Group including teenagers Walid and Mustafa will be reunited with relatives after grim odyssey
Until last week, Walid and Mustafa had never met. Owing to their disparate backgrounds, they might not have had anything in common, bar their age: both turned 18 this year.
But the fresh-faced, bright-eyed teenagers have been brought together by a common desire to escape danger in their respective homelands – Syria and Somalia – and rebuild lives shattered by war.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Greek PM intervenes to help 50 asylum seekers reach UK despite ban on direct flights
An unprecedented family reunion rescue flight is due to leave Athens, bringing 52 vulnerable migrants, including several minors, to join family in the UK.
The flight on Monday is the result of intense efforts by refugee families in the UK with the support of campaign group Safe Passage and the peer Alf Dubs. It was organised with collaboration from the UK and Greek governments after direct flights between Greece and the UK were suspended in March.
Continue reading...Firm stops allowances of hundreds of people after telling them to pack up their flats with an hour’s notice
Hundreds of asylum seekers in Glasgow have been given less than an hour’s notice to pack up their flats before being moved into city centre hotels, where they claim social distancing is “impossible”.
They have also had all financial support withdrawn, apparently because the hotels provide three meals a day, basic toiletries and a laundry service, in a move condemned by campaigners.
Continue reading...Government close to target figure, but researchers still fear citizens may be missed out
The Home Office has received 3.4m applications from people seeking to stay in the UK after Brexit under the EU settled status scheme.
It puts the government close to its overall goal for the scheme, with estimates of the number of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens eligible to remain in the country lying between 3.4 million and 3.8 million.
Continue reading...Home Office urged to ‘act urgently’ to rescue vulnerable minors and reunite them with family while flights still available
After seven months of waiting, Ahmed* had everything ready for his younger brother. Finally, 18-year-old Wahid was due to arrive from the Greek island of Samos under family reunion laws.
But on 19 March, as Covid-19 took hold across Europe, the Greek authorities called to tell him the transfer had been cancelled because of the growing restrictions on flights. Greece had suspended direct flights to the UK but indirect routes are still available.
Continue reading...Key questions around the government’s plan to rescue 300,000 stranded Britons
The government has announced a £75m rescue mission to repatriate an estimated 300,000 British stranded abroad because of the coronavirus outbreak. How will this work and who will be selected for a flight home?
Continue reading...Campaigners urge government to replace settled status process with guaranteed ‘right to stay’
Campaigners fear that EU citizens who have made their homes in the UK are at risk of becoming illegal as the government diverts resources to fight coronavirus.
Under current rules, all EU citizens have until June 2021 to apply for settled status. However, there are concerns that the pandemic will mean that the government support available to help EU citizens will reduce, and public awareness campaigns, designed to reach the most vulnerable people and those without an online presence, will be delayed.
Continue reading...Alliance of 16 anti-racism groups says report on scandal proves ‘institutional failures to understand racism’
An investigation into the extent of institutional racism within the Home Office must be launched in response to a damning report on the Windrush scandal, an alliance of anti-racism groups has urged.
The call came after the long-awaited publication of the independent inquiry into the government’s handling of the scandal, which saw British citizens wrongly deported, dismissed from their jobs and deprived of services such as NHS care.
Continue reading...Critics fear hard-hitting report on scandal will be buried amid coronavirus crisis
Wholesale reform of a “reckless” and “defensive” Home Office is expected to be recommended in a hard-hitting review into the causes of the Windrush scandal when it is released by the home secretary on Thursday.
The Windrush Lessons Learned review is expected to criticise Home Office staff and government ministers for their continued failure to admit the magnitude of their mistakes and the scale of damage inflicted on thousands of legal UK residents who were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants, with catastrophic results.
Continue reading...As the report on the Home Office scandal is finally published, we revisit the victims’ stories
‘They made me feel like I’m not British’
Continue reading...Wave of anti-migrant violence has left refugees without food and medical care – and more vulnerable to disease than ever before
News of a confirmed case of Covid-19 on Lesbos has sparked fears of the impact of an outbreak at the overcrowded Moria refugee camp, where refugees live in dire conditions with appalling hygiene and little medical care.
The troubling conditions in the camp have worsened this week, and tensions on the island have seen several NGOs forced to reduce or close services over safety fears.
Continue reading...Ilaitia Cokanasiga, who was prevented from watching his son Joe play in the World Cup last year, says he feels betrayed
A former British army sergeant whose two sons are English rugby internationals is stuck in Fiji, prevented by immigration rules from returning to the UK to rejoin his wife as she undergoes cancer treatment.
Ilaitia Cokanasiga, who over almost 14 years in the armed forces served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, told the Guardian that his immigration difficulties had stopped him from travelling to see his 22-year-old son, Joe Cokanasiga, play for England in the World Cup in Japan last year. He is devastated at being stranded 10,000 miles away from his family, unable to support his wife as she waits for an operation on a brain tumour.
Continue reading...It has been two years since the government apologised for the scandal and promised to rectify the injustices. Yet those affected are still being failed by the Home Office - with some still destitute
It requires a military level of discipline to live most of your life in Heathrow airport. Gbolagade Ibukun-Oluwa, 59, has been homeless since 2008 and for the past five years has developed a routine that sees him spending several nights a week in the cafes just outside the departures area. He arrives between 11pm and 1am, as day staff are replaced by the night shift, rotating between a Caffè Nero in Terminal 4 and a Costa coffee shop in Terminal 5, where the workers know him and offer him a cup of hot water. If flights have been cancelled and the cafes are very busy, he takes a bus to a 24-hour McDonald’s on the airport slip road, and waits there until dawn, occasionally managing to sleep for an hour or two in his wheelchair.
In the past, Heathrow security have been hostile, calling the police, who would put him in a van and drive him beyond the airport perimeter, where they would drop him and tell him: “If we ever see you there again, you’re in big trouble.” But that aggressive approach has stopped, and mostly he is ignored by passengers and staff; at a glance he looks like any other traveller, his belongings tidily packed into a few bags. “I have a routine to arrive as late as possible and to move on as early as possible,” he says. “They don’t bother me. They’re used to people waiting all night for a flight.” For all the hassle, the airport is at least warm and safe.
Continue reading...Government says it will support Greece as thousands of people arrive at Turkish border
The German government – anxious about the political consequences of a “repeat of 2015” – is tolerating Greece’s decision to suspend asylum claims at its borders and has launched a social media campaign to deter Syrian refugees from embarking on a journey to central Europe.
About 12,500 people are estimated to be waiting on the Turkish side of the Greek border after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Saturday that he would open his country’s borders for refugees fleeing the nine-year war in Syria to cross over into Europe.
Continue reading...Prince Fosu, 31, died of hypothermia, dehydration and malnutrition in cell
Neglect and a series of gross failures by the Home Office and other agencies contributed to the death of a vulnerable Ghanaian man from hypothermia, dehydration and malnutrition, an inquest jury has found.
In a damning narrative conclusion, the jury found that Prince Fosu, a car parts dealer, had died suddenly after developing these conditions while he was suffering from psychotic illness.
Continue reading...Bloc’s first UK ambassador says right to remain for many vulnerable Europeans must be protected
Prisoners and members of the Roma community, along with elderly people and the poorest in society, will be the focus of a new EU push to help Europeans “outside the mainstream” to remain in the UK after Brexit.
There are concerns that thousands of EU nationals will fail to apply to the Home Office to stay because they lack information or the means to see the digital application process through.
Continue reading...When Dr Nazia Hussein spent six months researching class and gender identity in Bangladesh for her PhD at Warwick University in 2009, she had no idea that, a decade later, the Home Office would use this to refuse her application for permanent residency.
Hussein, a Bangladeshi expert on gender, race and religion, now a lecturer at the University of Bristol, was “absolutely shocked” when her application for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) was rejected last year on the grounds that she had spent too many days out of the country during the 10-year application period. This was despite the fact she had submitted clear evidence that her PhD research constituted essential fieldwork and an unavoidable and legitimate absence.
Continue reading...Shohreh Bayat warned after images circulated appearing to show her without a headscarf at Shanghai tournament
A chess referee from Iran has fled to the UK after being warned that she could be arrested for being in breach of Iran’s strict dress codes during an international tournament in China.
Shohreh Bayat, 32, has sought asylum in Britain after a photograph of her at the women’s world chess championships in Shanghai last month was circulated on social media. It appeared to show her without a headscarf, although she has insisted the scarf was in place but loose over her hair.
Continue reading...Police say one migrant was charged $22,000 before being taken to China, France and then the UK
Police in Vietnam have charged seven people in connection with the deaths of 39 migrants whose bodies were discovered in the back of a lorry in the UK in 2019, authorities said late on Thursday.
The victims, who included two 15-year-old boys, were mostly from two provinces in north-central Vietnam, where poor job prospects, encouragement by authorities, smuggling gangs and environmental issues have fuelled migration.
Continue reading...Lawyers say suspected victims of trafficking have not received ‘adequate access to justice’
The Home Office is planning to deport vulnerable asylum seekers and suspected victims of trafficking on a new charter flight on Thursday, the Guardian has learned.
The flight will be going to Switzerland, Germany and Austria under Dublin Convention legislation, EU rules which require asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe EU country they arrive in and not move from one to another.
Continue reading...