...the UK Border Agency's own Professional Standards Unit has found that the agency's Cardiff office is not 'institutionally racist' or has a pervasive culture of abuse following a series of allegations made by ex-employee Louise Perrett in March this year. Nobody will face disciplinary action for actions apparently because they decided that there was nothing wrong with testing the veracity of boys from Africa who claimed they had been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers by making them lie down on the floor and demonstrate how they shot at people in the bush; or that singing "Umbongo, umbongo, they kill them in the Congo" in reference to a Congolese woman's asylum case; or that the fabled 'grant monkey' was not used as a 'badge of shame' when it was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any UKBA officer who approved an asylum application.
Despite the report's conclusion "that Ms Perrett misinterpreted its significance [and] it was accepted that her misconception of it could have been felt by others and as such it was unwelcome", it was "accepted that [the monkey's] subsequent removal from the office was correct"! So it was removed from the office just in case someone might get the idea that the 'grant monkey', when placed on someone's desk after they had given someone leave to remain, was in no way connected and, despite its name' it wasn't intended as a 'badge of shame'. Maybe the fact that there was "no evidence to corroborate Ms Perrett's claims" was down to the PCS union's advice not to co-operate with the investigation?
Thursday, 29 July 2010
IMPORTANT: 5 Years Limited Leave to Remain
Are you a Zimbabwean asylum seekers and were you granted 5 years refugee leave in 2005?
If so, please read the important information below and pass on to your friends.
From August 2005, refugees were granted 5 years refugee leave rather than indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Asylum seekers granted humanitarian protection (HP) were given HP for a 5 year period.
In August 2010, leave to remain will expire for the first of these people. It is VERY IMPORTANT that people do not wait for their leave to expire before making applications for further leave to remain or ILR.
They should apply for further leave to remain or ILR about a month before their leave expires.
See: Home Office website on Further Leave To Remain
Also: Download Cover letter
Also: Download Zip Info pack
[from the Zimbabwe Association website]
If so, please read the important information below and pass on to your friends.
From August 2005, refugees were granted 5 years refugee leave rather than indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Asylum seekers granted humanitarian protection (HP) were given HP for a 5 year period.
In August 2010, leave to remain will expire for the first of these people. It is VERY IMPORTANT that people do not wait for their leave to expire before making applications for further leave to remain or ILR.
They should apply for further leave to remain or ILR about a month before their leave expires.
See: Home Office website on Further Leave To Remain
Also: Download Cover letter
Also: Download Zip Info pack
[from the Zimbabwe Association website]
Some Light In The Limbo Of Everyday Existence?
And in another court decision, this time in the Supreme Court, the Home Office's challenge to an EU directive that asylum seekers who have already had one claim turned down but have submitted a fresh claim be allowed to look for work if their claim has not been processed within a year has been dismissed. Needless to say, the decision raised the ire of the usual suspects with claims that "tens of thousands" [Daily Telegraph] or even "up to 45,000" [Daily Mail] of "failed (sic) asylum seekers given right to work". Both of them of course took the opportunity to quote the latest MigrationBotch aka Andrew Green whinge, though only the Mail had the gall to print his smear about the refused asylum seekers in question not being "genuine refugees".
Just because someone's application for asylum has been turned down as it does not fit the ever more restrictive Home Office criteria, the ever smaller hoops that refugees have to jump through in order to be granted what is usually a very limited right to remain, doesn't make them bogus whatever all the anti-immigration propagandists would have you believe. At least this decision will allow the very small number of refused asylum seekers that actually do manage to get a job to live in something other than a limbo characterised by abject poverty that is hardly alleviated by an occasional charity hand-out whilst the rusty machinery of Home Office bureaucracy slowly grinds its way towards a decision on their case.
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Yet the latest news is that Damian 'The Omen' Green is seeking to subvert the court ruling by imposing restrictions on the type of jobs refused asylum seekers could apply for, barring them from "more than 28.5m jobs and restrict them to industries in which there are official staff shortages" according to the latest from the Guardian. Blatant discrimination.
Just because someone's application for asylum has been turned down as it does not fit the ever more restrictive Home Office criteria, the ever smaller hoops that refugees have to jump through in order to be granted what is usually a very limited right to remain, doesn't make them bogus whatever all the anti-immigration propagandists would have you believe. At least this decision will allow the very small number of refused asylum seekers that actually do manage to get a job to live in something other than a limbo characterised by abject poverty that is hardly alleviated by an occasional charity hand-out whilst the rusty machinery of Home Office bureaucracy slowly grinds its way towards a decision on their case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yet the latest news is that Damian 'The Omen' Green is seeking to subvert the court ruling by imposing restrictions on the type of jobs refused asylum seekers could apply for, barring them from "more than 28.5m jobs and restrict them to industries in which there are official staff shortages" according to the latest from the Guardian. Blatant discrimination.
Mail And Sun No Longer 'Lovin' It'
The Daily Mail and the Sun have been forced to eat humble pie in the court yesterday after falsely accusing Parameswaran Subramanyam, who went on a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square last year, of breaking his fast by eating hamburgers. His action was part of the 3 month long protests last year in Westminster during the later stages of the Sri Lankan civil war aimed at bringing about a ceasefire.
According to the Mail, a Metropolitan police surveillance team had observed him having had fast food smuggled to him during his hunger strike. The Sun repeated the story under the sneering headline 'Hunger Striker Was Lovin' It'. In court it was revealed that not only did the police not have any video evidence but that there had been no no police surveillance team using the "specialist monitoring equipment" as the Daily Mail article claimed. And in typical 'churnalistic' fashion, the Sun repeated the story without checking 'the facts'.
The legal team for the owners of both papers said that they apologised "sincerely and unreservedly" to Mr Subramanyam for the distress that had been caused and they are understood to be paying damages of £47,500 and £30,000 respectively, as well as his legal costs.
Sad to say it wont stop them from perpetrating the same sort of contemptuous thinly-veiled racist stories in the future.
According to the Mail, a Metropolitan police surveillance team had observed him having had fast food smuggled to him during his hunger strike. The Sun repeated the story under the sneering headline 'Hunger Striker Was Lovin' It'. In court it was revealed that not only did the police not have any video evidence but that there had been no no police surveillance team using the "specialist monitoring equipment" as the Daily Mail article claimed. And in typical 'churnalistic' fashion, the Sun repeated the story without checking 'the facts'.
The legal team for the owners of both papers said that they apologised "sincerely and unreservedly" to Mr Subramanyam for the distress that had been caused and they are understood to be paying damages of £47,500 and £30,000 respectively, as well as his legal costs.
Sad to say it wont stop them from perpetrating the same sort of contemptuous thinly-veiled racist stories in the future.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
The Use Of Dawn Raids Criticised
In another 'setback' for the government operates its immigration policy John Vine, the Chief Inspector of Immigration, has criticised the blanket use of dawn raids to detain families prior to their deportation. In his review of 42 deportation cases he found the the majority of arrests of families by UKBA snatch squads occurred between 6:30am and 6:40am.
Just as the police use dawn raids to catch their prey unaware, still in their beds or only just beginning to wipe the sleep from their eyes, the UKBA goons chose more or less the same modus operandi to minimise resistance and, not as they have insisted in the past, chose a time before a family's children will have left for school or, tellingly, to minimise any community reaction.
Therefore, the idea is to actually maximise trauma, a point reinforced by only allowing the families less than 45 minutes to pack their belongings and leave behind their homes for an unknown future. Vine also said that it unacceptable that there is no UKBA system available that makes available information on those families who have been detained. Therefore a family's lawyers and supporters are left to ring around the various detention centres and short-term holding facilities in what often turns out as a vain attempt to find them before they are forcibly removed or shunted on to another detention centre half way across the country.
1,168 children were held in detention in 2008-09. 539 (46%) were deported and 629 (54%) released.
Just as the police use dawn raids to catch their prey unaware, still in their beds or only just beginning to wipe the sleep from their eyes, the UKBA goons chose more or less the same modus operandi to minimise resistance and, not as they have insisted in the past, chose a time before a family's children will have left for school or, tellingly, to minimise any community reaction.
Therefore, the idea is to actually maximise trauma, a point reinforced by only allowing the families less than 45 minutes to pack their belongings and leave behind their homes for an unknown future. Vine also said that it unacceptable that there is no UKBA system available that makes available information on those families who have been detained. Therefore a family's lawyers and supporters are left to ring around the various detention centres and short-term holding facilities in what often turns out as a vain attempt to find them before they are forcibly removed or shunted on to another detention centre half way across the country.
1,168 children were held in detention in 2008-09. 539 (46%) were deported and 629 (54%) released.
Exemptions Policy Struck Down
Yet another piece of governmental gerrymandering abrogating the legal rights of refugees to seek protection under international law has been ruled illegal. The history of anti-immigration laws are littered with knee-jerk reactions to racist agitation and political sentiment. And when each incremental restriction of our freedom of movement proves to have not cut the numbers of those deemed as undesirable by the political classes, those same political classes tinker with the ways in which each new piece of restrictive legislation is applied, further restricting supposed safeguards under the law.
Thus we have seen the was that the 'exemptions policy' brought in by John Reid when he was Home Secretary in March 2007 was incrementally widened to allow for ever easier ways of denying detainees full access to the law, thereby making their removal from the country easier. That the lawyers for the Home Office argued that the exemptions policy was "sufficiently flexible" to ensure there were no human rights breaches only reinforces the doublethink involved in this type of policy. The 'sufficient flexibility' was wholly on the side of the Home Office.
Of course, the reforms of the Legal Aid budget and the loss of organisations like Refugee and Migrant Justice will more or less achieve the same ends by restricting the ability of refugees to access the courts and protect the rights supposedly guaranteed under law that the government constantly seeks to restrict by hook or by crook.
Thus we have seen the was that the 'exemptions policy' brought in by John Reid when he was Home Secretary in March 2007 was incrementally widened to allow for ever easier ways of denying detainees full access to the law, thereby making their removal from the country easier. That the lawyers for the Home Office argued that the exemptions policy was "sufficiently flexible" to ensure there were no human rights breaches only reinforces the doublethink involved in this type of policy. The 'sufficient flexibility' was wholly on the side of the Home Office.
Of course, the reforms of the Legal Aid budget and the loss of organisations like Refugee and Migrant Justice will more or less achieve the same ends by restricting the ability of refugees to access the courts and protect the rights supposedly guaranteed under law that the government constantly seeks to restrict by hook or by crook.
Monday, 26 July 2010
Maltese Cross The Line
Controversy has broken out in Malta over an incident involving the rescue of a group of Somali refugees from a sinking dingy by the Maltese military last week. The Somali's boat was spotted by Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) and Libyan vessels south of the island on Sunday 18 July and they mounted a joint rescue. The 55 Somalis were divided into two groups, with 28 (22 men, five women and a child) who required medical attention boarding the AFM boat and the remaining 27 immigrants 'voluntarily' boarding the Libyan vessel.
The controversy stems not just from the fact that the migrants claim that their comrades were tricked into returning to Libya, but from the fact that the actions of the AFM personnel render the Maltese government complicit in the Italian-Libyan 'push back' pack and its breaching of international law.
The 'push back' policy came into effect in May last year, with the Libyan government agreeing to accept the return of migrants intercepted on the high seas by the Italian navy. In return they would receive 6 Italian fast launches, that they would operate as part of their effort in the naval patrols, and lucrative economic deals and cash inputs to Libya's notorious detention system. All this is contrary to international treaties preventing the refoulement of refugees and is an abrogation of Italy's responsibility to allow refugees the opportunity to make asylum applications when, as the European Court of Human Rights has rules, a state already exercises 'effective control' over the person in question.
Malta has so far been a particular beneficiary of this policy, with not one single African migrant reaching its shore since last October, compared with the 1,400 in the first nine months of 2009. However, up till now it has not become directly involved in the transactions between Italy and Libya but, with this event, it has become directly embroiled in this dodgy deal.
Firstly, there is the problem over whether the Somalis who 'chose' to return to Libya actually knew that was what they were doing as many of the migrants that made it to Malta claim that their compatriots thought they were going onto Italy as there were Italian speakers on the Libyan boat. As Laura Boldrini, a Rome-based UNHCR spokesperson said, "It's difficult to believe anyone would choose to go back to Libya, after having paid a lot of money and risking their lives. In many years of work in this field, I've never seen anything of the sort. How can it be that an asylum seeker voluntarily opts to be returned to a place where he cannot get asylum?"
Added to that is the fact that the recognition rate for Somali refugees in Malta is very high and most, if not all, would probably have been given protection. Therefore, for the Maltese authorities to allow the Somalis, which they are obliged to disembark at a safe port, to return to Libya, a country that is known to have a poor human rights record, without express assurances on the treatment and safety of the refugees has laid themselves open to charges of complicity in any potential human rights violations.
The decidedly odd nature of this incident is further illustrated by the case of Ahmed Mahmoud Muhammed, who claims that his wife, 19year-old Mariam Hussen, who is seven months pregnant, was one of the migrants taken back to Libya. He alleges that he told Maltese soldiers that his wife was on the Libyan boat but they kept insisting that he boarded the Libyan ship to identify her. Fearing that he would be returned to Libya and loose all chance of getting out of that "hell", he refused. The AFM deny his claim.
Mariam was returned to a Libyan prison but fortunately managed to get released after a few days. His story brings into question the claims that the migrants on the Libyan boat thought they were going on to Italy, especially as the 'push back' policy is widely known about in Libya, but also the AFM claims that the Somalis were given the choice as to which boat they chose and that accompanied spouses were allowed on the same boat.
Despite the widespread controversy over the issue and the obvious implications as regards Maltese responsibilities under international law, the prime minister Lawrence Gonzi has ruled out an independent inquiry. Maybe there is something to hide?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See also: Joe Sacco's 'Not In My Country' for a different view on the plight of migrants in Malta.
The controversy stems not just from the fact that the migrants claim that their comrades were tricked into returning to Libya, but from the fact that the actions of the AFM personnel render the Maltese government complicit in the Italian-Libyan 'push back' pack and its breaching of international law.
The 'push back' policy came into effect in May last year, with the Libyan government agreeing to accept the return of migrants intercepted on the high seas by the Italian navy. In return they would receive 6 Italian fast launches, that they would operate as part of their effort in the naval patrols, and lucrative economic deals and cash inputs to Libya's notorious detention system. All this is contrary to international treaties preventing the refoulement of refugees and is an abrogation of Italy's responsibility to allow refugees the opportunity to make asylum applications when, as the European Court of Human Rights has rules, a state already exercises 'effective control' over the person in question.
Malta has so far been a particular beneficiary of this policy, with not one single African migrant reaching its shore since last October, compared with the 1,400 in the first nine months of 2009. However, up till now it has not become directly involved in the transactions between Italy and Libya but, with this event, it has become directly embroiled in this dodgy deal.
Firstly, there is the problem over whether the Somalis who 'chose' to return to Libya actually knew that was what they were doing as many of the migrants that made it to Malta claim that their compatriots thought they were going onto Italy as there were Italian speakers on the Libyan boat. As Laura Boldrini, a Rome-based UNHCR spokesperson said, "It's difficult to believe anyone would choose to go back to Libya, after having paid a lot of money and risking their lives. In many years of work in this field, I've never seen anything of the sort. How can it be that an asylum seeker voluntarily opts to be returned to a place where he cannot get asylum?"
Added to that is the fact that the recognition rate for Somali refugees in Malta is very high and most, if not all, would probably have been given protection. Therefore, for the Maltese authorities to allow the Somalis, which they are obliged to disembark at a safe port, to return to Libya, a country that is known to have a poor human rights record, without express assurances on the treatment and safety of the refugees has laid themselves open to charges of complicity in any potential human rights violations.
The decidedly odd nature of this incident is further illustrated by the case of Ahmed Mahmoud Muhammed, who claims that his wife, 19year-old Mariam Hussen, who is seven months pregnant, was one of the migrants taken back to Libya. He alleges that he told Maltese soldiers that his wife was on the Libyan boat but they kept insisting that he boarded the Libyan ship to identify her. Fearing that he would be returned to Libya and loose all chance of getting out of that "hell", he refused. The AFM deny his claim.
Mariam was returned to a Libyan prison but fortunately managed to get released after a few days. His story brings into question the claims that the migrants on the Libyan boat thought they were going on to Italy, especially as the 'push back' policy is widely known about in Libya, but also the AFM claims that the Somalis were given the choice as to which boat they chose and that accompanied spouses were allowed on the same boat.
Despite the widespread controversy over the issue and the obvious implications as regards Maltese responsibilities under international law, the prime minister Lawrence Gonzi has ruled out an independent inquiry. Maybe there is something to hide?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See also: Joe Sacco's 'Not In My Country' for a different view on the plight of migrants in Malta.
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