Today migrant organisations will be out in force on a march called by Strangers into Citizens in support of an amnesty for asylum seekersand undocumented workers. Although I will be fulfilling an earlier commitment to speak at the May day march and celebrations in Burnley, I wish to send my support to the demonstration today.
There has been alot of discussion amongst migrant organisations about whether the amnesty proposal is a good thing. Currently asylum seekers are forced into work illegally for sub-minimum wages. If they are refused asylum they are amde destitute and even though they have committed no crime they can be locked up in detention centres. I have a detention centre and a removal centre in my own constituency.
Regularisation would give them security and enable them to join with others in demanding decent pay and better conditions.
However many migrant organisations are unhappy with the Strangers into Citizens proposals. This includes many I have worked with over the years, such as the All African Women's Group, Barbed Wire Britain, Bolivian Solidarity, Campaign to Close Campsfield, Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq, Colombian Solidarity Campaign, Congo Solidarity Campaign, Cogo Support Project, Day-Mer Halkevi Turkish Centre, Ecuadorian Movement in UK, Latin American Community Association, Latin American Workers Association, Payday Men's Network and Women of Colour in the Global Women's Strike.
There are many reasons for their concerns, particularly that the proposal includes a list of criteria which wouold exclude many migrant such as a four year residency period and a fluent english qualification. The process envisaged w old also take two years to complete.
The Campaign has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament. I haven't signed tthis yet as I want to amend it to propose a more inclusive scheme and one that doesn't divide this most vulnerable community.
I am in favour of regularisation and wholeheartedly support the motives behind today's demonstration but I hope that we can all unite behind a call for regularisation for all so that nobody is excluded.
15 Comments:
John, your support for immigrants and asylum seekers is undoubtedly your clearest demonstration of a principled standpoint. Living in a culture of fear of terrorism and widespread xenephobia within mainstream media sources, defending the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants is not an easy task. However, it is the fact that you do so unhesitatingly and without proviso that finally convinced me that your campaign would be an honest and open one throughout.
my letter in support of John's camapign is in Guardian today; edited but made main point
my letter in support of John's camapign is in Guardian today; edited but made main point
Yesterday's march went really well. The groups John mentioned managed to get out over 300 "No one is illegal - Regularisation for all" placards, 5000 leaflets in different languages explaining why we need regularisation for all without exceptions or conditions, and 5000 free newspapers. They also marched behind banners demanding regularisation for all and talked to hundreds of people about the importance of campaigning for an amnesty that would not result in deportations (as it stands, the Strangers into Citizens proposal could perversely result in the deportations of thousands who applied and found they did not fit the selective & abritrary criteria).
Copies of the free newspaper with articles by asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and activists about the issues surrounding an amnesty can be ordered free of charge by e-mailing migrants@aktivix.org
There is also an ideas & planning day for regularisation on Saturday 19th May, from 11am - 4pm at South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, near Elephant & Castle tube station. Everyone is welcome, especially asylum seekers and other migrants. If you are an asylum seeker and need help with the costs of your fare to get to the conference, please contact migrants@aktivix.org
Thanks, John, for bringing this issue to people's attention - it is vital that we campaign for regularisation for EVERYBODY and not just a few.
accidentally double posted above due to defective mouse I think.
on the regularisation campaign above the thing to ask yourself is whether you would try to get to the West as an asylum seeker or whatever if you lived in a war torn country or there was a natural disaster such as the Monserrat disaster or even if you couldn't find work in your home country but you had family to support and there was work abroad. Unless you can honestly answer no to such questions you should supprt the campaign as "there by the graceof God go you" to misquote the famous saying.
When I worked in immmigration myself I got an inkling of what horror many of the applciants had had to escape from which led to things like unaccompanied junior asylum seekers - a parent would presumably be pretty desparate indeed to send their child half way round the world on their own;people who have clung to the fuselage of planes; a surgeon pressurised by the repressive government in his country to tortue people by cutting off hands etc who was himself tortured for refusing...let alone those who have been harassed and forced to go into hiding and flee for simply being a member of a political party - a freedom we take for granted here. The other reason I keep banging on about this is that as I know the UK takes less refugees/asylum seekers as it is supposed to under the terms of the UN ruling on it and secondly that the immigration officers are given a steer from further uo in the Home Office that most of the applicants must tbe lying and are really economic migrants and since the Tory government they have shortened the interviews on purpose and biased thequestions so that the applicants can't give a proper account of themselves as well as doing these main interviews with people straight off planes with no time to gather their thoughts and other dodges. I really feel I must speak out about it - they also told us we didn't really need to know what was actually happening politically in each country we interviewed people from as the claim would be worked out on whether the applicants had evidence (the decisions aremade in another dept of the Home Office) which tended to mean they were all refused with stock letters which we had to "serve" on them; there were often shocked gasps of disbelief at not only the refusal aspect but also the Home Office's glib analysis of the situation in their country and why they couldn't possibly need to claim saylum from there. But of course if you are really being persecuted it could happen anyway and it did seem that they had got often their facts on the countries concerned wrong but it was diffcult to follow up the situation in each country in your own tiem as we dealt with so many different ones each day and there was no internet or even laptops apart from databases when I was there- nine hour interviews had to be written out longhand and verbatim.
The other thing about our immigration policy is that it only takes a cursory examination of it's history to realise how imperialist and really institutionally racist it actually is - "white" countries such as Austrailia's applicants get much better terms than say those from the Indian subcontinent when itcomes to things like whether they are allowed to bring in their dependants for example.
It needs modernising by someone like John - he could appoint someone much better than John Reid methinks! We should also fight against IND becoming an executive agency as that will no doubt lead to things like them only recruiting thewrong sort of staff who are not impartial and we could end up with a right wing uniformed and armed border police (in many countries immigration is the police anyway) which we definitely don't want...
H, you're correct to point out that the vast majority of us caught in a war or a famine would wish to move to a more prosperous climate. However, it is important to also point out just how little the West does in terms of providing for asylum seekers. One of the BNP policies is to only accept asylum seekers that come directly from nations adjacent to our borders (in other words France) - a supposedly clever and frankly insulting means of meeting our duties under the Geneva Convention. The BNP claim that genuine asylum seekers should be seeking refuge within the borders of their nearest safe nation.
This is of course a ridiculous argument... the vast majority of asylum seekers do indeed end up in Iran or Pakistan at the moment - and the amount that Europe and America take in is miniscule in comparison. It's just a shame because I think if people were really made aware of the facts then they wouldn't just take the word of mainstream tabloids on all issues of immigration.
Good luck today John, fingers crossed Meacher stands down & has a couple of MPs he can transfer to you.
Glad to see you mentioned a fair few times on BBC news this morning. Shame Kevin Maguire didn't mention you.
Please would you comment on today John - not the greatest PR .... ?
Agreed - can we please get a statement???
I'm guessing that last comment wasn't really from Dan. I hope not anyway.
Do any of you people care about the English? Or is all moral worth for you got from supporting those dispossessing them?
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