Poll finds 90% of EU citizens in UK fear discrimination without evidence of rights after Brexit
The government is facing fresh calls to issue EU citizens with a physical document to prove they have the right to stay in the country after Brexit.
A report found nine out of 10 EU citizens in the UK would prefer a card over the digital evidence they have now to demonstrate their rights in future to employers, banks or landlords.
Continue reading...A few weeks ago, an old friend posted something on Facebook that stopped me in my tracks. He’s a GP, married to a teacher he met decades ago at university, with three children. They’re the sort of energetic, adventurous, public-spirited family who pitch in wherever help is needed and make me feel vaguely embarrassed about my own civic shortcomings. I have never known him be anything but laid-back, and although he’s originally Dutch, in theory he should have nothing to fear from Brexit: he has settled status, confirming the right to live and work here with his English wife and family after 31 January, just as before. But now he’s fearful. What if, the next time he needs to renew his passport for a family holiday, the computer says no? How can he be sure his life won’t unravel in some faceless official’s hands?
‘The despair is truly palpable now, and in some cases goes as far as suicidal thoughts'
Continue reading...Despite take-up by 2.7 million, alarm over numbers granted weaker pre-settled status
An estimated 900,000 EU citizens in the UK have yet to apply for settled status, which most will need to remain in the country long-term after Brexit.
The data comes a day after the European parliament raised concerns that EU citizens risked discrimination after Brexit in seeking housing and employment.
Continue reading...Commitment to reunite children with family members in UK to be removed from withdrawal bill
The Commons has rejected proposals to keep protections for child refugees in the redrafted EU withdrawal agreement bill, triggering dismay from campaigners.
Alf Dubs, the Labour peer who successfully campaigned for this protection for refugee children in 2016, said it was a “very depressing” development.
Continue reading...Legality of allowing Harare officials to interview those awaiting removal questioned
The Home Office faces a series of legal challenges over its decision to allow Zimbabwean government officials to interview people from the country who are seeking asylum in the UK.
The government was criticised earlier this year for working with the Zimbabwean state to accelerate the removal of asylum seekers after Robert Mugabe was forced from power, despite continuing human rights abuses in the country.
Continue reading...Campaigners criticise decision not to reveal data in algorithm that filters UK visa applications
Campaign groups have criticised the Home Office after it refused to release details of which countries are deemed a “risk” in an algorithm that filters UK visa applications.
Campaigners for immigrants’ rights were sent a fully redacted list of nations in different categories of “risk”, which were entirely blacked out, on a Home Office response to their legal challenge over the artificial intelligence programme.
Continue reading...Kent youth asylum seeker charity has seen a 50% rise in demand for its services since December 2018
Bridget Chapman, who swims regularly in the Channel, wasn’t surprised when desperate asylum seekers began travelling to the UK on small dinghy boats last year. On a clear day she can see France’s coastline from where she lives in Folkestone, Kent. “If you’re stuck in Calais and you can see the British coast quite clearly, it must be really tempting to think: I’ll just get a boat,” she said.
It has been a year since the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the increasing number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel a “major incident”, but boat arrivals are still a regular occurrence. On Boxing Day this year, more than 60 migrants were picked up while attempting to cross in small boats.
Continue reading...Most EU nationals living in the UK cannot vote – leaving many feeling like pawns in a political game
In a threadbare youth centre in Bradford, Vie Clerc, who got off a Eurostar from Paris 19 years ago with £50 in her pocket and never left, laments the irony. “It’s the first one I’ll actually be able to vote in,” she said. “Shame I’ve never felt less British.”
In a bright mezzanine office in Bristol, Denny Pencheva, who landed in 2013 from Bulgaria via Copenhagen and now teaches at the university, bemoans politicians “who use us to score their political points, but don’t actually have to consider us – because politically, we don’t count”.
Continue reading...As Britain braces itself for the Brexit endgame, leading poets – from Carol Ann Duffy to Andrew McMillan – take the pulse of our fragmenting world
From the collection Kin, Cinnamon Press, 2018
Continue reading...FoI reveals Home Office details on applications of EU citizens to stay in UK post-Brexit
Nine in 10 appeals brought by EU citizens who have challenged Home Office decisions about their right to stay in the UK post-Brexit have been successful, new data has revealed.
The Public Law Project (PLP), which obtained the figures, said the findings raised “a number of red flags” for EU citizens “seeking to make the UK their home”.
Continue reading...Roy Harrison, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged six, fighting deportation notice
A man caught in the Windrush scandal has resorted to sleeping in a freezing bin shed because the Home Office has not regularised his status and is trying to deport him.
Roy Harrison, 44, arrived in the UK as a six-year-old. He had been abandoned as a newborn in Jamaica by his mother and left on his grandmother’s doorstep.
Continue reading...Home Office unhappy with Foreign Office for potentially opening door to more Isis returnees
No other British children are expected to be repatriated from Syria in the foreseeable future, despite the announcement from the foreign secretary on Thursday that a small number of orphans who had been caught up in the conflict with Islamic State had been brought home.
Home Office officials view the repatriation of the children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as highly exceptional – and there is unhappiness with the Foreign Office for potentially opening the door to more Islamic State returnees.
Continue reading...Hubert Howard, a prominent Windrush victim, died recently without receiving compensation or a personal apology. Amelia Gentleman discusses his case. Plus: Polly Toynbee on the boldest Labour manifesto for a generation
Hubert Howard died on 12 November, three weeks after finally being granted British citizenship having arrived in London 59 years earlier. Howard spent much of the last two months of his life fighting for citizenship from his intensive care bed in hospital. He was granted it at the end of October when his lawyer informed the Home Office that he was critically ill and highlighted the urgency of his case.
Anushka Asthana talks about Howard’s life with the Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman, who recently met his friend Tyrone and his daughter Maresha and heard them describe the devastating impact his treatment by the Home Office had on his life. Amelia discusses why so many of the Windrush victims are still waiting for compensation and an apology from the government.
Continue reading...Twenty-five people reportedly found on ship travelling from the Netherlands to the UK
Dutch authorities have discovered 25 migrants stowed away inside a refrigerated container on a ferry bound for England.
According to a statement published on a local government website, all those found onboard were alive, with one of them thought to be a child.
Continue reading...Over 20 years, the debate about freedom of movement has become skewed by a hostile narrative. By Rachel Shabi
Few chance encounters have had a greater political impact than Gordon Brown’s fateful meeting with Gillian Duffy on an April morning in Rochdale in 2010. When the then prime minister was caught on a hot mic calling the Labour-voting pensioner a “bigoted woman” – after she cornered him with complaints about immigrants “flocking” into Britain – it did not just sink his floundering campaign. It set the tone for the way immigration would become the most toxic issue in British politics for the decade to come.
When New Labour came to power in 1997, just 3% of the public cited immigration as a key issue. By the time of the EU referendum in 2016, that figure was 48%. During those intervening years, the issue came to dominate and distort British politics – exactly according to the script established by Bigotgate. Brown’s gaffe both consolidated and gave credence to a political coding that would shape everything that came after: the “hostile environment”, the Windrush scandal, the EU referendum and the revival of Britain’s far right – deploying a narrative in which sneering, out-of-touch, big-city politicians who favour foreigners and open borders are hopelessly oblivious to the struggles and the so-called “legitimate concerns” of ordinary working people (who, in this scenario, are always white).
Continue reading...Uncertainty over UK citizens’ future status is prompting some European employers to steer clear
Past 40, and nearly five years after he arrived in Madrid, John Halliday is moving back to the UK and in with his parents. He had “nowhere else to go”, he says: Brexit had cost him his job and made other Spanish employers reluctant to hire Britons.
Related: Britons in Europe face citizens' rights 'lottery' in event of no deal
Continue reading...More people given temporary status as backlog of unresolved cases reaches half a million
The proportion of EU citizens being granted a temporary, more precarious “pre-settled status” in the UK has continued to rise, the latest Home Office statistics show, and the backlog of unresolved cases has grown to more than half a million, causing unease among campaign groups that support EU nationals living in Britain.
All of the estimated 3.4 million EU citizens resident in the UK must apply for settled status if they want to continue living here legally after Brexit. The latest EU settlement scheme statistics show that 590,300 people applied for settled status in October, bringing the total number of applications to 2,450,000.
Continue reading...Party leader has stressed benefits of immigration, but some fear policy could hurt Labour in Tory seats
Labour activists are urging Jeremy Corbyn to incorporate the radical pro-migration policy passed at the party’s conference into its manifesto this week as the Tories prepare to weaponise the issue in the election battle.
Senior Labour figures are expected to meet on Monday to thrash out the details of the party’s policy, but a final decision will not be made until next weekend.
Continue reading...Essex police refuse to confirm statuses of those who respond will not be given to Home Office
Essex police have refused to confirm they will not share data with the Home Office on the immigration status of anyone responding to recent public appeals for information on the deaths of 39 people in a lorry.
The force last week urged those who may have information to come forward “without fear”.
Continue reading...O’Neil Wallfall refused leave to remain for failing to show his life would be at risk in country he has never visited
A man caring for his terminally ill partner has been told he faces deportation from the UK to Jamaica because the Home Office concluded that he “failed to demonstrate that his life would be at risk in Iraq”.
O’Neil Wallfall, 49 – who has never been to Iraq – received a refusal letter that appeared to indicate his case had been confused with someone else’s. The government also said it would not be “unreasonable” or “unduly harsh” to expect his British partner, 56-year-old Karen McQueen, to relocate to Jamaica with him.
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