September 2021 - Status Now 4 All

September 27, 2021September 27, 2021

Racial Justice and Migrant Rights

27 September 2021: Here is the Motion submitted by Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party [CLP] to the Labour Party Conference taking place right now. The Motion did not make it onto the list for discussion because there were other issues that people prioritised. It is however heartening to see that our concern is shared in that forum and we encourage Party members to use the motion in their own CLPs, Trades Unions etc for discussion:

The Motion reads: Racial Justice and Migrant Rights

This CLP notes:

Structural racism exists.

This CLP believes:

The Labour Party must seek to dismantle structural racism and campaign for racial justice in the UK and around the world.
The more unequal a society, the greater the reliance on a carceral system.
Successive governments have exploited the labour of migrants while failing to acknowledge the contribution of migration to our economy, culture, and society.

This CLP resolves that the Labour Party must:

September 24, 2021September 24, 2021

Access to healthcare at the point of need?

Updated 24 September 2021: Bare Life films: NHS Borderlands – An investigative documentary into the human cost of charging migrants for accessing the NHS

After fleeing persecution in Zimbabwe in fear for her life, Angela sought asylum in the UK where she has lived with her husband for 20 years. Following a vital hysterectomy operation Angela is – without warning – issued a bill for £8,000 by the NHS, jeopardizing her life in the UK forever. Angela’s story exposes the real cost of the recent introduction of NHS charges for migrants, where discrimination undermines our society’s commitment to universal healthcare. The most vulnerable are left unable to pay and scared to seek care. There are many stories like Angela’s, most untold and undocumented. This film documents how healthcare workers and campaigners are fighting alongside Angela to keep the border out of hospitals.

Contact Bare Life films for more information:

About Bare Life films:

September 18, 2021September 20, 2021

Justice for Simba: Carnival of Resistance to the Hostile Environment in the NHS

Event organised by SNN signatories: Docs Not Cops, Medact ,Migrants Organise, and also Justice for Simba🎉✊🏿🏥 Justice for Simba: Carnival of Resistance to the Hostile Environment in the NHS 📅✊🏿🎉 Sat 18th September ✨ Join the action in solidarity!

On 18th September, the Justice for Simba campaign are hosting a carnival of resistance to the Hostile Environment in the NHS, taking place in Sheffield. Join us to take action in solidarity against racist immigration policies in healthcare – wherever you are!

Meet at 2pm, Devonshire Green! There will be music, dancing, speeches, and a spirit of solidarity and resistance to hostile and cruel immigration policies! We will then hand in Simba’s petition to Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

👉🏾 Here’s what you need to do! 👈🏾
⭐️ Sign and share Simba’s petition on your social media and with your friends and colleagues – we want to hit 70,000 signatures to hand in! http://change.org/justiceforsimba
⭐️ Spread the word https://linktr.ee/JusticeForSimba
⭐️ Print and share Simba’s poster! So we can share pics on the day https://tinyurl.com/SimbaPosters

Our friend Simba has been charged over £100,000 for his life-saving treatment following a stroke — all because of his immigration status. Two years on, Simba is fighting for his recovery but Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is still chasing him for payment.

September 15, 2021September 28, 2021

Zoom meeting: Oppose the Nationality & Borders Bill, Manchester, 27 September 2021

Please click the link and register to attend!

We are writing to you on behalf of NWTUC Black Members Committee and Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit to invite you to an online meeting to coordinate the widest possible opposition from both trade unions & community and voluntary sector organisations to this brutal & racist bill.
The Bill is designed to tear up the protections offered by the Refugee Convention.
The proposals are particularly aimed at people seeking asylum who arrive in the UK ‘illegally’, conflating asylum seeking with criminality, when the government well knows that there is, in practical terms, no way of entering the UK to seek asylum ‘safely and legally’.

September 15, 2021September 16, 2023

RAPAR event in Manchester on 18 September 2021

See more events here: https://statusnow4all.org/category/events/

September 15, 2021September 23, 2021

Scottish Housing Forum for Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Reminder: Date for your diary – 21 September 2021: Are you an asylum seeker, refugee or a supporting organisation in Scotland? If yes, please join us for this tenancy participation event.

MigrationUK, Scottish Asylum and Refugee Action Group, Status Now 4 All (Scotland) and Tenancy Participation Advisory Service (Scotland) are inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

TOPIC: Scottish Housing Forum for Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Tenancy Participation

SPEAKERS :
Tony Kelly, Tenancy Participation Advisory Service (Scotland)
Asylum Seekers and refugees with lived experience on housing issues
Peer group representatives
Support services

TIME:
Sep 21, 2021
06:30 PM London

About this event: The aim is:

September 12, 2021September 16, 2023

Congratulations Emma Raducanu

Equanicity: Emma Raducanu shines a light on the importance of citizenship

JULY 8, 2021 By Cryton Chikoko

I was delighted to watch Emma Raducanu reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon. The hope of success for the nation at the grand slam rested on the migrant teenager after Sir Andy Murray crashed out.

At the age of 18 and waiting for her A-level results, Emma Raducanu became the youngest British woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon in the Open era. The sheer frenzy Raducanu sent to the nation was ecstatic to behold.

As a migrant in the UK, I was quick to note that Raducanu was born in Canada to a Romanian father and a Chinese mother. Her family moved to London when she was two years old. Crucially, Raducanu was able to represent the nation at Wimbledon because of her British nationality. The UK would not have been such a great nation without the huge contributions of the migrant community.

Raducanu has become a huge inspiration for our sport mad three boys. The eldest is an aspiring footballer for Manchester United and the England national team! However, unlike the tennis ace, our boys who were born in the UK are not British nationals. And they are completely unaware of their predicament. Their precarious immigration status is a consequence of the barriers created by immigration rules.

September 12, 2021September 15, 2021

A grant of Indefinite Leave to Remain to people without status would help ease labour shortages

StatusNow logo

12 September 2021: StatusNow: A grant of Indefinite Leave to Remain to people without status would help ease labour shortages

“The Government should grant status to all those who currently reside in the UK, as well as bring forward legislation to improve workers rights on pay and end insecure employment practices such as zero hours contracts. These are actions to address some of the reasons why employers are unable to recruit,” Ian Hodson, national president of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU)

Status Now urges the UK Government to offer immigration settlement status to all people who have made the UK their home. This is one contribution to easing the current labour shortage.

September 12, 2021September 18, 2021

Priti Patel breaks rules again after secret meeting with billionaire and British Airways

What is the relevance to StatusNow4All? See the link below to a quote from BA who published a statement stating that ‘under the Immigration Act 1971, the company is legally required to assist the Home Office in forced deportations’. We must be concerned about what is happening behind closed doors in breach of the Ministerial code.

Updated 18 September 2021: i News: Home Office deportation charter flights from UK increased as commercial planes were grounded by Covid

‘The Government has shown contempt towards the countries they send these charter flights to – countries like Jamaica where hospitals are close to breaking point dealing with Covid’

More than 1,100 people have been removed from the UK on controversial Home Office charter flights since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it can be revealed.

The flights are controversial because little is known about their operation and passengers can be handcuffed or fitted with leg and waist restraints.

There were 54 flights in 2020/21, up from just 12 in the previous year. Seven flights also took off in the first four weeks of the current financial year.

11 September 2021: Mirror: Priti Patel breaks rules again after secret meeting with billionaire and British Airways

Home Secretary Prite Patel held a secret meeting with a billionaire and British Airways – Labour is demanding a probe as she is accused of a second breach of the ministerial code

September 10, 2021November 13, 2021

We call for an inquest into Harvey Wittika’s death

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3 September 2021: StatusNow4All: We call for an inquest into Harvey Wittika’s death

This call was made at the demonstration outside Holyrood on 2 September 2021:

The death of Harvey Wittika, aged 37, who died after falling from the second floor of his flat building in Glasgow calls for a thorough investigation.

It is reported that Wittika, a Malawian national, moved to Glasgow after the Home Office refused to renew his application to stay in the UK. At the time of his death, Wittika had lived in the UK for 16 years.

The details of his death are scanty but the British Government’s ‘hostile environment’ has to be in this frame: we suspect an act of suicide that was caused by his suffering at the hands of the government department in charge of immigration control – the Home Office.

September 9, 2021November 13, 2021

There’s No Turning Back

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9 September 2021: Solidarity in action – is the solution to dissolve the racist xenophobia[1] underpinning all, including the latest, refugee-rejection manoeuvre by the UK Government[2]: this time declaring that they will command workers to turn back boats carrying refugee people; it’s always, and only, about dividing – and thereby ruling – everyone on this side of the English Channel.

Claudia Webbe MP, at the forefront of Early Day Motions[3] that call for Status Now 4 All describes this latest move as “Abhorrent”, going on to explain:

“This is yet another example of the Conservatives putting their political agenda – of the ‘hostile environment’ and stoking up division – ahead of human life and decency.

September 8, 2021September 16, 2023

Migrant Voice: My future’s back: international students fight injustice with legal victories

Migrant Voice’s “My Future Back” campaign has helped three more South Asian students clear their names from Home Office accusations of cheating in an English-language test.

They have been fighting for justice for seven years since the government responded to a TV programme about cheating in the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) by suddenly terminating the visas of 34,000 overseas students, making their presence here illegal overnight. A further 22,000 were told that their test results were “questionable”. More than 2,400 students were deported.

September 4, 2021September 4, 2021

Scores of GP surgeries that wrongly refuse to register undocumented migrants rated ‘good’ by CQC

4 September 2021: Independent: Exclusive: Scores of GP surgeries that wrongly refuse to register undocumented migrants rated ‘good’ by CQC

Failure by watchdog to ‘properly scrutinise’ GP registration processes will mean vulnerable people continue to be denied medical care in breach of NHS guidance, health campaigners warn

Scores of GP surgeries are rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for the care they provide to vulnerable people despite wrongly refusing to register undocumented migrants, new analysis shows.

Health campaigners have raised concerns about the “lack of proper scrutiny” of GP practices that decline to register people because they cannot show ID or proof of address,

September 3, 2021September 16, 2023

Scottish Government Act – Stand against the New Immigration Bill: 2 September 2021

Peaceful demonstration: Scottish Government Act – Stand against the New Immigration Bill: 2 September 2021

See the videos of the livestreams here: https://www.facebook.com/MigrationukServices and here: https://www.facebook.com/StatusNow4All

The National: Holyrood demo over Patel’s Nationality Bill

MEMBERS of a group campaigning to end evictions in Scotland have mounted a demonstration in Edinburgh over the UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill, claiming it would see the criminalisation of asylum seekers.