Government challenged on asylum seeker DNA tests

The UK Government could be acting illegally if it uses DNA testing to try to determine the country of origin of asylum seekers, a leading Scottish human rights campaigner says.

Professor Alan Miller, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, and a top human rights lawyer, said moves to use DNA testing as a permanent part of the asylum application process could be contested in the European Court of Human Rights – reports the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (http://www.scvo.org.uk/).

Professor Miller was speaking at a Scottish Festival of Politics event that debated the legal and moral basis for a recent six month UK Border Agency (UKBA) pilot that used DNA testing in cases where an asylum seeker’s country of origin was in doubt.

The controversial UKBA Human Providence Pilot was aimed at addressing alleged problems of African asylum seekers claiming to come from war-torn Somalia because they were more likely to have their application approved.

However, it was amended at the last minute after an outcry from human rights bodies and scientists who claimed that it wasn’t possible to accurately determine a person’s country of origin from their DNA.

Testing did go ahead but the UKBA argued that it would not be used to determine a person’s right to asylum.

UK Immigration minister Damien Green, who is carrying out a review of the asylum process, has not yet indicated whether the controversial move will be rolled out permanently.

“If the government wants to legislate and put this into the asylum system they are on very, very shaky ground and they would be very susceptible to [being] challenged in the European Court of Human Rights,” said Miller at the event organised by the British Council and the Economic and Social Research Council Genomics Forum.

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Right to work for asylum seekers

UKBA has laid Statement of Changes CM7929 to give effect (or, at least, limited effect) to the judgment of the Supreme Court in ZO (Somalia) [2010] UKSC 36.

This was the case in which the Court held that an asylum claim is still an asylum claim for the purposes of the Reception Directive whether it is an initial claim or a subsequent claim. One of the consequences of this interpretation is that where UKBA fail to make a decision on a subsequent claim for asylum (usually called fresh claims, see this earlier post for some pointers on this subject) for 12 months or more, the applicant for asylum must be give access to the labour market, subject to some potential conditions.

Well, the conditions have been announced and the only jobs for which asylum seekers kept waiting for 12 months or more will be able to apply are those on the shortage occupation list maintained by UKBA, usually for the purposes of Tier 2 (general) applications in the Points Based System. This mainly consists of doctors, nurses and engineers but still includes ballet dancers, I see. Meteorologists are no longer required, apparently.

New paragraph 360 also states that UKBA will only consider applications for permission to work where the asylum claimant has not contributed to the delay in reaching a decision. No further meaning or explanation is provided here. In the vast majority of cases the delay is entirely caused by UKBA sitting on such cases for sometimes years on end, so this is a bit rich.

Self employment or setting up a business are both prohibited.

Homeless migrants pressured into returning home

Twenty two rough sleeping EU migrants that had set up a camp in Peterborough have disbanded it after pressure from local residents .A UK Border Agency pilot scheme to deport homeless migrants has seen 28 people sent home.

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Date set for Oakington closure

A date has been set for the closure of the Oakington immigration detention centre in Cambridgeshire.

The centre, which is run by the UK Border Agency, will close by 12 November this year, Immigration Minister Damian Green said.

About 300 people are employed at the facility, with 200 working for security company G4S along with 100 sub-contractors.

G4S will begin discussions with unions regarding the closure.

Mr Green said: “For the past 10 years, Oakington has housed hundreds of immigration offenders and allowed us to remove those with no right to be in the country.

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Nottingham asylum seeker jumps to his death

By Harmit Athwal

Campaigners are desperately trying to raise the necessary funds to send the body of 27-year-old Osman Rasul Mohammed, an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker who jumped from the seventh floor of a Nottingham tower block, back home.

On Sunday 25 July 2010, according to the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/01/asylum-seeker-osman-rasul-death-legal-aid) police officers talked to Osman as he was perched by railings of Clifford Court in Radford for two hours before placing his hand on his heart, looking up to the sky and jumping.

Osman was destitute and relied on the generosity of his friends, many of whom were in a similar situation, and local charity distributed by Nottingham and Notts Refugee Forum (NNRF). Osman had been in the UK since 2001 after fleeing Iraq when his father and brother were killed. He had been refused permission to stay in the UK but was in the process of submitting a fresh asylum claim. As such he was not in receipt of any support from the government and was forced to ‘live’ on the street with £20 per month and food parcels supplied by NNRF. He was not allowed to work and probably had little access to health care. He had separated from his Polish partner with whom he had two children.

The Guardian also reported that he had managed to make his way to London to visit UK Border Agency (UKBA) offices in Croydon but had been turned away and told to find a solicitor. Osman was one of over 10,000 clients of the Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) charity that recently went in to administration leaving its vulnerable clients without access to legal advice.

His friends and campaigners in Nottingham are trying to raise the funds (£3,300) to return his body to his mother in Iraq. You can find details of where to donate money below.

The sad death of Osman Rasul Mohammed ‘made’ the national newspapers as did the deaths of three Russian asylum seekers, in March this year, who were found below a block of flats in Glasgow, all three having apparently jumped to their deaths. However, the deaths of countless others fail to warrant even a mention in the local or national press.

According to the IRR’s research at least 276 asylum seekers and migrants have died either in the UK at their own hand or attempting to reach the UK since 1989, (see the IRR’s report: Driven to desperate measures (http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/september/ha000013.html).) And in the last three years alone, at least seventeen asylum seekers (five of whom were Iraqi) have apparently taken their own life, in circumstances similar to those of Osman Rasul Mohammed.

How many more will die as cuts to the legal aid budget hit those with the most to lose, as more are forced in to destitution and as the UKBA carries out more impromptu dawn raids? How many more?

UKBA publishes guide on employing refugees and asylum seekers

Law and Policy

Immigration inspector criticises dawn raids

By Alan Travis

Dawn raids on asylum families facing deportation have become “the norm”, with no evidence that the authorities actually consider whether they are necessary, according to a report published today by the independent chief inspector scrutinising the UK Border Agency.

John Vine says that his investigation of 42 deportation cases found that the majority of arrests of families by UKBA were carried out between 6.30am and 6.40am.

The chief inspector is sharply critical of this practice of using dawn raids and rejects explanations from immigration staff that this is the “optimum time” to find a family together before children go to school and to minimise any community reaction.

“Although we found awareness that the time of the arrest could be tailored to each family’s circumstances, there was no evidence that this was happening in practice,” says Vine.

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ICI publishes thematic inspection report on Family Removals

Prisons watchdog opposes detention of immigrants

The United Kingdom Border Agency should be stripped of its responsibility for detaining asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Dame Anne Owers, who for nine years has been the prisons watchdog, today warns of the conflict between the forced removal of failed asylum seekers and the proper care of detainees held in immigration custody.

Her call for a separation of roles comes after growing concern about the alleged brutal treatment of asylum seekers held in immigration removal centres before their return to their countries of origin. This week Dame Anne found that the Government’s newest immigration removal centre, Brook House, which opened last year, was “fundamentally unsafe”, and that both detainees and staff were victims of high levels of violence.

In an interview with The Independent, Dame Anne says that too many asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are being locked up in detention centres. But her greatest concern is for refugee children.

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