New Tribunal Rules and Procedures

I’ve been working on new training notes and having fun (noooooo!) deleting all of the references to the unlamented Asylum and Immigration Tribunal for the next edition of the HJT Immigration Manual. I thought I would share some of the fruits of my labours with you all. I’ll be delivering training for HJT on 25th February covering an analysis of the changes, so what follows are links to the relevant documents, collected into one place for ease of reference.

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Yarl’s Wood: Detained children face ‘extreme distress’

The Guardian – Children held at an immigration detention centre face “extremely distressing” arrest and transportation procedures, and are subjected to prolonged and sometimes repeated periods of detention, according to a damning report by the Children’s Commissioner.

In a report that prompted an angry response from the UK Border Agency (UKBA), Sir Al Aynsley-Green highlighted concerns over “significant areas” of healthcare for the 1,000 children held in the Yarl’s Wood centre every year.

They include a failure to assess “even at an elementary level” the general psychological wellbeing of a child on arrival and a failure to recognise psychological harm when faced with dramatic changes in a child’s behaviour. The report highlighted the cases of one four-year-old boy who appeared withdrawn, wetting when previously dry, and an eight-year-old previously happy boy who had become sad, skipped school, lost his appetite, slept poorly and screamed in the night.

Aynsley-Green concluded that the poor care and unacceptable delays in the case of a three-year-old child with a fractured arm was symptomatic of a failure to provide a standard of NHS care that any British citizen could expect. The child had been examined by a nurse hours after a fall, but was not seen by a doctor until 15 hours later and, five hours after that, was taken to hospital. The report also highlighted an allegation, disputed by the UKBA, that a 10-year-old girl had her head banged against the wall by an officer to wake her up and then attempted self-harm by swallowing shower gel.

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My Experience as a lone Parent on Asylum

Nehanda Radio – My name is Tapiwa. I am a single father of two daughters and we arrived in the UK in August 2003. I had no idea that I would be prohibited from working for the upkeep of my family. It seemed so strange I was told that I would be given money from the state every week, instead of being allowed to work.

After a few weeks of this money, it became clear to me that the amount of money I was receiving was calculated to allow me to simply stay alive while the Home secretary decided whether or not to grant us leave to remain. I called it “Breathing Money”. It was enough to keep us breathing and not much else.

It was hard living on NASS support with two children, seeing we had to pay for most other things just like anyone else. We had to buy school uniforms, shoes, clothes and pay for school trips among other things.

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Yarl’s Wood Women on Hunger Strike ‘Locked up’

The Guardian - An immigration removal centre was reported to be in a state of chaos yesterday, as at least 50 women entered the fourth day of a hunger strike in protest against their detention and conditions, with ­several reportedly fainting in corridors and almost 20 locked outdoors wearing few clothes.

Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire, which houses 405 women and children, was in lockdown, leaving women in communal spaces without food, water or toilet facilities.

Several women who tried to escape through a window were then locked outside, according to one detainee, including one whose finger was almost severed as she escaped but who had not received medical treatment.

“We have been on hunger strike since Friday protesting about the length of time we have spent in detention here,” said Aisha, who has been in Yarl’s Wood for three months. “We have been locked in the hallway all day – five ladies have fainted because they have not eaten since Friday. No one has come to give them any medical attention.

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Gathering Evidence Effectively Guide

There has been a greater interest in asylum issues in the media, particurlarly the national newspapers. Although there is some reporting which is sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers and refugees and recognises the contributions they can make, many stories highlight the presence of what are commonly termed ‘bogus asylum seekers’ who, it is argued, claim asylum even though they have not suffered persecution, in order to seek ‘a better life’.

The language of sections of the press can be mainly or frequently unbalanced, negative and in some respects potentially alarming.The press have the right to raise issues of interest to their readers but it is important to balance this against the need to respect human rights and the safety and cohesion of communities.

The Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees in the UK (ICAR) yesterday(09/12/09) published a document which is a rough guide to assist those seeking knowledge about UK asylum seekers and refugees to navigate secondary sources of data and information.

Many postgraduate students have chosen to focus their research on analysis of media coverage of asylum issues. Most local and national newspapers have their own websites. Some only have their
articles of the day online, others have free or pay-to-access online archives. A Google search will reveal most newspapers’ website details. A number of newspapers and broadcasters, such as the BBC and the Guardian, have dedicated sections on asylum and immigration issues.

A number of organisations and projects dedicated to interrogating the nature of media
representation of asylum issues (including HAT News – see page 35 of the guide)have also been established and these are a useful source for research reports and secondary analysis and commentary.

The guide, Gathering Evidence Effectively has been organised by type of information provider. The sections are as follows:
1. Government and statutory sector
2. Academia
3. Legal bodies
4. Voluntary sector
5. Inter-governmental organisations
6. Media
7. Think tanks
8. Professional bodies
9. Private research companies
10. Portals and information hubs
11. Archives of raw data for secondary analysis
12. Listservs

To read click Gathering Evidence Effectively

For more information visit the ICAR website.

Immigration and Asylum Law

By Gazala Rashid

Asylum law is nothing new and tracks its roots all the way back to the middle ages. Asylum law is a law that outlines situations for an individual or group that is under persecution by their home country, for political or spiritual beliefs, or is considered not safe in their own country and is thus looking to migrate to a different one for protection. This takes place all over the world, and if you’re considering entering the U.S. or the U.K. under these circumstances, it would be very important for you to contact a U.S. or U.K. immigration lawyer first, to see if you are eligible.

Asylum law is not quite refugee law and there is a large difference. Asylum law concerns the right of asylum, as opposed to refugee law, which concerns huge groups of people fleeing from a country. Most of the time, the seekers for asylum are often considered rebels or dissidents in their own countries and are not physically safe. Therefore, they seek asylum in a friendly country, consistent with their beliefs and values. In return, this country offers them asylum and protection. It is important to note, however, that in some cases these laws do sometimes overlap, as refugees sometimes demand to be treated as asylum cases, or vice versa.

Asylum has general legal stipulations surrounding it, as in any other case, and is usually treated on a case by case basis. However, asylum is different in each nation, and some may be generally stricter than others. In fact, many countries take extremely different viewpoints on what asylum law is, and what it should be which can create confusion. International law also states that a country does not have to surrender the asylum seekers, who are often considered criminals in their home country, if they don’t want to. This can make the complicated process even more complex, if the two countries are not working together.

Making the process even more complicated is the recent advent of the Extradition treaty which has given more power back to the government instead of the asylum seeker. Extradition treaties are treaties that give the home country of the asylum seeker the right to demand their return, and under international law, they would have no choice but to oblige. However, not every nation has signed this treaty, and if they have not signed they are under the international law to obey it. This happens all the time in asylum cases where asylum seekers go to countries that are friendly to their beliefs, and do not have an extradition treaty with the person’s home country. If you are seeking asylum in another country or feel that you may qualify for asylum, it is best to talk to an immigration lawyer so he can tell you exactly what you need to look out for when dealing with this complicated area of international law.

Gazala Rashid has been an immigration lawyer in the UK since 1999. She has great expertise in all aspects of UK immigration, asylum and nationality law, and you may view her articles on these topics in her blog at www.ukmigrationlawyers.co.uk/blog

Detaining Justice:Theater Review

Source: www.variety.com

A Tricycle Theater presentation of a play in one act by Bola Agbaje. Directed by Indhu Rubasingham.

Mr Cole – Karl Collins
Chi Chi – Rebecca Scroggs
Justice – Aml Ameen
Grace – Sharon Duncan-Brewster
Pra – Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Abeni – Cecilia Noble

The Tricycle Theater’s three-play series, “Not Black and White,” comes to a lively — if not particularly groundbreaking — end with Bola Agbaje’s agitprop take on the U.K.’s immigration system, “Detaining Justice.” While oppression, inhumane bureaucracy and xenophobia are always worth fighting against, their existence in Western nations is hardly news: there is a naive edge to the indignation that fuels the 28-year-old playwright’s writing.

Read full review here

What Value Refugees and Asylum Seekers.

Source: Adrian’s Blog

It is amazing how much we misunderstand the process of refugees and asylum seekers.

I work for a company called Phoenix Community Care, this is a not for profit company that works with people in need. So we work with young people age 16 and 17 years old who are in the UK but have no parents or guardians here. They actually come under the care system as looked after children, as you are considered by UK law as a child until you reach the age of 18 years, the problem for the care system was that in real terms most local authority agencies for foster care where overstretched before the wars in so many areas started supping refugees out all over the world. Places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Darfur, Somalia, and Iraqi. On top of that there are localised wars like in Congo. Then on top of that there are internal wars in Sri Lanka. Add to those problems the problem of persecution which still excises in countries like Vietnam, and Cambodia.

If your life was threatened would you run away, would you try and protect your family and loved ones?

As a company we are housing young people from most of the above countries, we then have young people from China and Iran, why Iran, no war there, well no, but if you are a Christian or a Jehovah witness, then life is almost impossible. Then there are those from Ethiopia, why do they come, many say to me well my father speaks Amharic but my mother is from Eritrea and no one want you then.

I am sure there are bad apples, some few I have met, but most of the stories I hear would make you wonder why they are not mad, and some because of the extreme pressure actually are and need good psychiatric care.

Sadly I often hear from people, it is not fair, they are steeling our houses and jobs and being paid large amounts of money. I work in the sector and what I see does not fit those newspaper nonsense headlines, I see youngster’s just about surviving, roof, small amount of food money and some help with language. Many of these people are ambitious and keen to work and contribute to the country that has given them refuge; often the law doesn’t allow them to do that.

We are only a small Island, other countries should help!

Where do asylum seekers in Europe come from?
The four main countries of origin of asylum seekers in Europe in 2002 were Iraq with 50,058 applications, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with 32,656 applications, Turkey with 28,455 applications and Afghanistan with 25,470 applications UNHCR Asylum Applications Lodged in Industrialised Countries: Levels and Trends, 2000-2002).

And who does help, well of course the UK does and many think we are doing more than anyone else, but look at these statistics which is based on the population for the country, per 1,000 and who in Europe does take the most refugees per head of population, have a look:

Which European countries have the highest number of asylum applications?
When the number of asylum applications are compared with the total population of the state in which the applications are made (i.e. applications per 1000 inhabitants), in 2002, out of 25 European countries, Austria was the European country with the highest ratio of applications to population with 4.6 applications per 1000, followed by Norway (3.9), Sweden (3.7), Switzerland (3.7), Ireland (3.1) and Liechtenstein (2.8). Germany had 0.9 applications per 1000 inhabitants and the UK 1.9. (Source: Table 1 UNHCR Asylum Applications Lodged in Industrialised Countries: Levels and Trends, 2000-2002)
The thing is that the UK can use asylum seekers to the benefit of the country as well as help very needy people. The UK has ageing population, many who have paid into pensions, never mind the national pension. Pension funds rely on the working population paying into the fund, which then pays out to those who no longer are in work. Of course if the amount of people working falls to a smaller and smaller amount the ability to continue to pay those who are no longer in work becomes more difficult, hence in the UK the moves to increase the statutory retirement age.

The state pension age is set to increase to 68 by 2050 with anyone aged less than 47 facing a longer working life, the work and pension’s secretary, John Hutton, said.

Only those born before 1959 will be unaffected by plans to phase in a higher retirement age over three decades, outlined in the government’s white paper on pension reforms.

The interesting thing is that most refugees / asylum seekers coming to the UK are of working age. Maybe they will help your pension!
Asylum seekers and refugees will often when given the opportunity create jobs for others, become entrepreneur’s that will benefit the economy and indirectly benefit all of the current population. We need to open our eyes to the benefits as well as the perceived problems; Benefits in our hospitals, in our transport system and in our building programmes.

My view, well some of these young people with tragic stories and terrible life experience can be of great blessing to all of us, we need to see it and help them to do it.

We need a gender-sensitive asylum system

By Debora Singer

Last week the government launched its strategy to end violence against women and girls. This rightly refers to the progress made by the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts in dealing with violence against women and girls. For example, if you report a rape nowadays you can ask for a female police officer to be present at your interview and you get supported by a specially trained officer throughout the police investigation and at any subsequent trial. Contrast this treatment with that in the asylum system. Rani, who escaped Sri Lanka after her husband was murdered and she was raped by soldiers, told me that at her asylum interview:

I was happy with a lady interviewer but not a male translator … Because he was a man I felt ashamed. If it was a woman I would have said more.

View full article here

How to View Private Facebook Profiles Agent

Source: www.111breakingnews.com

How much do you know about refugees and asylum seekers in the UK? Lauren Wright and Rosanna Lolla investigate…

In light of the recent media coverage of the British National Party – Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s Question Time and the various demonstrations facilitated by the English Defence League (a noticeably racist faction of the BNP), the issue of asylum and the role of the UK government has sparked furious political and ethical debate.

Everyone has an opinion on a subject that, worryingly, few know much about. This article intends to dispel some of the myths wrongly associated with refugees, in the hope that the real human cause is not submerged beneath a wave of confusing political rhetoric.

First and foremost, the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘person seeking sanctuary’ need clarification. A person seeking sanctuary, generally refers to “a person who has formally applied for refuge in a foreign country, but whose application is undecided.” It must be understood that a person seeking sanctuary only becomes a refugee once this application is successful.

The aim of the application is to ultimately decide whether or not the person concerned fits the definition of a refugee, which according to the United Nations convention, is someone who is outside their country of origin and unable to get protection from their own state “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Essentially, to become a refugee is not a matter of choice, but rather necessity.

There exists a high level of stereotyping with regards to refugees and persons seeking sanctuary in the UK. It is a common misconception that people come to the UK to reap the rewards of the generous benefit system. Given that this is a student newspaper, most readers should be somewhat horrified by the fact that a single young person (18-25) seeking asylumin the UK is given £33.39 per week. Furthermore, many only receive vouchers for some of the main supermarket chains, so the money has to spent on food and therefore cannot be spent on other important things such as medical treatment, clothing or transport.

According to the BNP’s official website, their policy aims to:

1. Deport all the two million plus who are here illegally;

2. Deport all those who commit crimes and whose original nationality is not British;

3. Review all recent grants of residence or citizenship to ensure they are still appropriate;

4. Offer generous grants to those of foreign descent resident here who wish to leave permanently;

5. Stop all new immigration except for exceptional cases;

6. Reject all asylum seekers who passed safe countries on their way to Britain.

The party claims that this policy should be endorsed to ‘abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. Also stressed is the need to clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can findrefuge much nearer their home countries.’ A sweeping generalisation to say the least.

At this point it is important to finally dispel some of these myths. Due to the vast amount of stereotyping that takes place with regards to this topic it may come as quite a surprise that research done by the Refugee Awareness Project shows that in 2007, Afghanistan, Iran and China were the top three countries of origin for UK asylum seekers. People who decide to seekrefuge will often opt for the closest safe country possible as many factors such as culture, religion and family ties will influence this decision.

Contrary to popular belief, it has been found that roughly 70% of the worlds’ refugees are hosted in Africa and the Middle East, with the UK being home to only 2%. In 2007 only 23% of first appealsin the UK were successful: at odds with the popular belief that the UK throws open its borders to anybody who wants to come in. The Home Office statistics show that, asylum applicationsin the UK “have fallen by almost half over the last five years,” yet due to negative media hype the case is generally believed to be quite the opposite.

Moreover, the process of gaining refugee status in the UK is both arduous and traumatic. When a person initially arrives in the UK they undergo a ‘screening interview’ in order to establish basic information such as their nationality, identity and any documentation that they may possess.

This is usually done at whichever port they arrive, however if a person requests a claim for refuge after entry in the UK then the ‘screening interview’ must be done at a screening unit (these are located in Croydon and Liverpool). A person is then given a case owner who handles the case and offers them advice throughout the process. It is highly important to note that the case owner is not a form of legal help; the person in question is supposedly granted a separate legal advisor, yet, often they will never actually be given the chance to meet their ‘legal advisor’.

In the UK, the government target is to have 90% of asylum claims completed with a definite decision being made within six months of the initialapplication. Shockingly, during this waiting period the person concerned is merely sent to live somewhere in the UK , without being given any choice and often lacking an adequate amount of information to actually understand what is happening. During this time it is illegal for a person seekingrefuge to work.

At any given time in the process a person can simply be taken away to be detained without any prior notice. The persons in question are held in “Immigration Removal Centres”, previously known as detention centres. “There are ten IRC’s in the UK. Seven of these are run by private companies contracted to the UK border agency, while three centres are run by HM Prison Service.”

The centres are primarily used to detain those who are awaiting a decision to be made on their refuge or whose claim has been unsuccessful and are being forcibly removed. There is no maximum period of detention and instances of people being detained for twelve months or more are ever increasing.

The harsh standards of treatment in detention centres can be likened to prisons and no consideration is taken for those under special circumstances. For example, the BID found many cases of ‘people held in detention in spite of having evidence of being tortured, people with severe mental and physical health problems, survivors of rape, and pregnant women.’

Suicides and instances of self harm are not uncommon occurrences to take place under such circumstances. Children are no exception to the rule with a total of 1.800 children being held in thesecentres in 2005. Frequently children are separated from their families in these centres and aren’t told how long they will be detained for. Often these children feel they are being punished yet don’t know why, leaving them both depressed and traumatised. A mother giving an account of her seven year old daughter, who speaks of how “She was crying all the time… and saying ‘I’m going to kill myself.”

If an application is positive, the person seeking sanctuary is given refugee status and initially allowed to live legally in the UK for five years. This means that they have the same rights as a UK citizen with regards to working and claiming any benefits that they may need.

On the other hand, if an application is unsuccessful then the individual will be asked to leave the country. It is possible to appeal this decision but during this time all support will be stopped which often means that people are left homeless and without any form of help. This often leads to many people becoming destitute.

Destitution affects up to 280,000 unrecognised refugees in the UK. This happens due to the fact that if a person is not granted refugee status they don’t always have the choice of returning home owing to a great fear of persecution or even death in their homeland and so decide upon the lesser of two evils by living homeless on the streets of the UK and being driven to extreme measures such as starving, begging and sometimes even prostitution in order to stay alive.

One lady telling her side of the story to a spokesperson of Asylum Aid says, “I have been through hell, lived with a man who provided me with a roof, in return I had to sleep with him, he beat me regularly, at times tried to suffocate me, called me racist names, spat at me, all this because he knew that I can’t go to the police with fear of being deported.”

Many feel that refugees and people seeking sanctuary are ‘taking up space’ and leaving UK citizens ‘jobless’, however these tend to be more myth than truth. As stated above, people seeking refuge are not allowed to work which clearly makes this view bogus. Furthermore, if the time is taken to truly consider these people, it would be understood how desperate they must have been to come here.

After all, no one would come to a foreign country, unable to speak the language, unable to work and leaving all that they know behind, out of choice.

There are many groups within the UK which are set up to aid refugees, people seeking sanctuary and the destitute such as STAR (Student Action For Refugees.) In Cardiff, STAR hold weekly drop-in centres where students can help to support refugees in a practical way through volunteering. There is a drop-in held every Wednesday evening.

If you are interested in getting involved, find us on facebook. If you would like some more information, visit www.star-network.org.uk.

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