Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

There is no mass public revolt against globalisation | Joel Rogers de Waal

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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.

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Home Office investigated over English test cheating claims

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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”.

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UK-born baby of parents with right to remain given six-month tourist stamp

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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.

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Bureaucratic glitch: UK suspends visa enrolment for American citizens

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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.

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Couples face ‘insulting’ checks in sham marriage crackdown

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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.

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Man facing deportation from Britain to DRC wins another reprieve

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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.

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Man who fled to UK as child has deportation to DRC halted

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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.

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UK urged to end unfair fees for child citizenship applicants

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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.

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Europe’s south and east worry more about emigration than immigration – poll

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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).

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Foreign Office admits it doesn’t know fate of DRC returnees

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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.

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Home Office has utterly failed in immigration detention, MPs find

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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.

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Home Office apologises for failings that led to detention centre death

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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.

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Deportation for being single? This shows the real bigotry gay people face | Ben Smoke

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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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‘No, I’m a Londoner’: Top Boy’s Yann Demange on his tussle with identity in the US

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Filmmaker was born to French-Algerian parents and made his home, and his name, in multicultural London. But he never felt a sense of belonging. Then Hollywood called …

Where are you from? It’s a question I’ve always had a hard time with. And since moving to the US four years ago, I’m asked it on a regular basis. Maybe it’s the combination of a brownish face, London accent and French names that throws people off. Who knows? But this question, hearing it asked over and over these past few years, has forced me to confront unresolved questions I have about identity: how I grew up and how those experiences led me to being a director.

People tend to like things compartmentalised and simple, but it’s never been that simple for me. I’ve never had any sense of a “national identity” or, for that matter, a sense of belonging to any one tribe. I’m mixed race: French white mother, Algerian father. So “I’m a Londoner” is my standard go-to short response when the question comes up. That’s the simplest answer I feel comfortable giving without getting into it.

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Revealed: how Home Office hires out staff to hunt migrants

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Department criticised for ‘escalating hostile environment’ by selling officials’ services to firms

The Home Office is selling the services of its immigration officials to private companies in a move attacked as an escalation of the “hostile environment” strategy.

According to internal documents seen by the Observer, the department is attempting to embed immigration officers at a rate of almost £60 an hour as part of an “enhanced checking service” being offered to public services, understood to include NHS trusts and local authorities, as well as private firms.

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Valentine’s Day Tinder messages aim to stop deportations

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Activists will use bot to try to send information on migrants’ rights to airline passengers

Anti-deportation activists will be using a combination of Valentine’s Day and Tinder to lobby for migrants’ human rights.

Supporters will hand their accounts on the dating app over to a bot designed to teach airline passengers how to spot a deportation happening on their flight – and how to stop it.

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MPs and peers call for end to indefinite detention

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Joint committee on human rights says people should be held for no longer than 28 days

Indefinite detention in immigration centres is traumatic and the practice should be stopped, with people ideally held for no longer than 28 days, a parliamentary committee has recommended.

In a highly critical report, the joint committee on human rights (JCHR), made up of MPs and peers, described the UK’s immigration system as “slow, unfair and expensive to run”, and said detention should be authorised only by decision-makers independent of the Home Office.

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Last-minute legal moves save detainees from deportation flight to Jamaica

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Campaigners raise concerns about ‘ad hoc reprieves’ as 29 offenders are deported

Last-minute legal interventions have led to a number of detainees being removed from a deportation flight to Jamaica, but the Home Office said 29 others were onboard the chartered plane.

More than 50 foreign national offenders who were being held in detention centres were reported to be due to be placed on the flight. But many of them were able to have their removal cancelled after their lawyers took action.

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Man facing deportation to Jamaica set to win last-gasp reprieve

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Summons to spare Joseph Nembhard, 37, who came to UK from Caribbean as teenager

A man who came to the UK from the Caribbean as a teenager is set to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve from being placed on a deportation flight to Jamaica.

About 50 people are thought to have been booked on to Wednesday’s secretive charter flight, the first to Jamaica since the Home Office suspended the flights last April the Windrush scandal.

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MPs slam Android-only app for EU citizens to apply for settled UK status

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Labour MPs and MEPs call on home secretary Sajid Javid to act over ‘digital discrimination’

Seventy-one Labour MPs and MEPs have accused the Home Office of “digital discrimination” for creating an Android-only app for EU citizens to apply for settled status.

In an open letter to home secretary Sajid Javid, frontbenchers including Luke Pollard, shadow environment minister, and Paul Blomfield, shadow Brexit minister, say the system “flies in the face of fair treatment of EU nationals”.

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