Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

Home Office may use nets to stop migrant boats crossing Channel

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Nets could be used to clog propellers and halt boats, says former Royal Marine in charge

The Home Office is considering permitting the use of nets to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats to the UK to claim asylum, according to a former Royal Marine tasked with preventing the journeys.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Home Office’s clandestine channel threat commander, Dan O’Mahoney, said nets could be used to clog propellers and bring boats to a standstill as they attempt the crossing over the Dover Strait.

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Home secretary’s ‘dangerous’ rhetoric ‘putting lawyers at risk’

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Solicitors and barristers say they feel unsafe and warn Home Office attacks on lawyers are undermining the legal system

Leading immigration lawyers have told the Guardian that increasingly hostile rhetoric from the home secretary is putting them at risk of being attacked as well as undermining the legal system.

On Sunday home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at the Conservative party conference to criticise lawyers who defend migrants, linking them directly with traffickers who help asylum-seekers to cross borders.

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Memo to the Home Office: a little humanity goes a long way | Kenan Malik

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Delivering migrants to an offshore location is more about spectacle than solution

Dump them on Ascension Island. Or in Moldova. Imprison them in disused ferries. Build “marine fences” across the Channel. Deploy water cannons to make huge waves to swamp their boats.

And so it goes on. All apparently ideas from Home Office “brainstorming” sessions on how to deal with asylum seekers and cross-Channel undocumented migrants.

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UK asylum detention: top civil servant says ‘all options on the table’

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Matthew Rycroft tells MPs civil service is considering all ways to improve migration system

The top civil servant at the Home Office has said “all options are on the table” for the migration system, in response to reports officials were asked to consider proposals to hold refugees in offshore detention centres, including remote islands in the south Atlantic.

Matthew Rycroft, the department’s permanent secretary, said the Cabinet Office would lead an inquiry into the leak of documents that revealed officials were asked to consider “possible options for negotiating an offshore asylum processing facility similar to the Australian model in Papua New Guinea and Nauru”.

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Former England boxer turns pro after winning fight with Home Office

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Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who was trafficked as a child and has won right to stay in UK, signs with top promoter

The former England amateur boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who won his 16-year legal battle with the Home Office for the right to remain in the UK, is launching his professional career after being signed by MTK Global, one of the world’s largest boxing management agencies.

Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has spent his adult life struggling to establish his nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.

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‘I felt unwanted’: Zodwa Nyoni on the immigration tales behind Nine Lives

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The playwright’s monologue, staged at the Bridge theatre, reflects the anger and pain of refugees and asylum seekers

My family migrated from Zimbabwe to England in the late 90s. Most of my teens and all of my 20s were shaped by applying for residency. I spent a lot of time feeling unwanted despite giving back to communities and to the arts, representing the UK at international poetry festivals and exchanges, and contributing to the landscape of British theatre.

In 2014, I was commissioned to write a play for Leeds Playhouse and Glasgow’s Òran Mór as part of the series A Play, a Pie and a Pint. I wrote Nine Lives, a one-man show about Ishmael, a gay Zimbabwean asylum seeker who is dispersed to Leeds while he awaits the Home Office’s decision on his case.

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Long live Barbados as a republic, soon to be free of tarnished ‘global Britain’ | Guy Hewitt

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The decision to drop the Queen had long been planned, but the shameful Windrush scandal altered perceptions of the ‘mother country’

Barbados’s recent announcement that it will become a republic, ending the tenure of the Queen as head of state by November 2021, is noteworthy not only for what is said about the island but also about changes in perception of Britain and its monarchy.

There is legitimacy in the stance taken by the prime minister, Mia Amor Mottley. A toddler in 1966 when “Little England” (as Barbados was referred to) achieved independence, this highly regarded Caribbean leader has strong nationalist and regional instincts. With many leading Commonwealth Caribbean countries already republics, she, like others born in the independence era, sees republicanism as a coming of age.

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Folkestone charities fear far right will target asylum seeker base

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Refugee groups urge ministers to ensure safety of 400 people housed in barracks

The people of Folkestone have become used to the sound of helicopters buzzing over their heads at night, as authorities scour the waters off the south coast for asylum seekers crossing the Channel on small boats.

September has become the busiest month on record for migrant Channel crossings, while more than 6,500 have made the journey this year – more than three times the total in 2019. The sight of new arrivals, some in flimsy dinghies and using spades as oars, has become an almost daily occurrence.

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Home Office plans to evict thousands of refused asylum seekers

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People in England whose cases have been refused will be given 21 days to leave UK, letter states

Thousands of asylum seekers currently accommodated in hotels are facing removal from the UK, the Home Office has announced.

A letter from the Home Office, seen by the Independent, states that evictions of refused asylum seekers will take place “with immediate effect” and charities have reported an increase in people being held in immigration detention centres.

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Asylum seekers and lessons from history | Letters

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Paul Secher on the refugees housed in an army barracks on the outskirts of Sandwich in 1939, Rachel A Elliott on the judge who stopped the expulsion of 20 asylum seekers on a charter flight, and David Edwards Hulme on the origins of the boat name Speedwell

There is an interesting parallel to the proposal to house 400 asylum seekers in a disused army barracks in Folkestone, about which the local Conservative MP, Damian Collins, and district councillors have registered their protest with the home secretary (Former Kent barracks to house asylum seekers who arrived by boat, 15 September).

In the summer of 1939, some 4,000 refugees, also mainly men in their 20s and 30s (including my father and uncle), were housed in the derelict Kitchener Camp army barracks on the outskirts of nearby Sandwich. Similar objections were raised by some local politicians to the imminent arrival of so many foreigners, mainly from Germany and Austria. While the influx could have overwhelmed the small Kentish town with a population of just 3,500, they were largely welcomed – to the benefit of both the refugees and the local community.
Paul Secher
London

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UK judge halts Home Office flight to remove asylum seekers

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Lawyers argue group of up to 20 people will be left destitute in Spain if deported

A senior high court judge has halted a charter flight hours before up to 20 asylum seekers who crossed the Channel to the UK in small boats were due to be forcibly removed to Spain, a country they had previously passed through.

The judge, Sir Duncan Ouseley, ordered the flight to be grounded because of concerns that the asylum seekers due to fly might be left destitute in the streets of Madrid, as happened to another group earlier this month.

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Boat migrants to be housed in former barracks in Kent

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Around 400 people to be housed in Kent as UK deals with record levels of arrivals crossing Channel

Migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats are to be housed in former military barracks while their asylum claims are processed, it has emerged.

Around 400 people including families are to be housed in temporary accommodation at Napier Barracks near Folkestone, Kent, from 21 September, MP Damian Collins said.

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Boris Johnson agrees to help father of Mercy Baguma’s child stay in UK

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PM pressed to help resolve asylum application for child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer

Boris Johnson has agreed to intervene in the case of Mercy Baguma, who was found dead in a flat in Glasgow two weeks ago next to her distressed one-year-old son.

Johnson was pressed by the Scottish National party MP David Linden at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday to arrange an urgent meeting with the home secretary to resolve the asylum application that has been pending for the child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer.

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Woman who helped deported Syrians ‘ashamed of UK government’

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Barbara Pomfret came to aid of group left homeless in Madrid after forced removal from UK

A British woman living in Spain who helped 11 Syrian asylum seekers who were left homeless and hungry on the streets of Madrid after being forcibly removed from the UK has said she is ashamed of the UK government’s behaviour.

The all-male group were left destitute after being put on a flight to Madrid by the Home Office last week. They had arrived in the UK in small boats from Calais and are part of a Home Office plan to remove almost 1,000 such arrivals.

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Wolverhampton marks life of Windrush campaigner Paulette Wilson

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Hundreds gather for funeral of high-profile, outspoken victim of government’s hostile environment

Hundreds of people gathered in a Wolverhampton carpark for the funeral of the Windrush campaigner Paulette Wilson, one of the most high-profile and outspoken victims of the government’s hostile environment who died unexpectedly in July, aged 64.

A horsedrawn carriage brought her body to the New Testament Church of God, where Wilson had volunteered for years as a chef cooking food for the local homeless community. The two grey horses pulling the coffin wore red, green, black and yellow headdresses, marking her Jamaican and Rastafarian roots.

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Brexit: EU rejects UK proposal for reuniting child asylum seekers

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Warning that lack of agreement means more young people will risk lives crossing Channel

The EU has rejected a British proposal for a system to reunite children seeking asylum with their families in the UK or Europe, prompting warnings that more young people will risk their lives in dangerous Channel crossings.

The government had proposed a post-Brexit agreement to continue transfers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers to families living in either the UK or EU, although with no obligation on either side.

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Hostile environment has fostered racism and caused poverty, report finds

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Policy has failed in its main objective of encouraging more migrants to leave UK voluntarily, says IPPR

The “hostile environment” policy has fostered racism, pushed people into destitution and wrongly targeted people who are living in the UK legally, a study has concluded.

The measures formally introduced by Theresa May while she was home secretary have also failed to achieve their key objective of increasing the numbers of people choosing voluntarily to leave the UK, according to the report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

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‘I had to stand up’: young refugees learn to take on MPs and the UK media

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The voices of young asylum seekers have been absent from the debate over their futures – until a charity decided to teach them public speaking

Naqeeb, a 20-year old refugee from Afghanistan, has watched with increasing dismay the reaction of politicians and journalists to the people who are risking their lives attempting to reach the UK across the Channel.

Among those packed aboard flimsy dinghies are teenagers and children travelling alone: more than 400 unaccompanied minors have attempted to cross from France to England by sea this year.

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Sons must leave UK after boat crossing but father stays after flight arrival

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Asylum claims all based on risk to life in Yemen but three sons to be sent to Spain leaving father in UK

Three members of the same family who arrived in the UK in a small boat have been locked up in an immigration detention centre while a fourth member has escaped incarceration because he arrived in the UK by plane.

The family, who have asked to be referred to by their first names only, are from war-torn Yemen. They had been living in a Gulf state but when that country revoked their residency permits they were forced to flee.

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Are asylum seekers really living in luxury hotels? – Q&A

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Far-right activists have claimed falsely that refugees are given £40 a week and are displacing homeless veterans

Are asylum seekers living in luxury hotels, as the far right claims?

The quality of hotel accommodation varies. Most rooms are in budget hotels, which are being used during the pandemic because social distancing is not possible in accommodation the Home Office usually uses, especially those that have several beds or bunkbeds in one room.

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