Denis McShane, the very man that wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian last week calling for 'A non-toxic immigration debate', "one that must be reported sensitively, not sensationally", has just called on Iraqi asylum seekers in the UK to 'go home'. "The successful election that has just been held in Iraq suggests that we may now be moving towards a more stable Iraq. Yes, there will be violence and explosions but the British Isles have known plenty of those in the past 30 or 40 years."
So we are talking about a country where there are currently 3.5 deaths a day from gunfire/executions and 6 per day from suicide/vehicle bombs, and where 91 people have died in the past 7 days (22-28 March) from terrorist/insurgent violence are we? Or are we talking about the British Isles where 52 people have died from terrorist/insurgent violence in the past decade? Or the 800 or so killed in the UK since 1970 (including deaths in Northern Ireland and the Lockerbie bombing)? This is about a sixth of the total civilian deaths in Iraq for the whole of 2009 (4,644).
Is this really the sort of "sensitivity and balance" that he claims he wishes to see in the immigration debate?
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
The Keystone Immigration Cops
On the same day that Gordon Brown tries to get across his oxymoronic idea of a 'fair' immigration system, comes the news that the attempt on Monday to deport Vincent Onwubiko, a disabled asylum seeker who had represented Team GB as a (five) gold medal-winning Paralympic weightlifter, failed because the four security guards and one immigration officer assigned to escort him from Colnbrook IRC to Lagos, Nigeria.
Given that he is a wheelchair-bound polio victim, one would have thought that 4 security guards was a bit excessive, but they managed to carry him out to the waiting van and drive off to Heathrow Airport. However, the five escorts singularly forgot to bring along Mr Onwubiko's wheelchair! Speaking to the Independent, Mr Onwubiko said: "When we got to the airport, they realised that they didn't have my wheelchair. Then they had this discussion about whether it was going to be safe for them to lift me on to the plane and escort me back to Lagos where I would have to fend for myself without a wheelchair."
"One of them was a medic and they said it wouldn't be right to send me back without a wheelchair – so they drove me all the way back to Colnbrook. I was very relieved because the idea of having to make my way out of Lagos without a wheelchair was very frightening."
As with many of these types of cases, it also emerged that Mr Onwubiko was being deported despite still having an appeal on his immigration status waiting to be heard by the High Court. However, his case is not due to be heard until sometime in the summer and the Home Office consider it expedient to deport people in situations such as this despite the full legal process not having been exhausted. Saves money you see, and people can always return to the UK if their court cases are successful, assuming that is that they are still alive and can raise the air fare.
Given that he is a wheelchair-bound polio victim, one would have thought that 4 security guards was a bit excessive, but they managed to carry him out to the waiting van and drive off to Heathrow Airport. However, the five escorts singularly forgot to bring along Mr Onwubiko's wheelchair! Speaking to the Independent, Mr Onwubiko said: "When we got to the airport, they realised that they didn't have my wheelchair. Then they had this discussion about whether it was going to be safe for them to lift me on to the plane and escort me back to Lagos where I would have to fend for myself without a wheelchair."
"One of them was a medic and they said it wouldn't be right to send me back without a wheelchair – so they drove me all the way back to Colnbrook. I was very relieved because the idea of having to make my way out of Lagos without a wheelchair was very frightening."
As with many of these types of cases, it also emerged that Mr Onwubiko was being deported despite still having an appeal on his immigration status waiting to be heard by the High Court. However, his case is not due to be heard until sometime in the summer and the Home Office consider it expedient to deport people in situations such as this despite the full legal process not having been exhausted. Saves money you see, and people can always return to the UK if their court cases are successful, assuming that is that they are still alive and can raise the air fare.
'Illegal Immigrant' Stole My Shed (Again)
Oh dear, the Daily Fail has come out with yet another 'illegal immigrants stole my shed' story. This one features a Romanian (sorry, a Romanian immigrant) who moved into the Newman's shed in Bromley, making himself 'at home' using "the garden hose to wash himself before bedding down on one of the sun loungers in the shed, using a sheet to protect the fabric" and "thoughtfully put(ting) his rubbish into the correct recycling boxes." [At least they give him some credit for being 'shed-trained'.]
The Newman's apparently then "took the 26-year-old immigrant to the police station, where officers put him on bail for a public order offence and ordered him not to return to the shed." Which kind of disproves the Mail's previous moan about the police being powerless to intervene in such cases, though exactly how the Romanian was held to have committed an offence under (we assume) Section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986* is not apparent.
We have not actually seen the hard copy version of this story, but in the on-line one the Mail went out of its way to both inflate this inane piece of flummery (though not to the extent of turning it into a front page one as it did today with 'Pet shop owner fined £1,000 and told to wear an electronic tag... for selling a GOLDFISH to a boy aged 14') and pad it out with two rather large and almost identical photos of the Newman siblings outside the shed in question, a bad cartoon on the subject and references to a couple in Kempston, Bedfordshire, who "found two Polish men in their shed and claimed they tried to eat their daughter's rabbit"**, the Peterborough shed 'outrage' and the Northampton 'Homeowner who forgot his wallet returns to find Romanian family moving in in scene from 'Dickensian times'' [related post].
The final word goes to Tilly Newman, 22, (an accountant we are helpfully told), "I'm not sure what he wants." Surely it is blindingly obvious? A roof over his head, however "on the damp side and popular with several species of spider" it is.
* Persistent use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour intending to and causing harassment, alarm or distress.
** A story the Mail must have been kicking itself for missing out on turning into a special 8 page full colour commemorative pull-out supplement.
The Newman's apparently then "took the 26-year-old immigrant to the police station, where officers put him on bail for a public order offence and ordered him not to return to the shed." Which kind of disproves the Mail's previous moan about the police being powerless to intervene in such cases, though exactly how the Romanian was held to have committed an offence under (we assume) Section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986* is not apparent.
We have not actually seen the hard copy version of this story, but in the on-line one the Mail went out of its way to both inflate this inane piece of flummery (though not to the extent of turning it into a front page one as it did today with 'Pet shop owner fined £1,000 and told to wear an electronic tag... for selling a GOLDFISH to a boy aged 14') and pad it out with two rather large and almost identical photos of the Newman siblings outside the shed in question, a bad cartoon on the subject and references to a couple in Kempston, Bedfordshire, who "found two Polish men in their shed and claimed they tried to eat their daughter's rabbit"**, the Peterborough shed 'outrage' and the Northampton 'Homeowner who forgot his wallet returns to find Romanian family moving in in scene from 'Dickensian times'' [related post].
The final word goes to Tilly Newman, 22, (an accountant we are helpfully told), "I'm not sure what he wants." Surely it is blindingly obvious? A roof over his head, however "on the damp side and popular with several species of spider" it is.
* Persistent use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour intending to and causing harassment, alarm or distress.
** A story the Mail must have been kicking itself for missing out on turning into a special 8 page full colour commemorative pull-out supplement.
Riot In Rome Detention Centre Last Night
At 11pm last night in the Ponte Galeria CIE (immigration detention centre) in Rome a riot broke out in the men's section, with mattresses being burnt and two huge fires started. Some of the detainees managed to make it on to the roof, while others broke through three or four doors and reached the outer fence. Riot police quickly arrived at the detention centre in large numbers and gunshots were heard around 1:20am.
The riot itself is believed to have caused around €200,000 worth of damage, with the water and electrical systems put out of order and extensive fire damage to the infirmary. Four people are also believed to have escaped during the disturbance. Once the police had regained control, the male detainees were locked in the dining area, where 17 people identified, via CCTV, as having taken part in the disturbance, were arrested. They are due in court for summary trial today. Around sixty of the remaining inmates were also moved to other detention centres.
We reported earlier on this month about the aftermath of the handover of control of the Ponte Galeria detention centre by the Red Cross to a private company Auxilium. Since then conditions have deteriorated and there have been a number of hunger strikes, disturbances, incidences of self-harm and increasing levels of brutalisation of the detainees. The policy has become one of cost-cutting, mass forced medication with tranquillisers in the food and drink, with the inmates, many of whom already have existing medical and health problems or suffer from alcohol and drug addictions, with little or nothing to do but lie around in a drug-induced stupor all day. The women's section of the prison is particularly badly affected by the mass forced medication, with a resulting epidemic of depression amongst the female detainees.
Many of these detainees have already languished in the system for months or even years. Now they have even less chance of a 'fair' hearing as the internal regime is mirroring the rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in wider society. All forms of resistance are met with excessive force, detainees are beaten so hard that most of their teeth are broken, people swallow razor blades to try and escape the misery, even if it is via a trip to hospital.
Aullium's response is to deny even this form of respite (they claim the detainees might escape). Instead, they have seized anything that might be used as a method of self-harm; lighter and matches have been confiscated - they might be used to start fires, and items like shampoo, soap and aftershave are only available in small quantities from the Auxillium shop (though, bizarrely, the shop continues to sell matches!) - less chance that they are used to self-harm and it maximises Auxilliun's profits if they try to stockpile them for such an attempt. There is method in their madness.
This morning, from 8.30, there is due to be a protest in the square in front the Court in Rome where the Ponte Galeria detainees are likely to appear.
For more information, check out the Italian language sites/blogs: Radio Onda Rossa, Noinonsiamocomplici & Macerie.
The riot itself is believed to have caused around €200,000 worth of damage, with the water and electrical systems put out of order and extensive fire damage to the infirmary. Four people are also believed to have escaped during the disturbance. Once the police had regained control, the male detainees were locked in the dining area, where 17 people identified, via CCTV, as having taken part in the disturbance, were arrested. They are due in court for summary trial today. Around sixty of the remaining inmates were also moved to other detention centres.
We reported earlier on this month about the aftermath of the handover of control of the Ponte Galeria detention centre by the Red Cross to a private company Auxilium. Since then conditions have deteriorated and there have been a number of hunger strikes, disturbances, incidences of self-harm and increasing levels of brutalisation of the detainees. The policy has become one of cost-cutting, mass forced medication with tranquillisers in the food and drink, with the inmates, many of whom already have existing medical and health problems or suffer from alcohol and drug addictions, with little or nothing to do but lie around in a drug-induced stupor all day. The women's section of the prison is particularly badly affected by the mass forced medication, with a resulting epidemic of depression amongst the female detainees.
Many of these detainees have already languished in the system for months or even years. Now they have even less chance of a 'fair' hearing as the internal regime is mirroring the rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in wider society. All forms of resistance are met with excessive force, detainees are beaten so hard that most of their teeth are broken, people swallow razor blades to try and escape the misery, even if it is via a trip to hospital.
Aullium's response is to deny even this form of respite (they claim the detainees might escape). Instead, they have seized anything that might be used as a method of self-harm; lighter and matches have been confiscated - they might be used to start fires, and items like shampoo, soap and aftershave are only available in small quantities from the Auxillium shop (though, bizarrely, the shop continues to sell matches!) - less chance that they are used to self-harm and it maximises Auxilliun's profits if they try to stockpile them for such an attempt. There is method in their madness.
This morning, from 8.30, there is due to be a protest in the square in front the Court in Rome where the Ponte Galeria detainees are likely to appear.
For more information, check out the Italian language sites/blogs: Radio Onda Rossa, Noinonsiamocomplici & Macerie.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Locked, Loaded And Ready No More / ICEd UP
Many of you will have heard of the Minutemen, mostly retired Americans who sit around in the Arizona desert under their gazebos cradling their proudly held legal firearms chatting away to each other on walkie-talkies and fantasising over what they would do if some poor Latino crossing the US-Mexico border hoved into view over the horizon. Well, the president of the Minutemen, or at least the version called the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Inc. (MCDC),* Carmen Mercer and her fellow directors have decided to disband the group. It seems that some of her followers have taken her call to come to the border "locked, loaded, and ready" too much to heart. That, and the escalating nastiness of the Tea Party movement, whose members' racial and homophobic abuse of US lawmakers at the recent health care vote, seem to have forced her hand.
"The mental attitude of many Americans is turning meaner … and we are concerned that this could cause problems. You see aggression surfacing even at the tea party marches. We just did not want to deal with the liability anymore," Carmen Mercer is quoted as saying. Maybe she was thinking about Shawna Forde, a Minuteman activist who was found guilt with 2 others of forcing her way into an Arizona house dressed in Police uniforms and shooting dead a Hispanic man, his 9 year old daughter and wounding the girl's mother. And that was well before this latest call to arms.
One would have thought that for an organisation that once had about 12,000 members, her call for more volunteers on the 16 March to "return to the border locked, loaded and ready to stop each and every individual we encounter along the frontier that is now more dangerous than the frontier of Afghanistan,"** smacks of an act of desperation as their numbers dwindled with the explosion of Tea Party groups. And where it leaves the organisation's fight against any immigration amnesty, an amnesty that she claims "lawmakers in Washington have pushed down our throats", only time will tell, especially as recent surveys have sometimes swung between the usually quoted 70% against to 70% in favour of said amnesty. Interestingly, the Washington branch of the MCDC will continue it's rearguard operation against any amnesty, no doubt hoping to enlist Tea Party racism to its cause.
* The Minuteman Project (MMP) was founded in 2005 but quickly split into 2 groups, the new one being called the Civil Homeland Defense patrol group, subsequently renamed the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Inc. Both operated in Arizona but the MCDC also sanctioned a New Mexico Minuteman group.
** Another prime quote was, "You are strongly encouraged to exercise your rights and duty as an American citizen to carry a long arm and if challenged use it to defend the United States of America."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other US immigration news, and against the backdrop of newly imposed quotas placed on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to deport more 'illegal' migrants and try and reverse the steep fall in numbers of removals, which runs counter to the Obama administrations public pronouncements that it should focus primarily of so-called 'foreign national criminals, a further aspect of US immigration policy (or the lack of it) has recently been highlighted.
A lawsuit was filed last Friday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers on behalf of two disabled migrants who have been held in detention for more than 4 years. The lawsuits allege that the two men, Jose Antonio Franco, who suffers from severe learning disabilities and is the son of two legal permanent US residents, and Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez, a legal permanent resident and who is a paranoid schizophrenic, have been held for more than four years in various immigration prisons in violation of the right to freedom from indefinite detention and the right to a fair hearing to contest the basis for that detention.
According to Sarah Mehta, Aryeh Neier fellow with Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, who has been investigating ICE's treatment of the mentally disabled for the past eight months in preparation for a forthcoming HRW report, these cases are not unusual as ICE have no policies or procedures in place for dealing with these types of cases and the victims end up languishing in the system in a state of limbo.
Interestingly, this comes at almost exactly the same time as the release of a report entitled 'Justice for Immigration's Hidden Population' by Texas Appleseed, a public interest law centre. It is based on a year-long study of the fate of the mentally disabled in immigration detention in Texas, where 29% of all detainees are held while the US government tries to deport them.
One of the cases highlighted in the report is that of a 50 year old legal permanent US resident with schizophrenia, who had lived in New York since 1974. Last November, a New York criminal court declared him incompetent to stand trial on a trespass charge and ordered him to serve 90 days in a mental institution. Instead, he was transferred to a detention facility in South Texas, to face a deportation proceeding without legal counsel. So abrupt was this, that his family and lawyer did not know it had happened. At the detention centre, he received no medication for weeks, and in March, he was deported to the Dominican Republic to, as his family fear, probably die on the streets.
"The mental attitude of many Americans is turning meaner … and we are concerned that this could cause problems. You see aggression surfacing even at the tea party marches. We just did not want to deal with the liability anymore," Carmen Mercer is quoted as saying. Maybe she was thinking about Shawna Forde, a Minuteman activist who was found guilt with 2 others of forcing her way into an Arizona house dressed in Police uniforms and shooting dead a Hispanic man, his 9 year old daughter and wounding the girl's mother. And that was well before this latest call to arms.
One would have thought that for an organisation that once had about 12,000 members, her call for more volunteers on the 16 March to "return to the border locked, loaded and ready to stop each and every individual we encounter along the frontier that is now more dangerous than the frontier of Afghanistan,"** smacks of an act of desperation as their numbers dwindled with the explosion of Tea Party groups. And where it leaves the organisation's fight against any immigration amnesty, an amnesty that she claims "lawmakers in Washington have pushed down our throats", only time will tell, especially as recent surveys have sometimes swung between the usually quoted 70% against to 70% in favour of said amnesty. Interestingly, the Washington branch of the MCDC will continue it's rearguard operation against any amnesty, no doubt hoping to enlist Tea Party racism to its cause.
* The Minuteman Project (MMP) was founded in 2005 but quickly split into 2 groups, the new one being called the Civil Homeland Defense patrol group, subsequently renamed the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Inc. Both operated in Arizona but the MCDC also sanctioned a New Mexico Minuteman group.
** Another prime quote was, "You are strongly encouraged to exercise your rights and duty as an American citizen to carry a long arm and if challenged use it to defend the United States of America."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other US immigration news, and against the backdrop of newly imposed quotas placed on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to deport more 'illegal' migrants and try and reverse the steep fall in numbers of removals, which runs counter to the Obama administrations public pronouncements that it should focus primarily of so-called 'foreign national criminals, a further aspect of US immigration policy (or the lack of it) has recently been highlighted.
A lawsuit was filed last Friday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers on behalf of two disabled migrants who have been held in detention for more than 4 years. The lawsuits allege that the two men, Jose Antonio Franco, who suffers from severe learning disabilities and is the son of two legal permanent US residents, and Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez, a legal permanent resident and who is a paranoid schizophrenic, have been held for more than four years in various immigration prisons in violation of the right to freedom from indefinite detention and the right to a fair hearing to contest the basis for that detention.
According to Sarah Mehta, Aryeh Neier fellow with Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, who has been investigating ICE's treatment of the mentally disabled for the past eight months in preparation for a forthcoming HRW report, these cases are not unusual as ICE have no policies or procedures in place for dealing with these types of cases and the victims end up languishing in the system in a state of limbo.
Interestingly, this comes at almost exactly the same time as the release of a report entitled 'Justice for Immigration's Hidden Population' by Texas Appleseed, a public interest law centre. It is based on a year-long study of the fate of the mentally disabled in immigration detention in Texas, where 29% of all detainees are held while the US government tries to deport them.
One of the cases highlighted in the report is that of a 50 year old legal permanent US resident with schizophrenia, who had lived in New York since 1974. Last November, a New York criminal court declared him incompetent to stand trial on a trespass charge and ordered him to serve 90 days in a mental institution. Instead, he was transferred to a detention facility in South Texas, to face a deportation proceeding without legal counsel. So abrupt was this, that his family and lawyer did not know it had happened. At the detention centre, he received no medication for weeks, and in March, he was deported to the Dominican Republic to, as his family fear, probably die on the streets.
A Rational Debate On Immigration? Not Involving You Mate!
Andrew Green, that 'well-known' one-man "influential think tank", has availed himself of the Guardian's 'Comment is free' facility again (see for example) to call for "an open debate" on immigration, which he claims "would be welcome, but it must be both calm and rational on all sides." Yet his ability to be rational does not, as we have pointed out before, stretch far enough to be able to grasp the correct terminology - "That is not quite right [Denis McShane's claim that nothing has changed in the immigration debate since the 1970s]. In 1971, net immigration (sic) was -40,000: in 2008, it was +163,000."
The correct term is net migration, i.e. the total increase in a population (births plus immigration) minus the total leaving that population (deaths plus emigration). This is not mere nit-picking, this goes to the heart of both his grasp of the underlying concepts and, more importantly, his basic anti-immigration standpoint. Just look at his use of terminology such as "the foreign-born" and the way he marshals his arguments.
For example, his continued stance that asylum is a 'problem', even if it is only 10% and "a small part of the overall problem" (we hate to think what he would be saying today if New Labour and the EU had not made it virtually impossible for anyone wishing to seek asylum to actually make it inside the walls of Fortress Europe, let alone make a successful asylum application when here). Then there is his obsession with this mythic 70 million figure and the manipulation of statistics that allegedly show exactly how 'overcrowded' the British Isles actually are (human habitation accounts for roughly 4% of the UK land mass and most of that is taken up by land owned by a wealth few percent of the population).
And does he really believe that he and his front 'organisation', MigrationBotch, constant stream of anti-immigration diatribes and selective use of statistics do not "somehow help the BNP"? If he does, then all he has to do is check out the BNP's website as to how many times they quote him or release press statements citing him or MigrationBotch* (basically the same thing really) or the mass of pro-BNP comment posted on-line below his newspaper articles or those articles that appear almost daily in the Tory red-tops and broadsheets that basically rehash his press releases.
* Surely his 'organisation' should have been named ImmigrationWatch if he were really being honest about his position?
The correct term is net migration, i.e. the total increase in a population (births plus immigration) minus the total leaving that population (deaths plus emigration). This is not mere nit-picking, this goes to the heart of both his grasp of the underlying concepts and, more importantly, his basic anti-immigration standpoint. Just look at his use of terminology such as "the foreign-born" and the way he marshals his arguments.
For example, his continued stance that asylum is a 'problem', even if it is only 10% and "a small part of the overall problem" (we hate to think what he would be saying today if New Labour and the EU had not made it virtually impossible for anyone wishing to seek asylum to actually make it inside the walls of Fortress Europe, let alone make a successful asylum application when here). Then there is his obsession with this mythic 70 million figure and the manipulation of statistics that allegedly show exactly how 'overcrowded' the British Isles actually are (human habitation accounts for roughly 4% of the UK land mass and most of that is taken up by land owned by a wealth few percent of the population).
And does he really believe that he and his front 'organisation', MigrationBotch, constant stream of anti-immigration diatribes and selective use of statistics do not "somehow help the BNP"? If he does, then all he has to do is check out the BNP's website as to how many times they quote him or release press statements citing him or MigrationBotch* (basically the same thing really) or the mass of pro-BNP comment posted on-line below his newspaper articles or those articles that appear almost daily in the Tory red-tops and broadsheets that basically rehash his press releases.
* Surely his 'organisation' should have been named ImmigrationWatch if he were really being honest about his position?
Friday, 26 March 2010
Inane Xenophobic Comment Piece Of The Week/Month/Year/Decade/Century*
(*Take your pick.)
From today's Daily Star:
"Foreigners To Flood UK
Britain is facing a fresh flood of immigrants unless ministers act now.
Influential think tank MigrationWatch** reckons we’ll be swamped by millions more foreigners in the coming years.
Numbers are set to soar, according to world population trends. (!?)
By 2050 an extra 17million people will be living here.
It will push our already overstretched public services to breaking point.
We cannot allow these huge numbers of immigrants to continue to swan in unchecked.
Our health, housing and council services are struggling to deal with those already here.
And with a fresh wave facing us from the developing world, they could collapse altogether.
It’s time for the government to cut the numbers coming in.
It’s time to close our borders."
** Must be some special use of the word'influential' that we have never come across before
From today's Daily Star:
"Foreigners To Flood UK
Britain is facing a fresh flood of immigrants unless ministers act now.
Influential think tank MigrationWatch** reckons we’ll be swamped by millions more foreigners in the coming years.
Numbers are set to soar, according to world population trends. (!?)
By 2050 an extra 17million people will be living here.
It will push our already overstretched public services to breaking point.
We cannot allow these huge numbers of immigrants to continue to swan in unchecked.
Our health, housing and council services are struggling to deal with those already here.
And with a fresh wave facing us from the developing world, they could collapse altogether.
It’s time for the government to cut the numbers coming in.
It’s time to close our borders."
** Must be some special use of the word'influential' that we have never come across before
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