Research shows government could make more than £5m by charging vulnerable children
The UK government could profit by more than £5m by charging children who have fled war-torn Syria to apply for British citizenship, according to research.
The revelation, based on the Home Office’s own data, has sparked accusations that the government is profiteering from vulnerable children and making a windfall profit by driving vulnerable families into debt.
Continue reading...Most people were still asleep on Christmas Day when Ameena landed in England. She remembers stumbling onto the Kent beach in total darkness, retching with sea sickness.
“When I arrived I was vomiting everywhere,” the teenager told the Observer during the first media interview with an unaccompanied child refugee who has entered the UK by boat.
Continue reading...Home Office releases Najat Ibrahim Ismail, an Iraqi Kurd who faced deportation three times
A man who brought his baby niece to the UK from a French refugee camp after she sustained serious burns has been released from detention and reunited with his family.
Najat Ibrahim Ismail, 32, an Iraqi Kurd, faced three attempts by the Home Office to put him on a plane to Iraq in recent weeks. He is married to a British woman, Emma Ismail, and has three young British children, including a 10-year-old son who has autism.
Continue reading...Home Office ‘did not have the expertise’ to check data used to accuse students of cheating
A government watchdog has criticised the Home Office for failing to protect students wrongly accused of cheating in an English language test that they were required to sit as part of a visa application process.
About 2,500 students have been forcibly removed from the UK after being accused of cheating in the exam and a further 7,200 left the country after being warned that they faced detention and removal if they stayed. Many have protested their innocence; 12,500 appeals have been heard in UK courts, and so far 3,600 people have won their appeals.
Continue reading...Azeem Wazir left Pakistan in 2015 over involvement in protest against blasphemy laws
A Christian man who has been living in Bristol for four years says he is at risk of being killed if he is deported to Pakistan after protesting against the country’s draconian blasphemy laws.
Azeem Wazir is being held in Colnbrook immigration removal centre near London, and may be deported as soon as Friday following his arrest last week.
Continue reading...Home Office figures revealed as immigration inspector calls for scheme to be improved
More than 600,000 EU citizens have already applied to stay in the UK post-Brexit, Home Office figures reveal.
But the settled status scheme for EU citizens seeking to remain has room for improvement, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI) in the UK has said.
Continue reading...Findings contradict assumption UK is more hostile than European neighbours
British people are more persuaded of the benefits of immigration than any other major European nation, according to a global survey, which has also found that almost half of Britons think immigrants are either positive or neutral for the country.
The YouGov–Cambridge Globalism survey found that 28% of Britons believed the benefits of immigration outweighed the costs, compared with 24% in Germany, 21% in France and 19% in Denmark. A further 20% of British people believed the costs and benefits were about equal, while 16% were not sure.
Continue reading...Survey of 23 countries has found surprisingly moderate attitudes on subjects such as immigration
Ever since the financial crisis swept through dozens of countries a decade ago, “globalisation” has become a dirty word – a creed of amoral liberalism under siege from the forces of populist public opinion.
So it might come as a surprise that a new survey of opinions in 23 of the world’s biggest countries uncovers a much more nuanced attitude towards the economic and social phenomenon that has shaped the world over the past 30 years.
Continue reading...National Audit Office acts as MPs warn scandal could be ‘bigger than Windrush’
A government watchdog has launched an investigation into the Home Office’s decision to accuse about 34,000 international students of cheating in English language tests, and will scrutinise the thinking behind the subsequent cancellation or curtailment of their visas.
More than 1,000 students have been removed from the UK as a result of the accusation and hundreds have spent time in detention, but large numbers of students say they were wrongly accused. Over 300 cases are pending in the court of appeal as hundreds attempt to clear their names. MPs have warned that this immigration scandal could be “bigger than Windrush”.
Continue reading...Father Charles Kriel and mother Katharina Viken were returning to UK from holiday in Florida
A baby born in the UK to two parents who have indefinite leave to remain in Britain has been denied the right to live in the country in what a human rights lawyer has described as a potentially unlawful move.
Dr Charles Kriel, a US national and special adviser to a parliamentary select committee, said he was returning to the UK from a holiday in Florida with his fiancee, Katharina Viken, and their baby daughter was denied entry. The child was eventually given a six-month tourist stamp to enter the country.
Continue reading...Americans applying for work, study or settlement visas have been turned away because of a ‘technical issue’, Home Office says
Biometric enrolment for American citizens seeking to move to the UK has been suspended for more than two weeks because the British government missed a payment to the Department of Homeland Security, according to sources familiar with the bureaucratic glitch.
Americans applying for work, study or settlement visas have been turned away from application support centres in the US which take the necessary fingerprints and photographs because of the suspension in service. Foreign nationals applying from the US were also affected.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Home Office investigators accused of demanding intimate sexual details and halting genuine weddings
Genuine couples are being prevented from getting married and are subjected to “insulting” and “gruelling” checks as part of a government crackdown on sham marriages, a Guardian investigation has found.
Couples and lawyers described wedding ceremonies being interrupted so that the Home Office could question people about their sex lives, an official finding a nude picture on a person’s phone and showing it to others in the room, and dawn raids carried out to check if couples were sharing a bed.
Continue reading...Habib Bazaboko, who has lived in the UK since childhood, was due to fly on Friday
A judge has halted the removal of a man who has lived in the UK since childhood just hours before he was due to be deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. It is the second time he has been within hours of deportation within a week.
Habib Bazaboko, 39, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He witnessed the murder and was left deeply traumatised.
Continue reading...Habib Bazaboko is returned to removal centre instead of boarding a flight at Heathrow in apparent U-turn by Home Office
A man who has lived in the UK since childhood and was due to be deported on Saturday on a 6.55pm flight to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, has been given an eleventh-hour stay of execution.
Habib Bazaboko, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He has previous convictions, including for grievous bodily harm, but has not committed any crime for nine years.
Continue reading...Home Office should also refund fees from failed requests, says immigration watchdog
The Home Office should consider scrapping controversial immigration fees charged to children from families who can’t afford it and refund profits made from failed citizenship applications, according to an official watchdog.
The call came as it emerged on Thursday that the Home Office is making a profit of £2m a month from charging children for citizenship, with about 40,000 estimated to be affected in the past year.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Survey of 14 countries show some Europeans now favour “emigration controls”
Southern and eastern European countries are more concerned about emigration than immigration, according to a wide-ranging survey of attitudes in 14 EU countries.
In Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania, six countries where population levels are either flatlining or falling sharply, more citizens said emigration was a worry than immigration, according to the poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Continue reading...Internal emails show Home Office asking colleagues to confirm they are not aware of persecutions
Home Office officials have been trying to persuade their Foreign Office colleagues to say publicly that it is safe to return people to the Democratic Republic of Congo despite the country having one of the worst human rights records in the world.
Internal emails obtained by the human rights organisation Justice First, and seen by the Guardian, show Home Office officials requesting that their British embassy colleagues in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, issue a statement saying they have no information that people are being persecuted after returning from the UK to the DRC.
Continue reading...Irresponsibility led to people being wrongly detained, committee chair says
The Home Office approach to immigration detention is careless and cavalier and has led to people being wrongfully detained, an influential parliamentary committee has concluded.
The home affairs select committee said in a scathing report that the department had overseen serious failings in almost every area of the immigration detention process.
Continue reading...Officials admit shortcomings at inquest into death of man who was killed by another detainee
A senior Home Office official has repeatedly apologised for shortcomings that led to the killing of a “gentle and polite” man in immigration detention, at an inquest into his death.
West London coroner’s court is exploring the role of the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, health professionals and detention centre subcontractors in the death of Tarek Chowdhury, from Bangladesh. The 64-year-old was killed by Zana Assad Yusif, 33, from Iraq, at Colnbrook immigration removal centre near Heathrow in December 2016.
Continue reading...Yew Fook Sam’s case exposes the endemic culture of xenophobia that goes unchallenged in the Home Office
Last week, it was revealed that a 67-year-old man faces deportation to Malaysia because Home Office officials, and a tribunal judge, refuse to believe he is gay. Yew Fook Sam, known as Sam, came out two years ago and spent 10 months in Harmondsworth immigration removal centre. He arrived in the UK in 2005 after his wife found out he had been having sex with ladyboys in Thailand and left him.
The Home Office has suggested the fact that Sam does not have a boyfriend raises suspicions about the legitimacy of his asylum claim, leading to a rejection of his claim. His lack of sexual partners lent weight to their suspicions.
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