You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Asylum Seekers’ tag.
An article in today’s Guardian, has added extra meaning to our protest outside the UKBA this afternoon. Louise Perrett worked as a case owner at the UK Border Agency office in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer. Due to her experiences of her time in the agency she has risked breaching the Official Secrets Act to go public with evidence of anti-immigration views and abuse of power by UK Border Agency staff.
“I witnessed general hostility, rudeness and indifference towards clients. It was completely horrific. I highlighted my concerns to senior managers but I was just laughed at. I decided to speak out because nobody else was saying anything and major changes are needed at senior management level.”
Her revelations reveal a culture of bigotry and prejudice in the Cardiff office, where members of staff took pride in refusing applications.
- One manager said of the asylum-seeker clients: “If it was up to me I’d take them all outside and shoot them.”
- If a case was difficult, she was simply advised to refuse it and “let a tribunal sort it out”.
- Any officer who approved an asylum application had a stuffed toy “grant monkey” placed on their desk by other members of staff as a badge of shame.
- One official tested the claims of boys Read the rest of this entry »
A new report: “Chance or choice? Understanding why asylum seekers come to the UK” has been published by the Refugee Council. The report is the result of research undertaken by Professor Heaven Crawley, Director of the Centre for Migration Policy Research at the University of Swansea.
The findings say what anyone who has any knowledge of the experience of refugees already knows. That people seeking sanctuary have little, if any, choice over which country they claim asylum in, and that few know what to expect before they arrive. The result being that harsh policies which make the life of a refugee tougher after they have arrived in the UK have no demonstrable influence over whether people Read the rest of this entry »
In the UK, on average, 50 people a day are forcibly removed from their homes and deported. In Cardiff, snatch squads leave from the UK Border Agency on 31-33 Newport Road in order to smash in peoples’ doors and drag them out of bed.
On Monday morning, UK Border Agency ‘Officers’ were at work early, busy at an address on Newport Road. The UKBA used dark blue anonymous unmarked vans, with blacked Read the rest of this entry »
Then you should be concerned about the repression of migrants by government and corporate immigration ‘services’. ID cards have already been tested on migrants seeking asylum and will be used next on other ‘foreigners’.
The Application Registration Card has to be carried by everyone seeking asylum for their regular reporting and to obtain National Asylum Support Service payments from the post office. It is an ID card containing the bearer’s fingerprint, photograph, name, date of birth and nationality.
From this November foreign nationals wanting to enter the UK will have to apply for “biometric residence permits” and their details will be entered into a national identity database. From next year foreign nationals living in the UK will begin to be issued with ID cards. Once migrants have been used to test the scheme, the government’s plan is to issue identity cards to UK citizens on a voluntary basis from 2010, then in 2011 bringing in compulsory ‘choice’ of a passport, ID card or both.
The fact that ID cards and fingerprinting technology has been tested on refugees shows that the state is prepared to impose ID on those people with the least voice to oppose it, before rolling it out to the whole population. The government is trying to get ID plans accepted by cynical scapegoating of immigrants especially ‘asylum seekers’ .
No Borders South Wales will be holding a protest against ID cards, biometric passports, and the surveillance society in general on Saturday 4th October at 2pm outside the Passport Office, Olympia House, Upper Dock Street, Newport, NP20 1XA (map). We will be distributing leaflets and raising awareness about the new ID laws that come into force this November. Come and join us.
This article first appeared in the new No Borders South Wales Newsletter, you can download a copy here.
“an immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for children”
Anne Owers, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.
Two recent reports on full announced inspections of two privately run detention prisons provide extremely damning evidence of the treatment of asylum applicants incarcerated within them. The report on Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre and report on Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centre were both carried out by Anne Owers, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. These are the places where single women and families – men, women and children – are locked up, often for extended periods of time, despite having never committed any crime, apart from coming to the UK in search of a better life. Both reports focused particularly on the effects that such imprisonment has on children.
Some key findings from the report on Yarl’s Wood
- Escort vehicles with caged compartments were inappropriately used to transport children
- the average length of children’s detention had increased and this had a detrimental effect on children and their families
- overall provision of health services was a concern
- Children staying for more than a few days received an unsatisfactory educational experience and there were few activities outside school hours
- There was no evidence that children’s individual needs were systematically taken into account when decisions to detain were made. Our interviews with detained children illustrated the effect of sudden arrest and detention on their well being and reflected how scared they were while held in detention
- The standard of care delivery was reasonable for basic primary care, but some serious gaps in provision, including poor access and communication, impacted negatively on detainee wellbeing
- Services for children were under-developed
Some key findings from the report about Tinsley House:
- Our principal concerns about safety related to children. While staff in the family centre made considerable efforts to support children and their families, they could do little to mitigate the damaging effects of their detention
- We were disturbed to observe some unprofessional conduct by external escort staff
- We were particularly troubled by the plight of single women …the conditions for single women were extremely poor …Their situation should be addressed as a matter of urgency
- there were examples of detainees given tranquilisers inappropriately without their consent
- Prolonged detention was not adequately explained or reviewed. When detainees made bail applications for independent review of detention by a court, BIA disclosure was sometimes prejudicially late and inaccurate
- there had been no progress on substantive areas of care since inspectorate recommendations as far back as 2002
Both these reports highlight the terrible conditions and human rights violations that asylum applicants must endure within detention centres, and as the final quote from the Tinsley House report highlights, nothing much has improved since the last inspection. The idea that such places could ever be made happier, more caring, or humane is pure fantasy. You know what we think. Close all detention prisons!
Help promote this site
Here’s a better version of the round banner ad that was posted the other day.
<a href="http://noborderswales.wordpress.com"><img src="http://i519.photobucket.com/albums/u354/noborderswales/nbwsquaread2.gif" border="0" alt="circlead"></a>
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.
On 9th January, Ama Sumani, a terminally ill Ghanaian mother of two was denied medical care for her cancer at University Hospital, Cardiff and subsequently deported. The decision has been widely and strongly criticised by the UK medical profession, with the medical journal `The Lancet’ stating that
“the UK has committed an atrocious barbarism”.
A doctor treating Ama at the hospital stressed to the immigration authorities that they were sending her to her death. Ama now has to fund her own kidney dialysis in Accra at £50 a day, without which she would die within 2 weeks. Most of the vital medication that was given by Welsh doctors for Ama to take home with her was taken by a UK government Doctor, leaving her Read the rest of this entry »
It has been discovered that ‘snatch squads’ who carry out dawn raids on asylum seeker families operate out of the ‘Border & Immigration Agency’, General Buildings, 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff. As part of the fight against unjust & racist migration controls worldwide, activists from No Borders Wales have conducted early morning monitoring of immigration staff at General Buildings & have witnessed ‘snatch squads’ leaving the building on a number of occasions at around 6am in the morning. Activists who have followed the ‘snatch squads’ have been Read the rest of this entry »
Asylum seekers may once again be locked up without charge in Cardiff Jail, despite assurances that this barbaric practice had ended. Sources in the prison itself have confirmed this is true, despite official denials.
In May 2001 it was revealed that asylum seekers were being held behind bars alongside remand prisoners. It has now been 7 years since the removal of the “final” asylum seekers from the jail was welcomed by Read the rest of this entry »
While the NHS was set up to provide health care for all based on need & not an ability to pay, this is not the case for us all.
In April 2004 the Government tightened up restrictions on free health care to ‘overseas visitors’, in response to the perceived threat to the NHS of people coming to the UK specifically for free medical treatment. In fact, as pointed out by a 2006 Refugee Council report, there is no evidence to indicate the scale of such ‘health tourism’ & no specific examples of people migrating to the UK specifically for free health care. According to the Refugee Council, the main factors affecting the choice of country where individuals seek asylum is their language, family connections or historical connections between their country & the UK. Also, many asylum seekers simply do not have a choice of where they go as increasingly tighter border controls mean Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday 3rd – Tour for freedom of movement & against migration control in Glasgow. The crowd split into small groups, visiting government institutions & multinational companies where, denied sanctuary & protection, asylum seekers are exploited & repressed.
These included the Immigration Appeal courts, the registration of birth, marriage & deaths, employment agencies such as Manpower & Staff Finders, who profit from Read the rest of this entry »
Mrs Saleh Deportation: Update
October 25, 2012 in Comment | Tags: abuse, arrest, Asylum Seekers, Barnardo's, blockade, Cardiff, Cedars, Crawley, demonstration, deportation, Detention Centre, Director of Prisons, domestic violence, due process, family's house raided by ukba, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, G4S, Gatwick, Group 4, Group 4 Securicor, Group Four, Heathrow, Home Office, Home Secretary, Illegal Deportation, injunction, lock-on, M23, miscarriage of justice, Mrs Saleh, No Borders, Pease Pottage, police, police brutality, protest, refugee, Saleh Family, Theresa May, UK Border Agency, UK Border Force, UKBA, violence | by No Borders South Wales | Leave a comment
Despite the best efforts of a handful of friends and family who blockaded Cedars detention centre and held up the coach for 5 hours, Mrs Saleh and her children were taken to an airport on Wednesday morning and deported to Egypt. However, the appeal against this course of action is building serious momentum as there have been a huge number of irregularities, illegalities and clear cases of abuse surrounding these events. Watch this space – we will be posting a detailed update really soon.
DEMONSTRATE! In Support of the Saleh Family
11.30am, Saturday 27th October
Aneurin Bevan Statue, Queen St, Cardiff.
Bring banners, signs, messages of support, and of course everyone you know!