during break time at the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre in west Java.
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Continue reading...Landmark ruling follows case of three young Indigenous Mexicans detained and abused on suspicion of being Guatemalan migrants
Mexican immigration agents can no longer conduct stop and search operations on buses and highways after the country’s supreme court ruled that such checks are racist, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.
The landmark ruling, handed down in Mexico City on Wednesday, found in favour of three young Indigenous Mexicans who were detained and abused by immigration (INM) officials in 2015 during a US-backed crackdown.
Continue reading...After four years in immigration detention, the election would produce an all-or-nothing result for the Tamil asylum seekers
About 11pm on election night in the central Queensland town of Biloela, Angela Fredericks phoned her absent friend.
“Priya, you are coming home,” she said.
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