Category: News

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Risk Assessing Hotels And Barracks Housing Displaced People In The UK

Updated 23.10.2020 with BBC report, below.

20 October 2020: Risk assessing hotels and barracks housing displaced people in the UK: Statement from StatusNow4All

We note that the role of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration is to help improve the efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of the Home Office’s border and immigration functions through unfettered, impartial and evidence-based inspection.   

We note, in contrast, that the Home Office is attempting to side step this transparent system by hiring  a private risk management company, Human Applications (https://ergonomics.org.uk/humanapplications)  to provide a ‘rapid review of initial accommodation for single adult asylum seekers, including hotels and former military barracks, and provide assurance of compliance with public health guidelines to prevent the transmission of Covid 19.’   Hastily arranged with minimal, non-transparent and selective third sector involvement, the Home Office have stated that they do not intend to make this report public.  

Living conditions have the potential to compromise the physical and psychological health of people.  Those displaced people currently accommodated by the Home Office in hotels and barracks around the UK are not being offered thorough assessment, especially in relation to the safeguarding concerns that arise from the Covid-19 pandemic.  The Home Office is failing to demonstrate either an appropriate duty of care, or any transparent process.   Similarly, the meaningful exercise of duty of care cannot be realised until there is a comprehensive test- track- trace and quarantine system that enables EVERYONE to participate, with confidence, throughout the UK. 

Alongside our call for StatusNow4All https://statusnow4all.org/about-status-now/ to enable everyone to share equal access to healthcare, housing and food, we call for the  Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration  to conduct an immediate and independent inspection that ‘provides assurance of compliance with public health guidelines to prevent the transmission of Covid 19’.

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Risk assessing hotels and barracks housing displaced people in the UK

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20 October 2020: Risk assessing hotels and barracks housing displaced people in the UK: Statement from StatusNow4All

We note that the role of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration is to help improve the efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of the Home Office’s border and immigration functions through unfettered, impartial and evidence-based inspection.   

We note, in contrast, that the Home Office is attempting to side step this transparent system by hiring  a private risk management company, Human Applications (https://ergonomics.org.uk/humanapplications)  to provide a ‘rapid review of initial accommodation for single adult asylum seekers, including hotels and former military barracks, and provide assurance of compliance with public health guidelines to prevent the transmission of Covid 19.’   Hastily arranged with minimal, non-transparent and selective third sector involvement, the Home Office have stated that they do not intend to make this report public.  

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12 Oct 2020 Vigil – lives destroyed by the hostile environment

2020 October 10: There was a Vigil this evening commemorating lives destroyed by the hostile environment, and remembering the death ten years ago of Jimmy Mubenga at the hands of G4S guards as he was being removed from UK; and others who have died due to this hostile environment … #SolidarityKnowsNoBorders

From the event:

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Home Office outsourcing asylum interviews to private contractors is irresponsible and callous. We have a better alternative.

28.9.2020: The UK Government’s Home Office are planning to outsource asylum interviews to private contractors. They claim that the move is intended to deal with a backlog of over 40,000 cases. The move has sent chills amongst some people seeking asylum, and wider communities with experience of outsourced state services, and especially amongst those who have endured an  interview process that was already dysfunctional before the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis.

Outsourcing the interviews would mean that whichever company gets the contract – G4S, Capita, Mitie, Sopra Steria or Serco – would be able to access highly sensitive and confidential information that could put peoples’ lives at risk. Could any of these private companies be trusted with access to sensitive information? Could they be trusted to employ case workers who are capable of creating safe spaces for people to tell their harrowing stories? Could they ask the right questions in the right ways and not intimidate people? 

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Divisive spin and scandalous neglect: this government’s approach to refugees

We welcome this statement from Leicester City Mayor & Executive:

23.9.2020: Divisive spin and scandalous neglect: this government’s approach to refugees

Leicester is a city that has been shaped by our recent history of providing refuge for people fleeing from war, conflict and oppression. Our city comprises many, many thousands and many generations for whom this plight and flight was a real, lived trauma. People who had to flee immediate jeopardy and make sudden, rapid life changing acts of survival. People who sought refuge and found a home in Leicester.

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Statement exposing how Home Office plans to restart evictions and continue deportations are irrational and undermine public health

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On 15th September 2020, the Minister for Immigration Compliance and the Courts wrote to Local Authority Chief Executives – you can read the letter here: https://statusnow4all.org/condemnation-of-home-office-decision-to-start-evicting-asylum-seekers-despite-warning-of-second-wave/  

Three days later, 18th September 2020, the Public Accounts Committee  exposed that the Home Office has no idea of the impact of immigration policies and raised serious concerns over the work of the Home Office Immigration Enforcement directorate dating back over several years.  That Home Office ‘work’ has directly interfered in the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children in families.  That ‘work’ has resulted in a myriad of humanity-denying actions authorised through Home Office powers, as most recently exemplified in the horrific death of Mercy Baguma.  From within Government structures, the 18th September report placed  massive questions marks over a multitude of migration related Home Office decisions.

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How can we be practical with the people living in the hostels and hotels

Bullet points from 3rd September 2020 Zoom Meeting of anti fascist activists in the North West about responding to Britain First attacks on hotels etc. organised by Liverpool based PCS Trades Union organiser Mary Dooley

  • Coordinate letters to local papers and complaints to IPSOS if letters or articles fostering hate are carried in local press
  • Insist that decent internet and wifi connection is put into every residence
  • Intention is to involve the people living in the hotels and hostels in the planning and development of our responses so that they are enabled to acquire more control of what is happening and their environment
  • Make phone trees including phone numbers of natural leaders in the residences
  • Put calls out for old phones so that residents can be given them – and sim cards
  • Translate leaflets into key languages – expressing solidarity and offering contact details
  • Residents can use healthy snacks fresh fruit and cash – there is no access to cooking facilities so food donations must be appropriate
  • Secure solidarity statements and actions from local trade union branches and TUC groups in the area
  • Translate leaflets into key languages – expressing solidarity and offering contact details

This is in response to the intrusions by Britain First into hotels where asylum seekers have been accommodated: https://statusnow4all.org/press-release-the-status-now-network-unconditionally-condemns-the-actions-of-members-of-britain-first/

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Home Office “has no idea” of the impact of immigration policies

18 September 2020: Public Accounts Committee: Department instead appearing to formulate policy on “anecdote, assumption and prejudice”; and shows far too little concern over damage caused by its failures on both the illegal and legitimate migrant populations. [Status Now note: we do not accept the term ‘illegal migrant’. Some people are ‘undocumented’]

The Home Office has “no idea” what its Immigration Enforcement Directorate’s £400 million annual spending achieves, says the Public Accounts Committee in a report published today, raising the spectre of the department making  policy decisions based not on evidence, but rather “anecdote, assumption and prejudice”. 

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Condemnation of Home Office decision to start evicting asylum seekers despite warning of second wave

Letter sent from the Home Office: Director General’s Office, UK Visas and Immigration and Her Majesty’s Passport Office, date: 15 September 2020

Dear All,
At the Asylum SEG on Friday of last week we committed to keeping you updated on cessations and when these would be resuming for those who have received a negative decision. I am therefore writing to let you know that the Minister for Immigration Compliance and the Courts has written to Local Authority Chief Executives today setting out these will start with immediate effect in England, and in the rest of the United Kingdom following consultation with officials in the Devolved Administrations.

We continue to share detailed data with Local Authorities to assist them in planning and this will continue. Migrant Help stand ready to support with the move-on process for those who will now receive cessation letters and we continue to work closely with them.
Andy Kelly will be writing to the SMPs today and will ask that the local NGOs are copied into any local information relating to restarting of negative cessations.

Thank you again for your continued support.

Yours Sincerely,
Abi Tierney
Director General, HM Passport Office and UK Visas & Immigration

See the letter here:

2020-09-15-Letter-from-Abi-TierneyDownload
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Status Now 4 All backs peaceful demonstrations calling for Leave to Remain for undocumented migrants in UK

18th September 2020 PRESS RELEASE: STATUS NOW 4 ALL BACKS PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATIONS CALLING FOR LEAVE TO REMAIN FOR UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN THE UK

A national Day of Action is being held this weekend to call for an end to the Government’s Hostile Environment policy and for Leave to Remain to be given to all undocumented migrants in the UK.

Regularise, one of Status Now Network’s signatories, is organising a peaceful demonstration for the rights of undocumented migrants on Saturday, 19th September. It will be held from 1pm-4pm outside 10 Downing Street to ensure the Prime Minister Boris Johnson hears our call for Status Now.

See https://m.facebook.com/events/2387705671522936? www.regularise.org

Also at 1pm on Saturday September 19th, the human rights charity RAPAR www.rapar.co.uk will be holding a demonstration outside the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Offices, Manchester M1 4AH.

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Status, Safety and Solidarity event 22 September 2020

[Updated 22.9.2020] Many thanks to everyone who attended or took part in this energising event.

You can watch the Zoom meeting here:

Status, Safety and Solidarity Now 4 All on Tuesday 22nd September with participation from MPs, trade unions, campaigners and those with lived experience, the focus being:

  • Building solidarity and dismantling the false divide between all workers, undocumented workers and the Trade Unions movement. 
  • Valuing the lives and livelihoods of all undocumented migrants and people with insecure status, as migrant rights are human rights.
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Mercy Baguma: The Legacy of the UKs Dysfunctional Asylum & Immigration System

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Yesterday, Prime Minister Johnson was compelled to respond to the child of Mercy Baguma, and the father of the child, after Mercy was found dead in a flat in Glasgow laying next to her distressed one year old son. Mercy had lost her Leave to Remain status (visa) and job, and was struggling to survive in the middle of a pandemic while she awaited a decision on her asylum application. Though Boris Johnson’s gesture to fast-track the resolution of the father of the child’s asylum case is in kind, it is too late for Mercy who died whilst in limbo and extreme poverty!

By implementing the proposal for the regularisation of undocumented migrants that he commissioned as Mayor of London more than a decade ago, this Prime Minister could prevent unecessary and sustained suffering for many, made worse by this pandemic. The UK government successfully ran a programme to resolve a backlog of 450,000 asylum cases (later extended to other people with insecure status) between 2007 to 2011, so why not take action now, in this time of crisis, to secure StatusNow4All?

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Status, Safety and Solidarity Now For All

A practical statement from Status Now Network

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The Status Now Network welcomes all demonstrations in solidarity with migrants and people seeking asylum currently living in hotels or elsewhere,and who are being targeted by fascist, racist and anti-migrant groups. It is vital to act and organise in solidarity with migrants and people seeking asylum in order to expose, effectively challenge and stop the threatening and oppressive behaviours of those that seek to demonise and scapegoat them for everything that is going wrong in the UK today.

The Status Now Network encourages all residents and organisations in the UK to take a twin track approach, where they:

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