Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

Home Office urged to stop housing asylum seekers in barracks

Posted on by

Housing survivors of torture or other serious forms of violence in barracks ‘harmful’, all-party report says

A cross-party group of parliamentarians is calling on the government to end its use of controversial barracks accommodation for people seeking asylum, in a new report published on Thursday.

The report also recommends the scrapping of government plans to expand barracks-style accommodation for up to 8,000 asylum seekers. It refers to accommodation, including Napier barracks in Kent, which is currently being used to house hundreds of asylum seekers, as “quasi-detention” due to visible security measures, surveillance, shared living quarters and isolation from the wider community.

Continue reading...

UK warned not to replicate Australia’s immigration detention centres

Posted on by

Letter from detainees urges MPs not to back nationality and borders bill to be debated in parliament this week

Two former detainees in Australia’s notorious offshore immigration detention centres have issued a “dire warning” to UK parliamentarians ahead of a vote to replicate these centres this week.

They are urging MPs not to back the nationality and borders bill which will be debated in parliament on Tuesday and Wednesday. If passed into law in its current form it will diminish refugee protection. Large-scale reception centres are planned and the legislation includes a provision for housing asylum seekers offshore while their claims are considered.

Continue reading...

Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

Posted on by

A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

Continue reading...

Tensions run high in Hastings over small boat arrivals

Posted on by

While many in East Sussex town have rushed to help when refugees arrive on the beach, some are less welcoming

Ten days ago, people stood on the beach in Hastings and tried to prevent a lifeboat crew from going into the sea to rescue a group of refugees in a flimsy dinghy. According to a witness, they were shouting at the RNLI: “Don’t bring any more of those, we’re full up, that’s why we stopped our donations.”

Meanwhile, a group from the same town calling itself Hastings Supports Refugees has set up what is thought to be the first emergency response team run by volunteers to welcome the bedraggled, traumatised newcomers and provide them with hot food and drinks, dry clothes and a warm welcome as soon as they come ashore.

Continue reading...

Channel crossings are an English issue, says French minister

Posted on by

UK accused of having a labour market akin to modern slavery that encourages people to make risky crossings

Senior French ministers have accused the UK of operating a labour market akin to slavery and called on London to open safe routes for migrants, as the two governments continued to deflect blame for last week’s drownings in the Channel.

The criticism came hours after France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, held a crisis meeting with European ministers and border agencies to discuss the migrant emergency around the Channel ports.

Continue reading...

British MPs call for law changes to help young Hongkongers flee to UK

Posted on by

Figures show that 93% of those charged over protests are under 25 and many therefore not eligible to access current UK visa scheme

More than nine in 10 people who have faced protest charges in Hong Kong are too young to access a UK visa scheme dedicated to helping Hongkongers flee to Britain, according to advocates and MPs calling for new laws to assist them.

The release of the figures on Sunday by the advocacy group Hong Kong Watch comes before a parliamentary debate this week on proposed migration law amendments that would widen the pathway for people with British national (overseas) (BNO) status to resettle in the UK.

Continue reading...

UK’s ‘double talk’ on Channel crisis must stop, says French interior minister

Posted on by

Exclusive: Gérald Darmanin says UK ministers must stop saying one thing in private while insulting his country in public

The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has said British ministers including his counterpart, Priti Patel, should stop saying one thing in private while insulting his country in public if there is to be a solution to the crisis in the Channel.

In an interview with the Guardian, Darmanin strongly criticised what he called “double talk” coming out of London and said France was not a “vassal” of the UK.

Continue reading...

‘He’s missing’: anxious wait in Calais camps for news on Channel victims

Posted on by

In northern France, friends and relatives of those who died in the tragic crossing on Wednesday are desperate for answers

On Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.

Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night.

Continue reading...

‘Shocking’ that UK is moving child refugees into hotels

Posted on by

Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited care

Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.

About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.

Continue reading...

Inside Dunkirk’s desperate refugee camps: ‘They take risks because they feel they have no choice’

Posted on by

Among the makeshift tents near the French beaches, we ask what drives people to make the perilous journey in small boats and what could prevent more deaths

There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy.

Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel on Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed Karzan in the UK, paying people smugglers thousands of euros to get across the Channel in the absence of other possible routes. Karzan said that he had been in continuous contact with his fiancee and was tracking her GPS coordinates. “After four hours and 18 minutes from the moment she went into that boat,” he said, “then I lost her.”

Continue reading...

Asylum in the UK: the key numbers

Posted on by

So often in debates about asylum, statistics are used out of context to back up a politically motivated point, or as fuel in the government’s culture war against asylum seekers. Here are the key statistics about the UK’s asylum system in context

13,210. The number of people the UK granted protection to via asylum or resettlement routes in the year to September 2021 This is significantly lower than before the pandemic hit in March 2020.

64%. The proportion of initial asylum applications that were successful in the year ending September 2021. This rate has increased in recent years. In addition, almost half of unsuccessful applications are granted on appeal.

17th. The UK’s ranking against EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications it gets, adjusted for population. The UK’s asylum application per capita rate is almost half the EU average. Germany received 122,015 asylum applications in the year ending March 2021; France, 93,475.

37,562. The number of asylum applications in the UK in the year ending September 2021. This is 18% higher than last year, which saw a dip as a result of the pandemic, and less than half the peak of 84,312 that was seen in the early 2000s.

25,700. The number of people who have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats. This is three times the total number who arrived via this route in 2020.

83,733. The number of people awaiting an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of September 2021. Delays in the asylum system have increased rapidly since 2018: this is 41% higher than a year ago.

86%. The proportion of refugees worldwide who live in low-income countries neighbouring their country of origin. A very small proportion choose to travel to Europe. The UK is home to just 1% of the 26.4 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their home country across the world. Around half of the world’s refugees are under the age of 18.

£39.63. The amount that people seeking asylum get per week to subsist on in the UK. In France, it’s £42.84, and in Germany £65.63. In Germany, they are allowed to work 3 months from making their applications, in France it’s 6 months. In the UK they’re not allowed to work at all regardless of how long it takes for their application to be processed.

Continue reading...

Priti Patel blames ‘evil’ gangs for Channel crossings but the reality is far more complicated

Posted on by

Analysis: The UK government’s own experts say many journeys are actually organised directly by desperate families

The government repeatedly insists that sophisticated criminal networks are driving the Channel crossings by people seeking asylum in Britain. Of all the contested claims advanced by the home secretary on the issue, it remains among the most pervasive.

True to form, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s drownings, Priti Patel wasted little time reiterating her determination to “smash the criminal gangs” behind such crossings.

Continue reading...

Kurdish woman is first victim of Channel tragedy to be named

Posted on by

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking

A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

‘We are sick of double speak’: French government intensifies attack on Johnson over Channel tragedy – live

Posted on by

Latest updates: Macron slams Boris Johnson for trying to negotiate with him via Twitter as it cancels talks with UK officials over Channel crossings

The French government has accused Boris Johnson of “double speak”. In a briefing, the French government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, said that the proposal in Johnson’s letter to Emmanuel Macron for France to take back people who successfully cross the Channel on small boats was “clearly not what we need to solve this problem”.

According to PA Media, Attal also said that the letter doesn’t correspond at all” with the discussions Johnson and Macron had when they spoke on Wednesday. Atta went on: “We are sick of double speak.”

What would be completely unacceptable, a stain on our country and a scandal would be to see in future those whose parents have died being placed in inappropriate institutions, in elderly care homes or mental health institutions.

That would be something that I think would bring shame to our country as well as an utterly inappropriate lifestyle for those to whom we should be giving the best possible care.

This is not a bill about a condition, it is not about dealing with Down’s syndrome, it is about people who deserve the same ability to demand the best health, education and care as the rest of our society.

It is not on our part an act of charity, it is an act of empowerment and the recognition that all members of our society must have a right to respect, independence and dignity. That is why I brought this bill forward.

Continue reading...

I crossed the Channel in a small boat. This is what it’s like – video

Posted on by

Ali, 28, left his home in Iran to escape religious persecution. After being denied asylum in France, he made the decision to cross the Channel in a dinghy. He told the Guardian's Today in Focus podcast about his experience making the perilous crossing twice, in search of a better life

Continue reading...

‘I come, or I die’: fatalistic refugees say Channel crossing their only option

Posted on by

Young people who have made the dangerous journey tell why they have risked all to reach the UK

In the early hours of Thursday morning, a group of newly arrived refugees huddled together on the coast of Dover. The smugglers had not halted their trade in moving people across the Channel and, just hours after 27 people died on the perilous journey, they were back at work.

There is little evidence that the latest loss of life will deter others from making the dangerous journey. After the tragic drowning of the Kurdish family who tried to cross the Channel in October last year, two asylum seekers who survived told the Guardian that, despite being deeply traumatised, they continued trying to cross and not long after made it to the UK.

Continue reading...

Macron tells Johnson to ‘get serious’ on Channel crisis after tweeted letter

Posted on by

French president says: ‘We do not communicate on these issues by tweets’ after PM issues five-point plan via Twitter

President Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson to “get serious” or remain locked out of discussions over how to curb the flow of people escaping war and poverty across the Channel.

In a further sign of an escalating diplomatic crisis since the deaths of 27 people on Wednesday, the French leader criticised the UK’s decision to issue a five-point plan via Twitter instead of conducting bilateral talks.

Continue reading...

‘I’ll try to get across’: people camped out in Dunkirk still hope to reach UK

Posted on by

News of Channel deaths has reached camp, but many still plan to pay people smugglers huge amounts in hope of a better life

Everybody at the camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk, little more than a scrappy collection of tents with no toilets or running water, has heard about the 27 people who drowned on Wednesday.

Everybody knows the risks. But everybody says they still have the same plan, to try to get on a boat to the UK, because they do not believe that death will come to them – and because of their hope for a better life.

Continue reading...

Channel drownings unlikely to slow exodus from Iraqi Kurdistan

Posted on by

As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe

Were they driven to the freezing shores of Europe by desperation, or did several thousand Kurds instead make the dangerous journey in search of opportunity?

As officials in Iraqi Kurdistan grapple with what is driving a crisis that is thought to have led to scores of citizens drowning in the Channel on Wednesday, and thousands of others to brave precarious migrant routes to Europe, even more are preparing to leave.

Continue reading...

Not doing enough? France senses policing alone won’t stop risky crossings

Posted on by

Analysis: UK suggestions that the French are not exerting themselves enough belies a more complex situation

Behind Boris Johnson’s suggestions, in the wake of the Channel drownings, that France was not doing enough to stop small boat crossings, lies a more complex picture. There is a growing sense among charities and the French political class that policing, security and repression alone cannot solve the issue of refugees risking their life to reach the UK to claim asylum.

In the past year, with rising numbers of attempted small boat crossings across the perilous shipping lanes of the Channel, there has been a significant increase in policing and patrols along the French coast, with new surveillance equipment, reservists called in, and more than 600 police officers and gendarmes working 24 hours a day – increasingly at night – to patrol a 40-mile stretch of rugged coast. UK financing has already contributed to new technology and an increase in officers. In addition, asylum seekers sleeping rough are moved on nightly, with tents and sleeping bags confiscated and camps broken up.

Continue reading...