Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

A wistful yearning for home and family | Brief letters

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Nesrine Malik’s columns | Ex-leaders compared | Love for Guardian letters | A mother’s place

Your columnist Nesrine Malik writes (11 April) that the pandemic has made her reflect wistfully on the bargain she made when she left Sudan to find success far from home. Nesrine’s columns, expressing subtle thoughts with admirable lucidity, have been something I’ve looked forward to reading all during lockdown. Perhaps we in her adopted country are not the audience she most longs for, but her eloquence has surely touched many readers.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh

• It’s been suggested that there’s little to distinguish between the main parties. But what former leaders do with their time may be instructive: David Cameron’s delayed self-justification for his use of networks to lobby for a company (Report, 12 April) should be weighed against Gordon Brown’s call for the G7 to develop a vaccination plan for the poorest countries (Opinion, 12 April).
Les Bright
Exeter

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Teenage refugee killed himself in UK after mental health care failings

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Coroner rules seriousness of Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus’s illness went unrecognised

A teenage refugee killed himself after the serious nature of his mental illness was not recognised, a coroner has concluded.

Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus, 19, was the fourth from his friendship group of Eritrean refugees to take his own life within a 16-month period after arriving in the UK.

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UK’s ‘headlong rush into abandoning human rights’ rebuked by Amnesty

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Covid failings, crackdown on protest, police discrimination and resumed arms trade with Saudi Arabia all listed in annual report

Amnesty International has published a stark rebuke of the UK government’s stance on human rights, saying that it is “speeding towards the cliff edge” in its policies on housing and immigration, and criticising its seeming determination to end the legal right for the public to challenge government decisions in court.

In its annual report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International says the UK’s increasingly hostile attitude towards upholding and preserving human rights legislation raises “serious concerns”.

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UK government in talks over expanding Covid travel ‘red list’

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Ministers under growing pressure to prevent variants undermining vaccine programme

Discussions are under way in Whitehall about expanding the travel “red list” of countries as ministers face mounting pressure to prevent coronavirus variants undermining the vaccine programme.

The Guardian understands that officials met on Friday to consider the case for taking a tougher approach. British residents and nationals returning from countries on the red list must quarantine in an airport hotel for 10 days at a cost of £1,750, while other arrivals are banned. It remains illegal to go on holiday.

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Specialist Covid infection control scientist faces threat of deportation from UK

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Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to Nigeria

An infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.

The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions.

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Asylum seekers ‘could be sent abroad by UK to be processed’

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Reports suggest using Gibraltar, the Isle of Man or paying third countries in an Australian-style system

Asylum seekers could be sent to processing centres abroad under the home secretary’s plans to overhaul the immigration system, according to reports.

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar is a location under consideration by officials, according to the Times, as well as the Isle of Man and other islands off the British coast.

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UK immigration officials ‘have had no information’ about hotel quarantine

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Border staff not briefed about even basics of Covid protection system starting on Monday, says union

Immigration officials expected to enforce a mandatory quarantine intended to protect the UK from new coronavirus variants have not been briefed on even the basics about how the system will work, little more than 48 hours before it begins, the Guardian has been told.

The Immigration Services Union (ISU), which represents many of the Home Office’s immigration officers, said that before the start on Monday of the new policy, staff had not been told if they would be expected to check for arrivals who had not properly declared their status, or when and how those obliged to quarantine would be taken to hotels.

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Britain should welcome Hongkongers, but not the ‘good migrant’ narrative | Jeevan Vasager

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The idea that Hong Kong migration will give the UK an entrepreneurial rocket boost is based on imperial stereotypes

Ministers swell with pride as they speak of profound ties of history and friendship, while polling shows that a substantial majority of Britons are in favour and newspaper headlines are overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration has always been a contentious issue in Britain. So why, as the UK opens a path to citizenship for millions of Hong Kong residents, is it different this time?

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Hong Kong migration agents report rush of inquiries for UK visas

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High level of interest in scheme launched on Sunday comes despite fears applications will be monitored

Migration agents in Hong Kong say they have had a rush of inquiries from people seeking to access the new visa scheme launched by the UK government on Sunday, despite fears their applications will be monitored.

Britain’s Home Office is expecting about 300,000 people to exercise a newly offered right to move to Britain and eventually seek citizenship in the next five years. The scheme was announced in July in response to the worsening security situation in Hong Kong, as the Chinese government tightens its control over the city with a draconian national security law.

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Britain launches new visa for millions of Hongkongers fleeing China’s crackdown

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Scheme allows Hong Kong residents with a BNO passport to live and work in the UK with a pathway to citizenship after five years

A new visa scheme offering millions of Hong Kong residents a pathway to British citizenship will go live on Sunday as the UK opens its doors to those wanting to escape China’s crackdown on dissent.

From Sunday afternoon, anyone with a British national overseas (BNO) passport and their dependents will be able to apply online for a visa allowing them to live and work in the UK. After five years they can then apply for citizenship.

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Slavery survivors moved ‘without notice, without reason’ in London lockdown

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Despite stay at home orders, vulnerable asylum seekers in Home Office accommodation say they were given as little as a day’s notice

Modern slavery survivors with young children were among refugees allegedly forced to move accommodation in London with as little as one day’s notice during coronavirus lockdowns this winter.

Women who are among the UK’s most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers said they were given just 24 hours to pack before being moved from accommodation provided by the Home Office, often having to travel long distances across the capital, in late December and January.

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Summer holidays cancelled? UK faces big decision on border

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Stricter controls appear likely, with government’s approach in stark contrast to that during first Covid wave

Slumped on the sofa after another day of home schooling, many families will have longingly eyed adverts for getaways: sun, sandy beaches and glittering pools, a much-needed reward after a year in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

But ministers are becoming increasingly concerned they may have to ask the British public to sacrifice their hopes of a break abroad this summer. On Thursday, Priti Patel became the latest cabinet minister to say it was too soon to book an overseas break; Matt Hancock has already announced he is going to Cornwall.

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People-smuggling gang members jailed over Essex lorry deaths

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Two ringleaders receive sentences of 27 and 20 years after 39 Vietnamese people suffocated in container

The two ringleaders of the people-smuggling gang responsible for the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people who suffocated in a sealed refrigeration container as they were transported across the Channel from France have received prison sentences of 27 and 20 years.

Ronan Hughes, 41, who ran a haulage company and organised the lorries and drivers to transport the migrants, was sentenced to 20 years at the Old Bailey on Friday. He pleaded guilty last year to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiring to bring people into the country unlawfully.

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Asylum seeker housing conditions under scrutiny at third ex-military site

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Allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk

A third former military site being used as temporary housing for asylum seekers is facing allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises, it has emerged.

The Home Office has been housing asylum seekers in a former officers’ mess at RAF Coltishall, north of Norwich, since April last year. The Norfolk site has not received as much scrutiny as two similar facilities, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Barracks in Pembrokeshire, which have been dogged by allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions.

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Asylum seekers on hunger strike over conditions at Kent barracks site

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Home Office urged to shut temporary accommodation after allegations of overcrowding and poor hygiene

Hundreds of asylum seekers are reportedly on hunger strike at a former army barracks in Kent being used as temporary housing, amid allegations conditions at the site are worsening.

About 400 men are being held at the Napier barracks site near Folkestone, which has been used as temporary accommodation since September and has faced calls for closure after allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions.

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Starmer accepts end of EU free movement in Brexit reversal

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Labour leader rules out extensive renegotiation if party wins next election

Keir Starmer has abandoned the commitment to free movement of people in the European Union he made to Labour members during the party’s leadership contest.

The Labour leader said his party had to be honest with the public, and that if it won the next general election a major renegotiation of the Brexit treaty would not be possible.

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Gatwick immigration detention centre closed due to staff Covid cases

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Serco-run Brook House has been shut and some detainees moved to another centre, Home Office says

An immigration detention centre has been temporarily closed after several members of staff tested positive for coronavirus.

The Home Office said Brook House, near Gatwick airport in West Sussex, has been shut for 10 days. It said a “very small number” of detainees had been moved to Colnbrook immigration removal centre near Heathrow.

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Stowaway tells how he survived 11-hour flight to UK in new film

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South African man, now known as Justin, speaks for first time of friend Carlito Vale, who died after 430-metre fall, in Channel 4 documentary

A South African man who survived an 11-hour flight from Johannesburg to London after hiding in a plane’s undercarriage has told of the last words he exchanged with a friend whose body fell from the same British Airways flight as it came in to land at Heathrow.

“He said: ‘We made it,’ and then I passed out with the lack of oxygen,” said the man, who was then known as Themba and who has spoken publicly for the first time about the desperate journey both men undertook in 2015.

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‘If a smuggler says do it, you do’: refugees on trying to rescue their friends from the Channel

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Two Kurdish asylum seekers made frantic attempts to save lives of family whose boat capsized in rough conditions

Two asylum seekers who were in the same boat as a Kurdish Iranian family who drowned trying to cross the Channel have spoken out about their frantic attempts to save the family’s lives after the vessel capsized.

Rasul Iran Nezhad, his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children: Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin, were among 22 people who boarded the boat, a rigid polyester structure about 20ft long, in October.

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