Twelve families, including 2 pregnant women and 14 children and babies, the youngest of whom is one month old and currently locked up at the controversial Yarl's Wood Detention Centre, have signed a joint letter to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pleading with him for an immediate end to their detention and that of all families and children in the UK immigration detention system.
One of these families writing this has been locked up in detention for eight months, even though the guidelines state they are only meant to be there for a few days. The children involved age's range from 1-16 years old. As the letter states "(t)hey have been out of school for long time. Most of them speak English as first language and do not speak their mother tongue. They were born in this country and do not know other country apart from England. The(y) ask question about why they are here, why they are different from other children and we often haven't got the answers for them."
"We sought protection from a country we believe in and has a tradition and good values of democracy. We have escaped our country because of fear of persecution. Our life and our children's is n danger. We are living an endless nightmare. We have been in the country for long time, from 2 years to 11 years. All we wanted is to have a life and live with decency."
Please help to end the inhumane detention of families and children by contacting Nick Clegg and your local MPs, calling for the immediate release of the 12 families back to their communities so that their children can return to a normal life and schools and for the release of all other families within the detention system.
Please support this call by e-mailing Nick Clegg at:
cleggn@parliament.uk
[Based on a press release from Positive Action In Housing, the Scottish ethnic minorities housing agency.]
Friday, 21 May 2010
Stop The Detention Of All Children In The UK, Not Just In Scotland
UNITY Centre Glasgow Press Release:
Please support this campaign by sending emails and faxes to the new Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Secretary of State for the Home Office
UNITY calls for an immediate moratorium on the detention of all children by the UK Border Agency and not just the end of detention of children in Scotland.
Today members of the organising committee of "UNITY, the Union of Asylum Seekers in Scotland" called for an immediate moratorium on the detention of children anywhere in the UK.
The committee elected earlier this year by a mass meeting of asylum seekers in Red Road, following the deaths of three asylum seekers, put out this call in response to the announcement by Immigration Minister Damian Green earlier yesterday that the detention of children in the Dungavel detention centre in Lanarkshire is going to end.
Whilst the Unity committee are pleased to see that the issue of child detention is being treated seriously by the new government we cannot understand why there has to be a delay of two or three months for a review to be carried out. This seems to be the worst situation for the children of asylum seekers as little 1 year old Wania Shebaz found out to her misfortune earlier this week when she became the first child to be detained in Scotland following announcements that child detention was going to be stopped.
If it is wrong to detain a child in three months time it must surely be wrong to detain a child now?
In the last three months of 2009, 285 children under the age of 18 of whom 180 were asylum seekers were detained by the UK Border Agency.
Will another 285 children be detained in Yarl's Wood in the three months it takes for a review to be held?
Earlier this year Ann Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons stated that over half of the children held in detention were released. 68 of the children had been held in the centre for more than a month and one, a baby, had been held for 100 days.
In our experience of helping families in detention for over four years we have repeatedly found that many families go on to win Leave to Remain in the UK if they manage to get out of detention. It would be wrong for anyone to think that the Home Office do not make any mistakes when they detain families.
Ending detention of children in Dungavel is not enough and will make it worse for those families detained, in the future, in Scotland.
The announcement that children will no longer be detained in Scotland does not give us much to celebrate either. In fact without an end to detention of children in England this step will actually make things worse for asylum seekers living in Scotland.
Instead of being given 72 hours for their Scottish lawyers to help them while they are kept in Dungavel, as is the current practice, asylum seeker families in Scotland could now face being driven 400 miles away from friends, family, neighbours, supporters and, most importantly, their Scottish lawyers.
If the family is taken directly to detention centres at Yarl's Wood or Tinsley House in England instead of the Dungavel detention centre, Scottish lawyers will not be able to help them as a completely different legal system exists there.
At this most crucial period of time when the family will be facing a major crisis and will need all the help they can get, instead of relying on lawyers who they know, trust, and who are familiar with the family's case, the family will be forced to look for a new lawyer in a different country, not knowing which solicitor they can trust.
Therefore not only will the new policy announced today mean that if children are detained in Scotland they will now face a long and traumatic journey in a private prison van away from friends and family but that the family will not be able to access the crucial legal help they need at one of the most dangerous periods of their asylum case.
We therefore, on behalf of all asylum seekers in Scotland, call for an immediate moratorium on the practice of detaining children anywhere in the UK. Ending detention of children in Dungavel is not enough and will make it worse for those families detained in the future in Scotland.
End of Statement
Email/Fax, Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Secretary of State for the Home Office
Fax: 020 8760 3132 (00 44 20 8760 3132 if you are faxing from outside UK)
Please support this campaign by sending emails and faxes to the new Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Secretary of State for the Home Office
UNITY calls for an immediate moratorium on the detention of all children by the UK Border Agency and not just the end of detention of children in Scotland.
Today members of the organising committee of "UNITY, the Union of Asylum Seekers in Scotland" called for an immediate moratorium on the detention of children anywhere in the UK.
The committee elected earlier this year by a mass meeting of asylum seekers in Red Road, following the deaths of three asylum seekers, put out this call in response to the announcement by Immigration Minister Damian Green earlier yesterday that the detention of children in the Dungavel detention centre in Lanarkshire is going to end.
Whilst the Unity committee are pleased to see that the issue of child detention is being treated seriously by the new government we cannot understand why there has to be a delay of two or three months for a review to be carried out. This seems to be the worst situation for the children of asylum seekers as little 1 year old Wania Shebaz found out to her misfortune earlier this week when she became the first child to be detained in Scotland following announcements that child detention was going to be stopped.
If it is wrong to detain a child in three months time it must surely be wrong to detain a child now?
In the last three months of 2009, 285 children under the age of 18 of whom 180 were asylum seekers were detained by the UK Border Agency.
Will another 285 children be detained in Yarl's Wood in the three months it takes for a review to be held?
Earlier this year Ann Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons stated that over half of the children held in detention were released. 68 of the children had been held in the centre for more than a month and one, a baby, had been held for 100 days.
In our experience of helping families in detention for over four years we have repeatedly found that many families go on to win Leave to Remain in the UK if they manage to get out of detention. It would be wrong for anyone to think that the Home Office do not make any mistakes when they detain families.
Ending detention of children in Dungavel is not enough and will make it worse for those families detained, in the future, in Scotland.
The announcement that children will no longer be detained in Scotland does not give us much to celebrate either. In fact without an end to detention of children in England this step will actually make things worse for asylum seekers living in Scotland.
Instead of being given 72 hours for their Scottish lawyers to help them while they are kept in Dungavel, as is the current practice, asylum seeker families in Scotland could now face being driven 400 miles away from friends, family, neighbours, supporters and, most importantly, their Scottish lawyers.
If the family is taken directly to detention centres at Yarl's Wood or Tinsley House in England instead of the Dungavel detention centre, Scottish lawyers will not be able to help them as a completely different legal system exists there.
At this most crucial period of time when the family will be facing a major crisis and will need all the help they can get, instead of relying on lawyers who they know, trust, and who are familiar with the family's case, the family will be forced to look for a new lawyer in a different country, not knowing which solicitor they can trust.
Therefore not only will the new policy announced today mean that if children are detained in Scotland they will now face a long and traumatic journey in a private prison van away from friends and family but that the family will not be able to access the crucial legal help they need at one of the most dangerous periods of their asylum case.
We therefore, on behalf of all asylum seekers in Scotland, call for an immediate moratorium on the practice of detaining children anywhere in the UK. Ending detention of children in Dungavel is not enough and will make it worse for those families detained in the future in Scotland.
End of Statement
Email/Fax, Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Secretary of State for the Home Office
Fax: 020 8760 3132 (00 44 20 8760 3132 if you are faxing from outside UK)
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Sehar Shebaz And Little Wania Belong To Scotland
HO ref S1369454Sehar Shebaz and her little 12 month old daughter were detained by the Home Office at Monday lunch-time. She has been given removal directions for Pakistani Airlines flight PK758 at 17.00hrs on Saturday 22nd May.
At this very moment 26 year old Shebaz and Wania are being moved from Dungavel detention centre to Yarl's Wood detention centre. The journey, as a prisoner in a G4S private security van will take the family at least ten hours.
Sehar came to the UK in May 2007 on a student visa to marry a Pakistani national living in Lancashire in an arranged marriage. Her husband’s family arranged for her to get her student visa to the UK. After a Sharia marriage in 2007 her husband became abusive and would not let her leave the house. His was often drunk and violent. On at least two occasions the police were called to their house.
In November 2009 she was attacked by her husband and went to Women’s Aid in Blackburn. She then came to Glasgow where an application for her visa extension made before she fled her husband was finally turned down in December. Sehar claimed asylum on 24th December 2009. Her asylum claim was refused on 22nd January this year.
Sehar’s husband has managed to track her down in Glasgow since she moved to the city and has made threatening phone calls to her. She has had to move flat to a safe address as a result.
The House of Lords has ruled that women in Pakistan constituted a particular social group because due to their gender, they were discriminated against as a group in matters of fundamental human rights and the State gave them no adequate protection because they were perceived as not being entitled to the same human rights as men.
The Home Office’s own Operational Guidance Notes clearly state that: “Asylum claims from Pakistani women who have demonstrated that they face a serious risk of domestic violence which will amount to persecution or torture or inhuman or degrading treatment must be considered in the context of individual circumstances of each claim.”
In February this year Human Rights Watch published a 69-page report by Gauri van Gulik, women’s rights researcher. Her report “Fast-Tracked Unfairness - Detention and Denial of Women Asylum Seekers in the UK” raising the issue that often women with claims involving domestic abuse are failed by the UK’s new ‘fast track’ asylum model which is too simplistic and women with complex cases have far too little time to prepare their case, obtain medical or other expert opinions, and establish the credibility of their claims. This is especially true in cases involving rape or abuse, where women may only be able to come forward with relevant information late in the process, or not at all, because they may be traumatized by their experience, frightened by the procedure, or simply embarrassed to tell an official.
Sehar had her case refused only four weeks by the Home Office after she submitted it with limited legal advice over the Christmas holiday period.
Sehar was detained before she was able to make fresh submissions to the Home Office with new evidence from Lancashire Constabulary and Strathclyde Police of her husband’s threats to her.
Sehar had her case refused at appeal by an Immigration Judge partially on the grounds that as her husband, who although a Pakistani national, resides in the UK therefore she would not be in any danger from him if she was returned to Pakistan.
But as a single women who has fled her husband Sehar would be in real danger if she is returned to Pakistan.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2008 that "Violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape, “honor killings,” acid attacks, and forced marriages, remain serious problems in Pakistan. Precise figures on gender-based violence are difficult to obtain, but estimates range from 50-90 percent of women experiencing some form of violence. Survivors of violence encounter unresponsiveness and hostility at each level of the criminal justice system, from police who fail to register or investigate cases of gender-based violence to judges with little training or commitment to women’s equal rights. According to Pakistan's Interior Ministry, there have been more than 4,100 “honor killings” since 2001…
Pakistan has no specific domestic violence legislation and has failed to repeal the repressive Hudood Ordinances. This set of laws, enacted in 1979, has led to thousands of women being imprisoned for so-called “honour” crimes and has rendered most sexual assault victims unable to seek redress through the criminal justice system, deeming them guilty of illegal sex rather than victims of unlawful violence or abuse. " (Human Rights Watch's Submission to the Human Rights Council May 2008)
A US State Department Report in 2008 recorded that:
“Domestic violence was a widespread and serious problem. Husbands reportedly beat, and occasionally killed, their wives. Other forms of domestic violence included torture and shaving. In-laws abused and harassed married women. Dowry and family-related disputes often resulted in death or disfigurement by burning or acid. There is no specific legislation prohibiting domestic violence, but sections of the Penal Code can be used to invoke justice for the victim.”
Sehar is currently being moved to Yarl's Wood Detention Centre. Friends and supporters have managed to arrange legal representation for her in England.
Please take these urgent action steps to help Sehar
Email/Fax, Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Secretary of State for the Home Office asking that Sehar, Shebaz be granted protection in the UK. Download "SeharShebazMinisterletter" which you can copy / amend / write your own version (if you do so, please remember to include her HO ref S1369454 )
Fax: 020 8760 3132 (00 44 20 8760 3132 if you are faxing from outside UK)
FAX or call Pakistan International Airlines
You can download the template letter or you may wish to write your own.
Fax: 0207 733 6209
Tel: 0207 287 3342
Email: lontopk@piac.aero
You may also wish to contact:
Nick Clegg, Lib Dems leader cleggn@parliament.uk
And Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond alex.salmond.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
At Last - Potential Light In The Labour Leadership Darkness
Since Gordon Brown announced that he was standing down as Labour leader it has been looking increasingly likely that the contest to replace him would take place between a bunch of middle class white male political apparatchiks whom one would find it difficult to squeeze a fag paper between them on policy or almost anything else. These prospective candidate clones had all been political researchers in the inner circle loop had also all made early noises off that the reason New Labour failed to stay fresh in the eyes of the electorate was because it had neglected its core constituency: working class voters.
Now, anyone with even a passing grasp of Labour history would know that the party had been ignoring the needs of the working class since the day it was formed. And this process was merely accelerated when the Blair/Brown plan to 'reinvent' as Nu Labour was first formulated. The plain fact is that Labour history has always been one of continuous movement towards the 'middle' of the political spectrum, and just like water going down a plughole, the nearer the middle they got the faster the rate of movement. Now they find Clegg and Cameron camped on what they though was now their home turf and they are stuck with two option: to try and elbow their was back to this mythical 'middle ground'[1] or to reconnect with what should be the needs of the party's core constituency.[2]
And their response? Well, initially it appeared that, rather than spending any time really analysing the 'whys and wherefores', the response would be straight out of the 'knee-jerk' school of politics: a quick coronation based around a common view that the voters blamed all their troubles on bloody foreigners 'over here stealing our jobs and homes and filling up our schools and doctors waiting rooms', therefore we should have been even tougher on immigration. Not that they weren't already turning the screws even tighter. Labour, for example, had planned to save £4.5bn by rendering destitute hundreds of thousands of people currently seeking indefinite leave to remain in the country but, according to ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas, the public didn't know about this 'tough cop' approach: "What we did was not too little, but it was too late. People felt we were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted." Thus it was all a failure to communicate.
So far, so bad. Then however, it appeared that some light be possibly be shone in the murk of all these recriminations as there appeared to be a chance that Jon Cruddas, who has often been at odds with his party's prevailing 'let's blame it all on immigrants' easy option, would stand. But that expectation proved fruitless and he passed up the chance to put forward arguments like:
"Immigration has been used as a 21st-century incomes policy, mixing a liberal sense of free for all with a free-market disdain for clear and effective rules. We have known this was a problem. Yet the answer for the government lay in a ratcheted-up rhetoric rather than solutions that may have challenged liberal assumptions and business lobbyists alike. Low pay and job insecurity, despite a minimum wage, has left people on the edge of society looking in on new levels of riches. This has happened while migrant workers are set against British workers by rogue employers looking to shave costs to make a bigger buck. This has not happened by accident. Labour actively took the decision not to better regulate for agency workers, and to not introduce living wage agreements."[3]
on the main stage of the leadership debate (though we can but hope that he continues to inject some sense into it even if his position is limited and often contradictory).
Then there is John McDonnell, another working class MP from the 'left' of the party but currently struggling to get the requisite number of nominations. He has been less vocal on the subject but has a history of supporting causes like the Yarl's Wood hungerstrikers, the SOAS cleaners and others struggling against immigration-related repression, and therefore might also contribute views counter to the Milibands, Burnhams and Balls of this world, resulting in some form of rational debate.
However, the piece de resistance must surely now be the announcement this morning that Diane Abbott, the first black MP and female to boot, would join the race. She certainly wont be trotting out the same tired hypocritical rhetoric that Nu Labour were 'tough on immigration and tough on the causes of immigration'. Instead, announcing her reasons for standing, she said that the immigration system is "inefficient and unfair and brings abuse" and that "nobody (else) will say we have to address the underlying issues behind black and white working class unease about immigration, about housing, job insecurity."
She wont win of course, the job is bound to go to one of the safe 'lets not rock the boat' apparatchiks, and the Labour Party's' default setting on immigration is unlikely to change. But then again we don't really care who does win, just as long as they actually try and reconnect with reality and somebody argues the point that it is not migrants that are to blame for the shortage of housing, education, training and meaningful jobs; it is them, the political classes, who have created the conditions that allowed this to happen. Ed Miliband is right, "immigration is a class issue". Just not in the way he meant it.
For example, it is not that immigrants are getting what public housing that is available ahead of the so-called 'indigenous' population, it is that successive governments have decimated that public housing stock that working class voters rely upon especially in areas like London and in the industrial heartlands where unemployment is rife. Instead they chose to follow the Thatcherite ethic, selling it off to subsidise the public coffers and remove the costs of maintaining it via direct works departments from local council budgets. At the same time no new public housing was built to replace it and the inevitable consequence is that the pressures on the ever dwindling council houses that were still available would increase.
This has also inevitably led to bigots wishing to pedal their race-hate agenda or sell their execrable daily newspapers being able to feed lies to and exploit the ignorance generated in the general public around immigration issues, such as immigrants jumping the housing queues. The simple truth is that, rather than jumping any queue, the houses that migrants are getting is ex-council properties in the hands of private letting agents, housing that is often in such a state of dilapidation that nobody would chose to live in them unless they had no other choice short of living on the streets.[4]
This is just one example of the sort of myth (along side blaming migrants for binging wages down, rather than as Cruddas suggests, the employers that pay the wages in the first place) that has the potential to go unchallenged in this 'debate'. One can but hope that it doesn't come down to that. The Tories and Lib Dems may have joined the Blair and Brown version of Labour in junking ideology in order to gain power but Labour have a chance to reject that option and fight for real working class values, not just those of their 'core vote' but for all workers, including migrants. And not to just fight for their own careers as Labour Party apparatchiks.
[1] The idea that everyone can occupy the middle ground is patently absurd ('how many pin-heads can one get on the head of an angel?). And one assumes that there must be a fence in the middle dividing off right from left, therefore, if everyone is sitting on this fence in the middle, it is bound to collapse at some point.
[2] The more paranoid commentators currently appear to think that this [the Tory-Whig coalition] is all some master plan by Cameron - push Labour to the wilderness of left-wing politics - rather than just some accident of history. And if Nu Labour do continue to try and occupy this 'middle ground', they might just as well join the coalition.
[3] We have to say that almost any argument would be more enlightening that the sort of one Ed Balls is putting forward: "Britain is not a racist country"! What is that meant to mean?
[4] And that only some property speculator would want to buy as they know they can make massive profits out of them from the government in just such a fashion without having to invest any money to bring them back up to any sort of acceptable housing standard.
Now, anyone with even a passing grasp of Labour history would know that the party had been ignoring the needs of the working class since the day it was formed. And this process was merely accelerated when the Blair/Brown plan to 'reinvent' as Nu Labour was first formulated. The plain fact is that Labour history has always been one of continuous movement towards the 'middle' of the political spectrum, and just like water going down a plughole, the nearer the middle they got the faster the rate of movement. Now they find Clegg and Cameron camped on what they though was now their home turf and they are stuck with two option: to try and elbow their was back to this mythical 'middle ground'[1] or to reconnect with what should be the needs of the party's core constituency.[2]
And their response? Well, initially it appeared that, rather than spending any time really analysing the 'whys and wherefores', the response would be straight out of the 'knee-jerk' school of politics: a quick coronation based around a common view that the voters blamed all their troubles on bloody foreigners 'over here stealing our jobs and homes and filling up our schools and doctors waiting rooms', therefore we should have been even tougher on immigration. Not that they weren't already turning the screws even tighter. Labour, for example, had planned to save £4.5bn by rendering destitute hundreds of thousands of people currently seeking indefinite leave to remain in the country but, according to ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas, the public didn't know about this 'tough cop' approach: "What we did was not too little, but it was too late. People felt we were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted." Thus it was all a failure to communicate.
So far, so bad. Then however, it appeared that some light be possibly be shone in the murk of all these recriminations as there appeared to be a chance that Jon Cruddas, who has often been at odds with his party's prevailing 'let's blame it all on immigrants' easy option, would stand. But that expectation proved fruitless and he passed up the chance to put forward arguments like:
"Immigration has been used as a 21st-century incomes policy, mixing a liberal sense of free for all with a free-market disdain for clear and effective rules. We have known this was a problem. Yet the answer for the government lay in a ratcheted-up rhetoric rather than solutions that may have challenged liberal assumptions and business lobbyists alike. Low pay and job insecurity, despite a minimum wage, has left people on the edge of society looking in on new levels of riches. This has happened while migrant workers are set against British workers by rogue employers looking to shave costs to make a bigger buck. This has not happened by accident. Labour actively took the decision not to better regulate for agency workers, and to not introduce living wage agreements."[3]
on the main stage of the leadership debate (though we can but hope that he continues to inject some sense into it even if his position is limited and often contradictory).
Then there is John McDonnell, another working class MP from the 'left' of the party but currently struggling to get the requisite number of nominations. He has been less vocal on the subject but has a history of supporting causes like the Yarl's Wood hungerstrikers, the SOAS cleaners and others struggling against immigration-related repression, and therefore might also contribute views counter to the Milibands, Burnhams and Balls of this world, resulting in some form of rational debate.
However, the piece de resistance must surely now be the announcement this morning that Diane Abbott, the first black MP and female to boot, would join the race. She certainly wont be trotting out the same tired hypocritical rhetoric that Nu Labour were 'tough on immigration and tough on the causes of immigration'. Instead, announcing her reasons for standing, she said that the immigration system is "inefficient and unfair and brings abuse" and that "nobody (else) will say we have to address the underlying issues behind black and white working class unease about immigration, about housing, job insecurity."
She wont win of course, the job is bound to go to one of the safe 'lets not rock the boat' apparatchiks, and the Labour Party's' default setting on immigration is unlikely to change. But then again we don't really care who does win, just as long as they actually try and reconnect with reality and somebody argues the point that it is not migrants that are to blame for the shortage of housing, education, training and meaningful jobs; it is them, the political classes, who have created the conditions that allowed this to happen. Ed Miliband is right, "immigration is a class issue". Just not in the way he meant it.
For example, it is not that immigrants are getting what public housing that is available ahead of the so-called 'indigenous' population, it is that successive governments have decimated that public housing stock that working class voters rely upon especially in areas like London and in the industrial heartlands where unemployment is rife. Instead they chose to follow the Thatcherite ethic, selling it off to subsidise the public coffers and remove the costs of maintaining it via direct works departments from local council budgets. At the same time no new public housing was built to replace it and the inevitable consequence is that the pressures on the ever dwindling council houses that were still available would increase.
This has also inevitably led to bigots wishing to pedal their race-hate agenda or sell their execrable daily newspapers being able to feed lies to and exploit the ignorance generated in the general public around immigration issues, such as immigrants jumping the housing queues. The simple truth is that, rather than jumping any queue, the houses that migrants are getting is ex-council properties in the hands of private letting agents, housing that is often in such a state of dilapidation that nobody would chose to live in them unless they had no other choice short of living on the streets.[4]
This is just one example of the sort of myth (along side blaming migrants for binging wages down, rather than as Cruddas suggests, the employers that pay the wages in the first place) that has the potential to go unchallenged in this 'debate'. One can but hope that it doesn't come down to that. The Tories and Lib Dems may have joined the Blair and Brown version of Labour in junking ideology in order to gain power but Labour have a chance to reject that option and fight for real working class values, not just those of their 'core vote' but for all workers, including migrants. And not to just fight for their own careers as Labour Party apparatchiks.
[1] The idea that everyone can occupy the middle ground is patently absurd ('how many pin-heads can one get on the head of an angel?). And one assumes that there must be a fence in the middle dividing off right from left, therefore, if everyone is sitting on this fence in the middle, it is bound to collapse at some point.
[2] The more paranoid commentators currently appear to think that this [the Tory-Whig coalition] is all some master plan by Cameron - push Labour to the wilderness of left-wing politics - rather than just some accident of history. And if Nu Labour do continue to try and occupy this 'middle ground', they might just as well join the coalition.
[3] We have to say that almost any argument would be more enlightening that the sort of one Ed Balls is putting forward: "Britain is not a racist country"! What is that meant to mean?
[4] And that only some property speculator would want to buy as they know they can make massive profits out of them from the government in just such a fashion without having to invest any money to bring them back up to any sort of acceptable housing standard.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
EU To Trade In Third-Country Refugees
In response to growing pressure from the UNHCR for the EU to adopt a common resettlement policy and to significantly increase the number of refugees accepted into EU countries, the European Parliament has amended a draft EU law to pay up to €6,000 to member states for each third-country refugee that they accept. Fortress Europe currently only accepts 6.7% of refugees resettled worldwide, much fewer than countries like the USA, Canada and Australia.
The deal is structured so that the funding will amount to €6,000 per person for the first year for member states applying for the first time, €5,000 in the second year and €4,000 thereafter. The 'premium' paid for the first two years additional to newly participating member states must be invested in developing the country's resettlement programme.
In addition, the parliament approved the creation of a European Asylum Support Office, based on a report produced by Green MEP Jean Lambert, co-ordinate co-operation and information exchange between EU states, and to be sited in Malta.
The deal is structured so that the funding will amount to €6,000 per person for the first year for member states applying for the first time, €5,000 in the second year and €4,000 thereafter. The 'premium' paid for the first two years additional to newly participating member states must be invested in developing the country's resettlement programme.
In addition, the parliament approved the creation of a European Asylum Support Office, based on a report produced by Green MEP Jean Lambert, co-ordinate co-operation and information exchange between EU states, and to be sited in Malta.
Destitution Amongst Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children
New research from the Children's Society's West Midlands Destitution Unit ['Destitution Amongst Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children']has shown what many of us already knew, that there is a "rising tide of destitution often being caused by Britain’s chaotic asylum system either denying them support or limiting them to an amount that is internationally recognised as being inadequate to meet basic human needs."
Since opening its doors in October 2008, the project, like the Society's other centres, has helped hundreds of children from families left destitute because the adults are unable to work and the meagre support available under the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act (£35 in vouchers a week and hostel accommodation) proves insufficient to provide basic essentials (such as food, nappies and clothes), not to mention those who are unable to get any help from the state at all and who live under threat of being taken into care. For all these the Project tries to provide crisis grants and other resources such as emergency food parcels and advice on accessing other forms of non-state support.
According to Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the Children's Society, "Staff based at our projects say they are overwhelmed by the scale of the distress they are dealing with." And this picture is being repeated up and down the country, not just in Children's Society centres but in all the self-supporting groups large and small that have been forced to take up the slack caused by constant cutbacks in state aid. Now Cameron wants to push his 'big society' project as a way of charities and other non-state organisations (and non-organisations even) taking up even more of this 'cutback generated slack', covering his back with a supposed 'big new idea' (courtesy of that incoherent diatribe 'Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It'). Smacks of 'I'm alright Jasper'!
Since opening its doors in October 2008, the project, like the Society's other centres, has helped hundreds of children from families left destitute because the adults are unable to work and the meagre support available under the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act (£35 in vouchers a week and hostel accommodation) proves insufficient to provide basic essentials (such as food, nappies and clothes), not to mention those who are unable to get any help from the state at all and who live under threat of being taken into care. For all these the Project tries to provide crisis grants and other resources such as emergency food parcels and advice on accessing other forms of non-state support.
According to Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the Children's Society, "Staff based at our projects say they are overwhelmed by the scale of the distress they are dealing with." And this picture is being repeated up and down the country, not just in Children's Society centres but in all the self-supporting groups large and small that have been forced to take up the slack caused by constant cutbacks in state aid. Now Cameron wants to push his 'big society' project as a way of charities and other non-state organisations (and non-organisations even) taking up even more of this 'cutback generated slack', covering his back with a supposed 'big new idea' (courtesy of that incoherent diatribe 'Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It'). Smacks of 'I'm alright Jasper'!
A Positive Outcome For Whom?
So the new Lib-Con coalition has announced an end to the detention of children in Scotland i.e. Dungavel. Good news one would have thought, but not if you've grown up in Scotland: your friends and family are there; your legal team are there, as is your legal aid provider (moving to England would entail a new application); it is nearly 300 miles to the south and a nine hour journey in the back of a minibus with a bunch of people in uniforms that often treat your with contempt, if they pay you any attention at all, to reach the nearest detention centre with family facilities. And to top it all, you are of course still in detention. Where's the "positive outcome"* in that for children in detention Damien Green?
It may have gotten you temporarily into the Scottish government's good books but that is of no comfort to people like Sehar Shebaz, who was detained on Monday with her 8 month old baby when she went to report on Monday. She had fled her violent husband in Pakistan to claim asylum in the UK, fearing for her life if she is returned to Pakistan (women who leave their husbands are under threat from his extended family and are often killed or maimed in acid attacks).
With the ending of the detention of children in Dungavel, she and her baby, like the other families detained there, were due to be moved to be moved to Yarl's Wood today. However, Ms Shebaz was refusing to cooperate with the move, claiming that her baby is too young to be forces to endure a nine hour journey in the back of a van. She herself is also ill, having been vomiting since the early hours of yesterday morning.
The response of the 'enlightened' UKBA regime? To threaten to remove her baby from her and transport them in separate vans anyway. So much for the new coalition's commitment to respecting human rights and reigning in the abuses perpetrated by the Big Brother state on people. Of course, they will claim that she is not a UK citizen but should that allow them to treat Sehar and her child any differently that they would expect them and their children?
* Damien Green - "This is something which many groups in Scotland have been calling for, and we are now delivering this positive outcome."
It may have gotten you temporarily into the Scottish government's good books but that is of no comfort to people like Sehar Shebaz, who was detained on Monday with her 8 month old baby when she went to report on Monday. She had fled her violent husband in Pakistan to claim asylum in the UK, fearing for her life if she is returned to Pakistan (women who leave their husbands are under threat from his extended family and are often killed or maimed in acid attacks).
With the ending of the detention of children in Dungavel, she and her baby, like the other families detained there, were due to be moved to be moved to Yarl's Wood today. However, Ms Shebaz was refusing to cooperate with the move, claiming that her baby is too young to be forces to endure a nine hour journey in the back of a van. She herself is also ill, having been vomiting since the early hours of yesterday morning.
The response of the 'enlightened' UKBA regime? To threaten to remove her baby from her and transport them in separate vans anyway. So much for the new coalition's commitment to respecting human rights and reigning in the abuses perpetrated by the Big Brother state on people. Of course, they will claim that she is not a UK citizen but should that allow them to treat Sehar and her child any differently that they would expect them and their children?
* Damien Green - "This is something which many groups in Scotland have been calling for, and we are now delivering this positive outcome."
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