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The next regular picket of the UK Border Agency Office at 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff (map) will be held on Thursday 26th March at 12 noon. Please join us to show solidarity with people forced to sign here.
It wasn’t until the 1905 Aliens Act that we saw the first law aimed at controlling migration into Britain. Now we have a brutal and dehumanising system where people, including children are imprisoned Read the rest of this entry »
A loud and vibrant demonstration in Whitehall (video) along with a picket outside the UK Border Agency (UKBA) in Cardiff last thursday was part of an international day of action for Yahya Al Faifi. The practice of the UK Border Agency in this case has been of its usual disgusting standard. Yahya, like so many people who seek asylum in Read the rest of this entry »
Today was an international day of action for trade unionist Yahya Al-Faifi, who is under threat of deportation to Saudi Arabia. There were protests outside the offices of the Home Secretary in Whitehall, outside the UK Border Agency in Cardiff, as well as outside the British embassy in Brussels.
Yahya and his family fled Saudi Arabia after threats of fatal attack because of his trade union activity, eventually settling in south Wales. However, Yahya has had his application for asylum refused and he now faces the very real possibility of being deported back to a country with a horrific human rights record where trade unions are illegal.
It is very likely that if deported it will be BMI Airlines who are called on to do the governments dirty work, as they have previously Read the rest of this entry »
Yahya Al Faifi and his family, who live in Cardiff, are now threatened with deportation after their asylum application was refused. The family were forced to flee Saudi Arabia in 2004 after receiving threats for Yahya’s trade union activity. The trade union movement has called for an international day of action on Thursday 19th February.
At 2pm, there will be a lobby of the Home Secretary in Marsham Street, behind Millbank (Pimlico Tube Station – map). All supporters who can be there are urged to attend.
From 12 noon there will be a picket at the UK Border Agency, 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff (map) in support of this day of action and in solidarity with the demonstration in London.
Elsewhere groups are requested to protest outside British Embassies and Consulates. Please join us to demonstrate your support for this family. Bring Read the rest of this entry »
On Thursday 29th January 2009, around 25 people braved the freezing cold conditions to hold a picket for about 2 hours outside the UK Border Agency at 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff. These offices are where decisions are made about who gets detained, deported or in rarer cases granted leave to remain. ID cards are issued here for non-EU students and spouses and immigration ‘snatch squads’ operate from this address. This is also the local reporting office, where asylum applicants must ‘sign on’ as part of the conditions of their continued residence in the UK and then sometimes are detained prior to deportation. It is the face of Britain’s racist immigration policies right here on our doorstep.
Whilst holding our regular pickets we witness asylum applicants attending to ‘sign on’, their papers being inspected before they are granted admittance. Any accompanying friend or family members made to wait outside while they go in. We often also see Read the rest of this entry »
On Thursday 29th January at 12noon we will be holding a picket outside the UK Borders Agency at 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff (map) to protest against deportation, against detention and against the racist ID card system all of which are enforced from these offices. We will be hanging banners, holding placards and distributing leaflets to draw attention to what happens inside the building.
The last picket of the UK Border Agency was set to coincide with the start of registration for ID cards, whilst there is no such Read the rest of this entry »
Once again people gathered outside the UK Border Agency to protest against “ID Cards for Foreign Nationals”. This demonstration was scheduled to coincide with the start of the registration of non-EEA students and spouses in Wales and the West on Wednesday 10th December. The close proximity to a large number of Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday when the Cardiff office of the UK Border Agency starts the process of interrogating foreign nationals (starting with non-EEA students and spouses) and registering them for ID cards, we’ll be protesting outside (map).
Against ID Cards. These ‘ID cards for foreign nationals’ are the first step in the process of introducing a national ID card for everyone. The testing of the scheme on migrants before their introduction to the rest of the population is a cynical appeal to the worst kind of bigotry. By resisting the repression of migrants we Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday 10th December the registration of non-EEA students and spouses for ID cards will begin in Cardiff. At 12 noon No Borders South Wales will be holding a protest outside the UK Border Agency at 31-33 Newport Road (map) where this registration will happen. We invite all opponents of ID cards to join us.
This is a follow up to the demonstration when ID cards came into force on the 25th November in the same place, which was part of a national day of action by No Borders. Reports of the protests appered in Indymedia, No Borders Nottingham, Ten Percent, Gair Rhydd, SWM Forum, Greenman’s Occasional Organ, Earth First! Action Reports, Freedom for Tooting, and even got a mention in the Guardian.
The different border agency centres around the country are starting to register over a stagered period. Only the Croydon centre started registering on the 25th. There was a blockade of Vulcan House in Sheffield when Read the rest of this entry »
Over 60 people attended our protest against the introduction of Biometric ID Cards for non-EU students and spouses on Tuesday. The demonstration was held for a couple of hours at midday outside the Cardiff office of the UK Border Agency at 31-33 Newport Road. People the government is forcing to carry ID cards will have to attend this centre for interrogation, photographing and Read the rest of this entry »
With the launch date for the first wave of ID cards of Tuesday 25th November fast approaching, more information on the shape of the scheme is coming to the public domain. Resistance to ID cards for airport workers appears to be having an effect, plans of protest are developing in all six cities where the the ID cards issuing centres are, with No Borders, Defy ID and no2id activists indicating their intention to take to the streets. The addresses of the UK Border Agency centres where student and marriage visa applicants will have to go to have their photograph and fingerprints taken are -
- Birmingham - Dominion Court, 41 Station Road, Solihull, Birmingham, B91 3RT (map)
- Croydon - Lunar House, 40 Wellesley Road, Croydon, CR9 2BY (map)
- Cardiff - General Buildings, 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 6AB (map)
- Glasgow - Festival Court, 200 Brand Street, Govan, Glasgow, G51 1DH (map)
- Liverpool - Reliance House, 20 Water Street, Liverpool, L2 8XU (map)
- Sheffield - Vulcan House, 6 Millsands, Sheffield S3 8NU (map)
No Borders South Wales will be protesting outside the Cardiff centre from 12 noon on the Tuesday 25th November. We welcome all opponents of the increasing levels of social control that the government wishes to extend over all our lives to take part. Join us during your lunch break from work or study to show solidarity with migrants being victimised by these cynical divide and rule tactics by The Home Office. By resisting the repression of migrants, we defend the freedom of everyone!
Somewhat unsurprisingly The Home Office are predicting considerable delays in their processing time, and the Border Agency centres will not all be ready to take ID applications at the same time, the roll out of the scheme being - 25th November: Croydon, 1st December: Sheffield, 4th December: Liverpool, 8th December: Birmingham, 10th December: Cardiff, 12th December: Glasgow.
Today we held one of our regular pickets of the UK Border Agency 
offices in Cardiff. Whenever we hold one of these protests we distribute “Campaign to Stay” leaflets to the asylum seekers who are forced to sign there. We also give an information leaflet to passers by, the leaflet explains:
Why are we demonstrating outside this building
General Buildings, 31-33 Newport Road (map) is the regional offices of the Border Agency, which is a Government agency of the Home Office. This agency make decisions on people’s claims for asylum, decides who can and cannot stay in the UK and are responsible for detaining and deporting thousands of migrants every year.
Migrants come to the UK to in search of a better life. They may be escaping from poverty, from war, from environmental disasters. They may have been abused, imprisoned, persecuted, tortured or had their lives threatened because of their religion, their political opinions, their sexuality, their ethnicity or because of their gender. Whatever the reason that someone has come to the UK, they do not get an ‘easy ride’ and they do not deserve to be treated in the cruel way that our government treats them.
People have moved freely across the globe for thousands of years, without any need for these movements being controlled. Migration controls and the techniques of migration management are a very recent phenomenon of human history. It wasn’t until the 1905 Aliens Act that we saw the first law aimed at controlling migration into Britain.
Now we have a brutal & dehumanising migration regime in the UK. Asylum applicants, including children, are routinely imprisoned in immigration detention centres, despite having committed no crime. Refused asylum applicants are routinely detained in police station cells (including Rumney in Cardiff) despite having committed no crime.
Refused asylum seekers can have their homes raided in the very early hours when they are sleeping, where Immigration officials snatch children and their families to detain and deport them. Such ‘snatch squads’ operate from the Newport Road Border Agency office. There have also been numerous reports of physical assaults on migrants who are being deported by the security personnel who are escorting them.
Asylum applicants are forced to live in poverty in the UK. They are not allowed to work and risk prison if they do. They receive just 70% of standard Income Support benefit levels. If an asylum application is refused, but a migrant is unable to return because the situation in their country is too dangerous, such as Iraq, they get no benefits but may get £35 a week in vouchers and are not allowed to work.
You may often hear or read stories about there being ‘too many’ asylum seekers or refugees in this country and that we are being ‘flooded’ by immigrants. In fact, refugees and asylum seekers make up only 0.3% of the Welsh population.
Supporting people who have come to the UK for protection and for a better life should not be viewed as a ‘drain’ on public resources, especially when our government spends £billions on wars, £millions on a Royal Family we did not choose, £millions on MP’s expenses and where very rich British people can be allowed to avoid paying taxes.
Click on image to download the .pdf
We are protesting in solidarity with the people whose lives are under attack from the bureaucrats inside this building; who took cancer patient Ama Sumani from her hospital bed and sent her to her death, who sent BB, Jean Pierre Gueutchue and so many others to uncertain, unsafe futures, away from people they loved and who loved them. We will be protesting outside these offices for as long as the government enforces racist border controls.
Biometric ID cards will come into force for non-EU students and spouses from 25th November and will be issued from offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Croydon, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Sheffield. We will be holding a protest outside the Home Office building in Cardiff and hope for protests outside each of the other offices on that day. You can read an excellent overview of the introduction of ID cards over in an article entitled “IDentity politics: new biometric cards for foreign nationals” in Corporate Watch, we have also produced a leaflet detailing the government timetable and calling for protests around the country on the launch day. Please download, print, photocopy and distribute!
“First they forced ID cards on asylum seekers,
and I didn’t protest because I wasn’t an asylum seeker.
Now they’re forcing ID cards on non-EU migrants,
and I didn’t protest because I wasn’t a non-EU migrant
Next they’re forcing ID cards on airport workers,
and then they’re going to force one on me…”
Borders are rising around all of us, immigration law already gives the Home Office powers it would like to exert over everybody. We are against repression in all its forms and the many controls which would restrict the lives of everyone. The UK is becoming a mass surveillance society, migrants are at the very sharp end. We are keen to work with other opponents of ID cards to build a grassroots resistance to state control, please get in touch.
By resisting the repression of migrants, we defend the freedom of everyone!
Here are some more pictures of our recent awareness raising anti-ID card protest outside the Passport office in Newport a few weeks back:
Articles covering the protest also appeared in Bath Bomb and Digital ID.
The last picket of the UK Border Agency offices in Cardiff was attended by around 50 people, including Leanne Wood AM and the deputy leader of Cardiff Council Neil McEvoy, all supporting BB‘s anti-deportation campaign.
Let’s all meet again on Thursday November 6th from 12noon for about an hour or so, at General Buildings, 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff (map) to protest against the Home Office’s racist immigration policies, to demonstrate our solidarity with all migrants, no matter where they are from or why they are here. We will be hanging banners, holding placards and distributing leaflets to draw attention to the sickening activities of the Border Agency. Take your lunch break from work, study or whatever else with us to show you won’t tolerate the brutal practises that take place inside the building. See you there!
There will be one of our regular meetings this Thursday, and every Thursday at 7pm at the South Riverside Community Development Centre, Brunel Street, Cardiff CF11 6ES. (map). Meetings are open for all to attend, but discrimination is not welcome, and diversity is respected. They usually take no more than 1 hour and are usually followed by a sociable pint in a nearby pub!
Activists from No Borders South Wales, No Borders Bristol, and Zimbabwe Development Support Association demonstrated outside the UK Border Agency’s regional office for Wales and South West in Cardiff today in protest against the UK’s racist and repressive migration controls.
Despite some rather petty territorial behaviour from the Border Agency staff (who removed a banner that was attached to ‘their’ railings) and a short visit from 
local police who had been ‘sent down to check that everything was passing off peacefuly’, the event went very well.
The turn out was good, the response from passers-by was great, and we managed to hand out a load of leaflets to asylum seekers being forced to sign on inside the building. One of the main reasons we do a regular picket of this place is to distribute leaflets to the refugees who are victimised there. By informing them about the support that’s available and urging them to campaign for the right to stay in the UK, we encourage people to take control of their lives rather than submitt to whims of an asylum regime that aims to de-humanise them at every turn.
In the wake of the recent hunger strike by 50 inmates of the squalid detention prison at Campsfield IRC over their continued detention, it was truly inspiring to see people coming together to offer solidarity to migrants living in our community. The hunger strike was started by 13 Kurdish refugees after news that Hussein Ali, who had attempted to claim asylum in the UK, commited suicide two days after he was forcibly deported to Iraq.
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