Immigration, asylum and anti-deportation

Refugees and asylum-seekers hold up banners during a protest at the Manus Island immigration detention centre in Papua New Guinea On 13 April, the government announced a raft of anti-refugee measures, including a deal to remove many asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. It is even worse than a plan to outsource processing of refugees to offshore detention camps. It will deport them to Rwanda to claim asylum there, allowing them no possibility of settling in Britain. Other announcements include putting operations relating to small refugee boats in the Channel under military command, and a new...

The article in Solidarity 627 on the House of Lords amendments to the Nationality and Borders Bill was based on a report from the website Electronic Immigration Network . We have since amended the online version in line with what it says on Parliament’s website – which is slightly different. Where the original said that Clause 15, on restricting asylum claims if the asylum-seeker had travelled through a safe third country, had been amended, the Parliament website says it has been removed. The Parliament website reported an amendment to allow asylum-seekers to work if they are still waiting on...

Given the Tories’ chest-beating about the Ukraine conflict, you’d think they’d have made an exception to their general hostility to migrants. So far they are standing firm for their inhuman principles. The government claims the number of visas issued to Ukrainians since the war began is now up from 50 — the number that caused outrage — to… 300. This in the context of 1.7 million having fled Ukraine. Poland, with a population not that much more than half the UK’s, has already taken over a million people. Of course Poland is much nearer to Ukraine. Equally, the Tories are outflanking the far...

Following a stream of protests against the Nationality and Borders Bill, the House of Lords has inflicted multiple defeats on the government. It has: • Removed Clause 11, which would create a two-tier asylum system based on whether asylum-seekers arrived in the UK with or without official entry clearance. • Removed Clause 28, which would allow asylum-seekers to be removed from the UK and sent to a third country for their claim to be processed. • Removed the parts of Clause 39 that would make it a criminal offence for a person to arrive here without valid entry clearance to seek asylum. •...

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement has called for visa waivers and safe and legal routes for refugees from Ukraine to come to Britain. It is pushing against the Tories’ grain. Russia annexed Crimea and started a war in the Donbas regions of eastern Ukraine in 2014, and as a result at least 14,000 people have been killed on the Ukrainian side alone. Thousands of civilians have been killed or injured. Between Jan 2014 and Dec 2021 (reports journalist Sian Norris ) a total of 661 asylum claims were made in the UK by refugees from either Crimea or Ukraine. 436 were refused and 167 people...

Boris Johnson’s bubble has burst. Most people accept that the government has had to issue instructions over Covid: self-isolate, test, reduce social contact in various ways, all the rest. All governments have done fairly similar, in one way or another, and varying with different geographical conditions. Most people even accept that the governments, dealing with a new virus, will be bound to make mis-steps. Even those, like us on Solidarity , who are political opponents of all the existing governments, recognise that on Covid it is better that we all follow even flawed rules, to give us all...

On Saturday 15 January, I spoke at the “Kill the Bill” demonstration in London. The demo protested both the Policing Bill and the Nationalities and Borders Bill. We need an ongoing movement against both pieces of legislation, which represent a slide towards authoritarianism. The government’s war on migrants has direct industrial implications for our union (PCS) members who work in the Border Force. The government wants our members to drag migrant boats back towards France. Given that these boats are frequently overcrowded and unseaworthy, such a policy greatly increases the danger to the...

January 15 has been named as a “national day of action” against the Tory Police Bill (now in its last, Report and Third Reading, stage in the Lords), and Another Europe is Possible and others including the Labour Campaign for Free Movement will protest against both the Police Bill and the Borders Bill (starting Lords committee stage 27 January) the same day in London. 12pm, Saturday 15 January, Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3TL We urge readers to back the protests in London and elsewhere. Sadly, even as late as 11 January, protest times and places for 15 January have been released only for a few...

As we go to press, talk is rife of Tory moves to oust Boris Johnson — in favour, alas, of someone probably even more right-wing. The Tory government is on the back foot, floundering on Covid, commanding little trust or credit, u-turning again and again. And yet its Borders Bill (went to Lords 8 December), Police Bill (entered final Lords stage 8 December), and Health and Social Care Bill (Lords committee stage starts 11 January) are going through Parliament with little loud and active opposition. The left seems to be on the back foot, too. There are millions who oppose the Tories from the left...