'Indefinite Leave To Remain' for people who are undocumented, destitute, and those in the legal process #HealthAndSafetyForAll
People who have been to StatusNow events will most likely know that one of our CoChairs, Loraine Masiya Mponela is an amazing poet who bring to life the experiences of people living without status through her words.
We congratulate Loraine, and welcome the publication of her first book of poetry:
“I Was Not Born a Sad Poet”
You can read more about the book, Loraine, and her poetry on her website here
Pictures showed scores of people taking to the city centre as part of the campaign’s day of national action
Thousands of people gathered in Manchester city centre this afternoon to protest against soaring energy prices and the cost of living crisis as part of a day of national action for an anti-poverty campaign.
Enough is Enough, a national campaign created by trade unions and community organisations to help battle the cost of living crisis, launched in Manchester at an event in the Cathedral on August 30, where organisers say over 5,000 people attended to hear from mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and RMT member Eddie Dempsey.
The event officially launched the campaign in the city region, with over 500,000 people across the country signed up to support the organisation’s five demands within the first month. The group is pushing for: a real pay rise, lower energy bills, an end to food poverty, decent homes for everyone, and more taxation on the top five per cent of earners and big businesses.
Whilst some of the group’s demands have been partially met, including a reversal of the recent National Insurance payment increase from 12 per cent up to 13.5 per cent and a temporary cap to energy bill prices, a national day of action today, Saturday, October 1, saw demonstrations held in dozens of cities across the UK, including London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham.
The years of the Covid pandemic have had their impact on human rights activism in this area, which depends on people meeting face-to-face and finding ways to get beyond the national differences that distort transnational solidarity. But as the gathering got underway it was clear that participants were able to report on an upturn in their work, from across Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Greece as well as the UK, who all at strong representation in the discussion.
Continue reading “European campaigns for regularisation confer and protest in Brussels”Conclusion
Social protection is intended to protect people against particular economic and social exclusion, including homelessness, that can be the result of life changing events, such as unemployment or reduced ability to work due to health reasons (including work-related injuries) or changes in families and households, such as birth of a child or death of a partner or parent. It is intended to ensure that all people maintain a minimum level of income to meet their basic needs, and that older people can retire and maintain a decent quality of life. Some of these life changes are inevitable for everyone to go through, while others only impact some people – but in any case, can happen to anyone.
The Commonwealth Games welcomes you to Birmingham 22 – but the Government with its ‘hostile environment’, its laws and Immigration Rules prevents your citizens from staying
The 2022 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XXII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Birmingham 2022, is an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth to be held in Birmingham between 28 July – 8 August 2022.
People from over 30 countries are coming to compete.
In UK your citizens are welcome as athletes, administrators, trainers and supporters. However, many people who have lived here for decades have been subject to deportation orders. Others live a precarious existence. We ask all Commonwealth Heads to support our call for equal rights and grant indefinite leave to remain for all Commonwealth Citizens irrespective of the status of your nation. We also request an end to deportations.
Continue reading “Open letter to the Heads of Commonwealth countries:”As terrible as these revelations are, what’s more shocking is that he’d never receive that level of compassion today Francesca Humi
Last Wednesday, Mo Farah revealed in a new BBC documentary that he had not come to the UK as a refugee. He had, in fact, been trafficked to the UK to be a domestic worker when he was a child.
In his heart-breaking testimony, he describes being forced to cook, clean, and care for the children of his employers. He explains how he confided in his PE teacher at school, who then referred him to social services. The documentary shows that Farah’s school repeatedly petitioned the Home Office to grant him British citizenship, so that he could represent Great Britain in international running competitions. And in a particularly powerful segment, he is advised about the potential legal repercussions of sharing his true identity and story. Even now, he learns, the Home Office could revoke his citizenship if it wanted to.
Continue reading “There will never be another Mo Farah”| “Our place is here”, a campaign for the rights of domestic workers by Status Now Signatory Kanlungan Since the official launch of the hostile environment policy in 2012, domestic workers were stripped of their rights to switch employers and apply for extension of stay and settlement. With the change to the Overseas Domestic Workers (ODW) visa introduced in that year, stays are limited to six months and migrant domestic workers have become tied to individual employers as sponsors. They are denied the freedom to switch employer even in cases where a worker is a victim of modern-day slavery or human trafficking. The impact of this change on the life of dozens of thousands people has been devastating. A survey conducted in 2019 by the Voice of Domestic Workers found that 77% of migrant domestic workers experienced physical, verbal or sexual abuse; 51% reported that they were not given enough food; 61% were not given their own space in employers’ houses. To mark a decade since the Government revoked the rights of domestic workers, Kanlungan — a signatory of SNN — has started a new partnership with FDWA-UK (Filipino Domestic Workers’Association), Kalayaan, and The Voice of Domestic Workers to campaign for the rights of migrant domestic workers in the UK. Together, we have developed our campaign ‘Our Place Is Here’ centred on advocating for migrant domestic workers’ belonging to the UK and their right to work and live here. We are joining together to call for the government to restore the rights of domestic workers. |
| Welcome to this edition of SNN Newsletter! We are covering a number of items in this issue that will be of interest to everyone involved in migrant and refugee solidarity work. First up is the report on our campaign for better asylum seeker accommodation. Our SNN colleagues in the North West are particularly active in this area and after a first online event during Refugee Week are now planning new initiatives to fight for better provision of safe and decent homes for people in the asylum system. The second article is dedicated to the campaign “Our place is here” developed by Kanlungan together with other organizations in defense of the rights of domestic workers. The third item reports on the SNN event organised during Refugee Week which assembled a roundtable of activists to discuss where we have got to with the campaign against the hostile environment and the steps that need to be taken for this to go forward. The key idea is the project underway to organise a People’s Tribunal on Migration Justice over the course of the next 12 months which will draw on the evidence of violation of the rights of migrant people to indict Government policies and help forge the sort of alliances we will need to bring about change. The appalling news about the deaths of at least 37 people at the border between the Spanish enclave of Melilla and Morocco is the subject of our fourth feature. In response to this massacre at the hands of the Spanish civil guard and the Moroccan police authorities the Transnational Migrant Platform has launched an appeal for solidarity and action to force an inquiry into how the tragedy happened. Finally, our fifth article focuses on the important role assumed by the Union, particularly by the Public Services and Commercial Union (PCS), in the fight against the Rwanda offshore plan and stresses the need to fight all together for the rights of migrant and native workers in the UK. In addition to these items we also have information on the call for a public demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 19 July to coincide with the opening of the judicial review hearing on the legality of the Home Office’s Rwanda refugee removal plan. Do join us at this protest if you can. |
Page contents
The United Kingdom’s asylum system has been described by the current Home Secretary as “broken”. There is some truth in that statement. In many ways, the asylum system is now in a parlous state. What the Home Secretary does not say is that it was she who broke it.
[…] The picture the data presents is of a system that has been overwhelmed. Not by new arrivals but by mismanagement. The people arriving to claim asylum are overwhelmingly refugees and they will, eventually, build new lives for themselves in this country. But they must endure bureaucratic purgatory first, seemingly to cleanse them of the supposed sin of irregular arrival. Waiting times for a decision run to years, during which time these refugees are forbidden from work, and forced to endure destitution-level support and temporary accommodation. As well as being bad for the refugees, it is causes an unnecessary charge on the public purse. And then, at the end of the process, despite all the tough posturing by the Home Secretary, almost no-one is removed anyway.
Continue reading “Alarming Rise in Asylum Backlog Despite Fall in Applications”Status Now Network organised a roundtable discussion event during the course of Refugee Week at the end of June. The theme of the discussion was holding the Government to account for its hostile environment policies.
Contributors to the discussion included Zoe Bantleman of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, Julius-Cezar MacQuarie, organiser of the Night Workers Charter, Francesca Humi of Kanlungan, and Loraine Mponela, chair of Status Now.
Participants considered how the Government’s hostile environment policies continued to operate today, five years after the revelations of the Windrush generation scandal, and what campaigning work needed to be undertaken to continue to challenge their corrosive effects on the rights of migrant and refugee people.
The report of the discussion can be read here…
Report of Status Now Refugee Week event: The Hostile Environment – How do we hold the Government to account? Report of a roundtable discussion
Status Now Network (SNN) took up the invitation to organise an event during the course of this year’s Refugee Week and set up a roundtable discussion on the current state of the resistance to hostile environment immigration policies.
Continue reading “Status Now Refugee Week event” 10 years of hostile environment: It’s time to change!
Last month marked the tenth anniversary since the then home secretary, Theresa May, declared the aim of building a hostile environment for migrants in the UK.
The policies which followed have produced scandal after scandal, with the infamous undermining of the rights of people from the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants being only the most well-known. There is scarcely any group of people who came from abroad – whether they be refugees, migrant workers, students, or the family members of people settled here who haven’t felt the harsh consequences of this set of policies.
The government made the mistake of thinking that the hostile environment would be popular with the majority of people in the UK, but that hasn’t been the case. Right from the early days of its ‘Go Home vans’ campaign, through to the refusal to provide sanctuary to asylum seekers corralled on the wrong side of the English Channel, the shocked response to what was inflicted on Windrush generation people, and taking in solidarity shown to migrant workers in the key posts that kept the country running during the worst period of the Covid pandemic, more and more people have been showing a willingness to take the side of people who are trying to settle into normal lives in the UK.
The Status Now Network grew out of this popular reaction to the hostile environment. We are working today to win greater recognition of the injustices being inflicted on people settling in the UK, and for the solidarity that will be needed to defeat the threat that the hostile environment poses to their lives. Our demands remain:
End the hostile environment!
Status Now, for all!
The Hostile Environment: How do we hold the Government to account?
The Home Office’s immigration policies have taken a battering over the course of the last few years. The public response to Go Home van campaigns and the Windrush generation scandal has shown increased awareness of the injustice being inflicted on migrant and refugee people.
Despite the mounting tide of criticism, Priti Patel and her colleagues have stuck firmly to the line of the hostile environment and are continuing to plot a new offensive against migrants and refugees that will come straight from the ‘culture wars’ playbook.
How should the grassroots migrant and refugee rights movement square up to this challenge? What sort of projects do we need to embark on that will unite the different sites of resistance to immigration policies and consolidate a united front opposition to entrenched racism in this area of policy?
The Status Now Network is working to open up a discussion about the role that a People’s Tribunal might play in indicting government policy and relating all its aspects back to a full frontal assault of all working people in the country today.
This has direct impact on time-served prisoners who are ‘released’ on immigration bail:
Privacy International has made a submission to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration inspection of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service Programme. We highlighted some of our concerns about the intrusive nature of location data as well as systemic failures relating to the quality of tags and battery life of devices which have a significant impact on individuals, as battery depletion can result in criminal prosecution.
Electronic tags have been a key part of criminal justice for many years throughout the world. As traditional radio-frequency tags are replaced by GPS ankle tags, we examine how these different technologies work and the seismic shift that will result from 24/7 location monitoring and data analytics, enabled by GPS tags.
Read more: https://privacyinternational.org/explainer/4796/electronic-monitoring-using-gps-tags-tech-primer
14 June 2021: from BID and Liberty: Our letter, signed by 42 organisations, was covered in an article below in the Guardian
The most recent Home Office bail policy sets out its plan to transition from radio frequency
monitoring to GPS monitoring for people on immigration bail. Whereas radio frequency monitoring can verify whether a person is where they should be at a given time, GPS monitoring provides 24/7 real time location monitoring, tracking an individual’s every move: it tells you where someone has gone, where they have shopped, what GP’s practice they have been to, and much more. Those who are being monitored in this way do not know when the ordeal will end because there is no time limit for how long people will be tracked.
Motion text: That this House recognises the important campaigning work of the Status Now network on their two year anniversary; notes that there are currently an unknown number of persons in the UK who are not citizens and who do not at present have leave to remain in this country, who lack any entitlement to support from the state and are therefore entirely without funds to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families; considers it essential that the Government takes immediate action to ensure that Leave to Remain in the United Kingdom is granted to all such persons who are within the UK but are not citizens, irrespective of their nationality or immigration status, so that they can access healthcare, food, housing and other essential human rights; notes that asylum support allowance is a mere £39.63 per week which is a miserly and inadequate amount on which to be able to survive; laments the prohibition on asylum seekers being able to work while their claim is being processed, which leads to further impoverishment; welcomes the recent progress made in Ireland through the regularisation scheme for long-term undocumented people, launched in January 2022, which will offer an amnesty for 17,000 undocumented migrants; and calls on the Government to follow suit and ensure that all undocumented, destitute and migrant people in the legal process be granted status now, or indefinite leave to remain, to guarantee that every human being, irrespective of their nationality or citizenship can access the essentials to live.
We thank Claudia Webbe MP for her continuing support for the StatusNow4All campaign
Please ask your MP to sign this EDM. If they do not sign EDMs then you can ask them to talk with others about concerns raised above.
Continue reading “Status Now campaign : EDM (Early Day Motion)1098”
The Plan includes completed reports that are with the Home Secretary awaiting publication and inspections that were started in 2022-23 and will report over the next few months. These two may be of particular interest:
A (re)inspection of the Home Office response to small boat arrivals
An inspection of Home Office operations to effect the removal of Foreign National Offender.