News Archives - Page 13 of 16

September 18, 2020November 13, 2021

Status Now 4 All backs peaceful demonstrations calling for Leave to Remain for undocumented migrants in UK

18^th 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, 19^th 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 19^th, the human rights charity RAPAR www.rapar.co.uk will be holding a demonstration outside the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Offices, Manchester M1 4AH.

September 16, 2020November 2, 2020

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.

September 11, 2020September 3, 2021

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?

September 7, 2020September 3, 2021

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:

September 5, 2020September 3, 2021

SNN: We are asking for Status Now

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We are asking for Status Now: We believe that the public health is only public if we include the undocumented, mostly people of color, migrants living in the UK. We are not asking for amnesty. Amnesty is only for those who commit a crime, guilty, and was pardoned. We refused to deploy the language of this government criminalizing migration. We are asking for Status Now – Rogelio Braga

September 2, 2020November 2, 2020

Welcome Refugees, no to Britain First

Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group saying welcome refugees, and no to Britain First

While the Status Now Network – SNN recognises that the swinging cuts to local government and health systems over the last decade have had profound impact on cities, SNN does not subscribe to the idea that people seeking asylum are a drain in the public purse. There is ample factual evidence about who is making money out of COVID, and it isn’t the people seeking asylum or the working class communities where they are being placed e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/dominic-cummings-allys-pr-firm-hanbury-strategy-given-covid-19-contracts-without-tenders

August 28, 2020September 3, 2021

Leicester Mayor responds to SNN concerns

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2020 August 28: The Elected City Mayor of Leicester, Peter Soulsby has responded to Status Now Network’s approach to him to be aware that people seeking asylum were accosted by Britain First in a hotel in Bromsgrove, whilst in the care of Serco who housed them there. It is Serco’s practice to house people where they can temporarily as their current housing stock is full and under the terms of their contract they must accommodate new asylum seekers, so they are converting office blocks, but also using hotels. We suggested that Leicester Council needs to be aware that this behaviour by Britain First is attracting a lot of far right acclaim, and that it may happen in Leicester itself.

August 26, 2020August 26, 2020

Coverage of yesterday’s SUTR demonstration

25.8.2020: Express and Star: Pro-migrant demonstrators accuse Government of ‘vilifying’ asylum seekers

Dozens of pro-migrant demonstrators have accused the Government of “dehumanising and vilifying” asylum seekers at a protest outside the Home Office.

The demonstration on Tuesday evening, organised by campaign group Stand Up To Racism, demanded that the right of safe passage be given to “desperate” migrants making the crossing between England and France.

August 25, 2020November 13, 2021

PRESS RELEASE: The Status Now Network unconditionally condemns the actions of Members of Britain First

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29.8.2020: The Status Now Network unconditionally condemns the actions of Members of Britain First, a British, Fascist political organisation formed in 2011 by former members of the British National Party. Britain First members have filmed people seeking asylum placed in hotels through the Government’s sub-contracted asylum system, and are now using their film, includes inflammatory words and phrases commentary, to ferment their anti-immigration stance.

Through its contract with The AASC providers – Serco, Clearsprings and Mears Group the Home Office has an inescapable duty of care towards these people seeking asylum. The AASC providers are subcontracting to, for example, Brittania Hotels and Holiday Inn but they retain responsibility for the care of the people in the hotels and they must immediately demonstrate that care.

August 25, 2020September 3, 2021

Mercy Baguma living in ‘extreme poverty’ found dead next to her malnourished baby boy

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From the heart:
How many more people will this Government kill? Mercy Baguma is the latest victim in the growing number of people who have died at the hand of the inhumane and immoral “hostile environment” policy instituted by this Government against refugees and migrants.

Organisations in the Status Now Network are witnessing every day the desperation and destitution caused by this policy which has been intensified by COVID-19 pandemic.

We are currently supporting hundreds of men, women and children, who have been made impoverished and destitute because of these punitive and draconian immigration policies. These include 15 Filipino women who are pregnant or with young children, who are destitute and impoverished because they have no recourse to public funds and nor are they allowed to work. Instead they are relying on the support of a small community organisations to survive.

We call for the regularisation of these vulnerable people.

We hold the Government responsible for Mercy’s death and the destitution and suffering of hundreds of other women like Mercy Baguma who are undocumented in the UK, and their children.

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020

Yemeni asylum seeker found dead in Manchester hotel room

23 August 2020: Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah Alhabib arrived in UK in June after crossing Channel in boat

A man who fled war-torn Yemen, made a difficult journey to Europe and two months ago survived a Channel crossing in a flimsy boat has been found dead in a Manchester hotel room.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah Alhabib 41, was found dead on 6 August in a room where he had been placed by the Home Office after arriving in Dover on 11 June seeking asylum.

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020

What Happens To Precarious Migrants And Asylum Seekers During This Pandemic?

Furaha Asani : A few days ago, journalists from the BBC and Sky News attempted to obtain live interviews with migrants making their way across the English Channel in dhingies. The journalists, safe aboard their own boats, extended microphones over the edge of their boats in the direction of the dhingies. Social media fired up, with many voices speaking both for and against migrants alighting on the British shore. Poll results released around the same time in the United Kingdom showed that nearly half of the respondents had little to no sympathy for migrants who were crossing the channel from France to England.

Mere months ago there was global panic, clearing out shop aisles of food and toiletries and indulging in war rhetoric all in a bid to stay safe and healthy. Covid-19 and its ensuing lockdown gave everyone a taste of instability. Yet the conversation around migration shows reserved empathy with migrants fleeing whatever instability they have left behind.

In this pandemic, for those who have access to healthcare services—and importantly the funds for these services where they are not free—there at least exists the assurance that support is on hand should it be needed. Amongst various marginalized and vulnerable groups, those with immigration hardship often have limited healthcare access for reasons ranging from no funds, to language barriers, and fear of being detained and deported. In the words of Professor Raj Bhopal of the University of Edinburgh, undocumented migrants often live “in the shadows of society, fearful of authority, and with little access to services, which are mostly provided by the voluntary sector.”

Precarious and undocumented migrants and asylum seekers are therefore multiply marginalized within this pandemic: they likely live with trauma from situations they fled from, they face the virus (just like everyone else), they face instability on the shores they land on, and potential anti-immigrant (and in many cases outright racist) sentiments within those lands.

August 21, 2020September 3, 2021

Cruel and unsafe to resume evictions and in-person reporting

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21 August 2020: In a last minute U-turn, the UK Government has been pressured to extend the ban on evictions of renters that had been planned to end this coming Sunday, 23 August. This means that from September 20th onwards people who rent will no longer have any of the emergency protections, put in place by the UK Government when COVID-19 first emerged in the spring of this year, that banned evictions across England and Wales. Without this protection, the spectre of mass evictions and a further surge in homelessness looms.

Among the millions of people facing severe financial difficulty, hundreds of thousands of renters are reported to now face eviction threats and homelessness. In spite of temporary measures that were introduced to support some, systemic government failures that existed before COVID-19 are leaving people acutely vulnerable.