Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

Home Office hotels for asylum seekers ‘akin to detention centres’ – report

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Lawyers documented deterioration in health of asylum seekers while staying in accommodation

Conditions in hotels used by the Home Office to accommodate asylum seekers during the pandemic are akin to detention centres, according to a report that also says accommodation is often sub-standard and sometimes unsafe.

The report, Safe Environment: investigating the use of temporary accommodation to house asylum seekers during the Covid-19 outbreak, explores experiences in hotels and similar accommodation. It was conducted by academics at Edinburgh Napier University in partnership with grassroots organisation Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment.

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UK borders bill could criminalise Afghan refugees, UN representative warns

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Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor tells MPs proposed legislation could end up punishing those fleeing Taliban if travelling by illegal routes

The UN’s refugee chief in London has said the introduction of the new nationality and borders bill could criminalise Afghan people who manage to escape the Taliban.

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, the UNHCR’S representative in the UK, told MPs that the government could find itself in a situation where it is jailing Afghans who seek refuge in the UK because they travelled by illegal routes.

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‘My son misses his Papa’: Brexit rules force families to split

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Partners and spouses are being kept apart by Home Office delays in processing revised versions of entry permits to Britain

A British woman has told how she had to separate her six-year-old son from his French father because post-Brexit rules prohibited her spouse from returning with her to the UK for a new job without prior Home Office approval.

After 11 years in France, the couple, who work in highly skilled jobs in the defence industry, decided to move back to the UK and thought it would be as simple as getting on a Eurostar train.

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France accuses Patel of blackmail in row over Channel migrants

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Interior minister says UK plans to return boats of vulnerable people would not be accepted

Priti Patel has been accused by France’s interior minister of plotting “financial blackmail” and a violation of international maritime law in a deepening diplomatic row over efforts to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel by boat.

Gérald Darmanin said that UK plans, released on Wednesday night, to send back boats of vulnerable people into French waters would not be accepted by his government.

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Return of migrant vessels: a violation of maritime law and moral duty

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Analysis: experts say blocking right to apply for asylum is an infringement of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Gaspare, a fisher from Sciacca in Sicily, had rescued dozens of migrants attempting to reach Italy by boat from Libya when the Italian authorities threatened to arrest him and his crew for aiding illegal immigration.

“I wonder if even one of our politicians has ever heard the desperate cries for help at high sea in the black of night,” he said in 2019. “I wonder what they would have done. No human being – sailor or not – would have turned away.”

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‘Chaotic’ UK response criticised as Afghan babies wait for milk and donations turned away

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Volunteers ‘operating blind’ about refugees’ needs, while hotels left with no staff to distribute aid

The government’s response towards families evacuated from Afghanistan to Britain has been “chaotic and uncoordinated”, hampering volunteers’ efforts to help, charities have said.

One hotel where 50 babies were in quarantine with their families after fleeing the Taliban had no formula milk, they said. In other hotels, supplies of clothes, toiletries and nappies donated by the public were turned away by managers who had no staff to distribute them.

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Concern for migrants’ safety as hundreds resume Channel crossings

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RNLI lifeboat charity experiences especially busy day after recent run of bad weather halted crossings

Hundreds of people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel, as several charities said the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan showed why people risk their lives to flee.

It followed a first day of landings in more than two weeks on Sunday, after a run of bad weather put a halt to the crossings. A Home Office source said reports of 1,000 migrants entering the UK across the Channel in a single day is an exaggeration, and believed the figure will be between 800 and 850.

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Hilary Mantel: I am ashamed to live in nation that elected this government

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Double Booker prize winner tells La Repubblica she may take Irish citizenship to feel European again

Hilary Mantel has said she feels “ashamed” by the UK government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and is intending to become an Irish citizen to “become a European again”.

In a wide-ranging interview with La Repubblica, the twice Booker prize-winning novelist also gave her view on the monarchy, told how endometriosis has “devastated my life”, and how Boris Johnson “should not be in public life”. She also addresses the criticism of JK Rowling and her stance on transgender rights.

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MPs trying to rescue more than 7,000 people trapped in Afghanistan

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Figure dwarfs 800 to 1,100 Afghans eligible for resettlement defence secretary said would be left behind

MPs are scrambling to rescue more than 7,000 constituents and family members trapped in Afghanistan, according to figures provided to the Guardian, dwarfing the only estimates provided by the government of the number left behind.

Scores of Labour MPs have been inundated with pleas for help from thousands of constituents whose relatives have been left stranded since the UK’s final emergency airlift left Kabul following the country’s rapid fall to the Taliban. Among them are children, disabled relatives and people who face persecution due to their work, all with potential eligibility to be resettled in Britain.

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‘I feel helpless, useless and hopeless’: diary of an Afghan evacuee

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Student, English teacher and journalist Mursal Rasa Jamili, 23, was evacuated to the UK from Kabul with her two sisters

Mursal Rasa Jamili, a 23-year-old final-year university student, English teacher and journalist in Kabul, was evacuated to the UK with her two sisters. Here she explains what happened during her last days in Afghanistan.

Sunday 22 August

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‘I cry all the time’: the plight of Afghan refugees in Calais

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More Afghans are arriving in norther France hoping to make it across the Channel to claim asylum in the UK

Salaam Khan had not long ago woken up after another fruitless night attempting to cross the Channel from Calais and was on alert for the arrival of the French police. They come most mornings to confiscate the tents of the hundreds of migrants and refugees sleeping on the city’s outskirts.

“It’s a new day and the same shit,” he said.

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Forty people feared dead as woman rescued from dinghy off Canary Islands

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The woman, who was trying to make the trip from Africa, was found lying next to two bodies and ‘in a bad state’, officials say

About 40 migrants are feared dead after rescuers recovered a lone woman clinging to an overturned dinghy that had been carrying dozens of people trying to reach the Canary Islands.

A rescue helicopter carrying the survivor – a 30-year-old woman who appeared exhausted and shaken – landed at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria airport on Tuesday, after a cargo ship found her 135 miles off the coast.

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How the Covid pandemic has led to more Channel crossings – video explainer

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A record number of people are expected to cross the Channel to the UK in small boats this year to claim asylum. 

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, more than 10,000 people have already made the dangerous and potentially fatal 21-mile journey across the busiest shipping lane in the world. On 4 August, 482 migrants crossed the Channel – a record for a single day.

The Guardian journalist Diane Taylor explains what is driving people to take the enormous risk

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How is UK planning to help resettle Afghan refugees?

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Ministers are expected to announce a ‘bespoke’ scheme similar to that put in place for Syrians in 2014

Ministers are expected to announce plans for a new settlement scheme in the UK for Afghan nationals following the Taliban takeover of the country. Similar to a scheme put in place for Syrians in 2014 amid the country’s civil war, this would be in addition to existing structures to assist some Afghan nationals.

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Home Office challenged over ‘sped-up’ removal of Vietnamese nationals

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Signs that detainees were victims of trafficking are being overlooked, say campaigners

Lawyers are challenging the Home Office policy of deporting people to Vietnam who could be victims of trafficking after the UK sent a second charter flight to the country within a matter of weeks.

The challenge follows concern from lawyers and charities that some victims of trafficking could be wrongly removed from the UK under a speedy processing system for migrants in detention known as “detained asylum casework”.

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EU citizens who applied to stay in Britain facing threat of deportation

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The Home Office appears to be in breach of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, says legal charity

European citizens who have applied for settled status are being detained and threatened with deportation, a development that contradicts assurances from ministers and appears to contravene the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

The Home Office has served EU nationals with removal directions even though they could prove they had applied for settled status, which should protect their rights to remain in the UK.

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How an RNLI training pool gave me an insight into crossing Channel as a migrant

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Sitting in a small dinghy in darkness as it took on water was frightening enough in a sea survival exercise let alone for real

As I paddled through crashing waves in the darkness, stomach churning, I watched our small dinghy starting to fill up with water with a sinking feeling – it wouldn’t be long before we went overboard, and I was worried that at least one person in my boat was paddling in the wrong direction. But, then again, it might have been me: I was wielding an oar twice my size and it was impossible to tell in the frenzy.

Before we knew it the odyssey was over and the lights were back on. I emerged soaked through – with aching muscles and shot nerves – relieved to be out of the water.

This was the RNLI’s sea survival pool, used to train volunteers in the rigours of life-or-death aquatic rescue. All I had done was traverse a 25-metre swimming pool four times, but it was enough to assure me that repeating that at least 325 more times across the Channel would be a deeply traumatic experience. What’s more, it is a journey that would probably be much longer as a migrant is, in many cases, guided by only a smartphone compass.

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UK poised to end amber list quarantine for people vaccinated in US and EU

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Ministers to discuss plans, with talks also to determine if they will apply to England only or all UK nations

Plans to significantly open up international travel are expected to be announced on Wednesday, with UK ministers poised to let people who have been fully vaccinated in the US and EU avoid quarantine if arriving from amber list countries.

The move would benefit millions of people by finally letting them be reunited with family and friends based in the UK, as well as businesses in the aviation and tourism sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

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RNLI hits out at ‘migrant taxi service’ accusations

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Lifeboat charity says it is its moral and legal duty to rescue people at risk of dying as they cross Channel

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has hit out at accusations it is operating a “migrant taxi service” by rescuing people at risk of dying in the water as they cross the Channel in small boats, which the charity says is its moral and legal duty.

Responding to accusations from Nigel Farage that it is facilitating illegal immigration, the volunteer lifeboat charity said it was “very proud” of its humanitarian work and it would continue to respond to coastguard callouts to rescue at-risk Channel migrants in line with its legal duty under international maritime law.

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France fiasco to pingdemic U-turn: Boris Johnson’s week of chaos

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In the last seven days the UK government has flailed from one controversy or misstep to the next

Often, the political week heading into the Commons summer recess can feel almost soporific, with the thoughts of ministers and MPs geared more towards holiday sunbeds than rows. But the last seven days has been different, and not only because of the ongoing political flux of coronavirus, with the government seeming to flail from one controversy, U-turn or misstep to the next, day after day.

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