There have been a few emails flying around amongst refugee lawyers recently about a court-ordered suspension on removals to the Democratic Republic of Congo. NCADC have posted up some information about the situation. In summary, a high court judge recently ordered that a removal to DRC was suspended until after...
I’ve just seen press reports that the Home Office is suggesting that immigration enforcement officers are issued with nice pastel-coloured uniforms (‘standard-issued clothing’) when doing dawn raids on families to remove them from our shores. It’s reassuring to see that child welfare is being taken so seriously. Next stop, removing the UK’s immigration opt-out...
I’ve updated the Borders Bill page here with a little more up to date information. This follows a Home Office press release on 25 June 2007 announcing that protection for children subject to immigration control will be enhanced. I’ve taken a look at the latest amendments tabled before the Lords,...
A few weeks ago, Channel 4 showed a documentary as part of the Unreported World series. The title was Mugabe’s Reign of Terror. The production company, Quicksilver Media, have taken the view that the programme is in the public domain and have made the transcript available, although they have pointed out...
The framework for immigration control is mainly contained in the Immigration Act 1971. This has been amended by major pieces of primary legislation in 1988, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and probably also in 2007 by the UK Borders Bill currently before Parliament. Each Act has involved an overhaul of existing immigration law […]
...It is a question faced by all immigrants. To be uprooted from your own country, culture and kinship network leads to enormous dislocation and can be deeply traumatic. Living in exile is difficult, whether it is the result of forced movement or is voluntarily undertaken. Migrants of both variety often summon the courage to make...
Co-incidentally, after my last post on Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker Children (UASCs) an excellent but depressing article appeared in The Guardian on the same topic. It describes the circumstances in which many refugee children live and was prompted by a piece of research by the excellent Heaven Crawley (full report, executive...
The test case of AA (Zimbabwe), mentioned in previous posts, is being dropped by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in favour of another case, called HS (Zimbabwe). This is apparently because the AIT did not want to have to deal with argument about what issues the Court of Appeal ordered...
Yesterday the Foreign and Commonwealth Office launched a new forced marriage survivor’s handbook. A specific team, the Forced Marriage Unit, was set up two years ago to deal with this issue and is reported to be dealing with 250 cases a year. Obviously, these cases are extremely traumatic for the victims...
