Call for immigrant amnesty in UK / Comment#1

I receive a lot comment on this web site, now I decided to publish occasionally some comments.

Hi everyone,
I am ***.
I came in this country 6 years ago hoping to start a new life here after having ran away from home. I applied for assylum and was turned down. I now qualify as an illegal immigrant. I have however managed to continue with my Studies, finishing off college and going on to University to persue a maths degree. I work, pay tax, pay for private health care when \i need it, pay my rent, bills and fees as well as studying at the same time. I am just 22 years old, but Alone in the world and always scared of being ambushed and deported with zero wealth.
being an illegal immigrant in my capacity does not at all affect any citizen of this country negatively neither does offering me the right to live in this country legally. being an illegal immigrant does not mean that I seek to make peoples lives miserable. I just long to live like a normal human being. Be able to go on holiday once in a while and be look down at like an outcast.
Granting amnesty does not mean that 500,000 people are going to cross the boarders and apply for free housing. All these people are already living in the country and housed some where.
I really do hope they sheer common sense prevails in this situation and a solutions be drafted to take care of innocent human beings like me.

I just want to repeat this sentence which says: “Granting amnesty does not mean that 500,000 people are goin to cross the boarders and apply for free housing. All these people are already living in the country and housed some where.” Indeed.

Refugee Council response to quarterly asylum stats published

In response to the publication today of the asylum statistics for the first quarter of 2008, Donna Covey, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council said:

“Yet again the government takes pride in a fall in people seeking asylum in the UK – but this is not a numbers game. A drop in asylum applications should only be celebrated if the world has become a safer place – and with wars raging around the world and serious human rights abuses continuing in places like Zimbabwe, Darfur and Burma this is patently not the case.

“As the statistics show, asylum seekers do not come from peaceful countries. They come from countries where violence is commonplace, and where the government is either the perpetrator or helpless to do anything about it. Our role is to offer a place of safety for those desperate people fleeing for their lives – and it is something we should be proud of.”

UK Asylum Statistics: 1st Quarter Jan/Feb/March 2008

The Home Office have published  their quarterly bulletin on Asylum statistics for January, February and March 2008, in that period:

Removals: Principal asylum applicants removed in Q1 2008: 2,805;

Total persons removed in Q1 2008: 16,760; 12% higher than Q1 2007 (14,970)

* 970 persons were removed under Assisted Voluntary Return schemes in Q1 2008 (320 non-asylum cases, 575 principal asylum applicants and 75 asylum dependants).

Top Ten nationalities accounting for the highest number of asylum removals in Q1 2008 (principal applicants) were

Afghan (270),

Iraqi (205),

Turkish (190),

Chinese (185)

Pakistani (185)

Jamaica (105)

Iraq (95)

Iran (75)

Eritrea (65)

Sri Lanka( 55)

Asylum: the peers’ revolt

Their Lordships speak out: deportations to Iran must end

Britain must radically change its immigration policy and end immediately the deportation of failed asylum-seekers who fear persecution in Iran, a group of leading peers will tell the Government today.

The call for a moratorium on asylum removals is a direct response to the plight of Mehdi Kazemi, a gay Iranian teenager facing execution if he returns to Iran, whose case has been taken up by The Independent.

UK Asylum statistics October/November/December 2008

Removals down 25%, asylum applications up 19% on the same period in 2007

Detention:

There were 2,095  Persons recorded as being in detention in the United Kingdom solely under Immigration Act powers as at 29 December 2007.

Of these: 1,455 had claimed asylum at some stage 69%

1,435 were held at Immigration Service Removal Centres, and 20 at Immigration Short Term Holding Facilities.  

Church leaders call for ‘a more humane asylum system’

 

8 February 2008 To mark Ash Wednesday leaders of Christian faith traditions in West Yorkshire issued a statement of support for asylum seekers, calling for a more humane asylum system, for the right to work for asylum seekers and for better legal representation. The church leaders also praised the great work many people in West Yorkshire do supporting refugees and asylum seekers, noting that it demonstrates that “at a community level Britain shows a welcoming face to people fleeing persecution, in contrast to the Government’s approach which has become a cause for national shame.” The church leaders statement was reported in the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Huddersfield Examiner, BBC Radio Leeds, BBC Radio York, BBC Look North, ITV Calendar and Radio Aire.

See also

To see the full list of church leaders and their statement see http://www.wyec.co.uk/

Home Office grants 19,000 asylum seekers permission to remain

More than 19,000 asylum seekers, some of whose cases date back more than 10 years, have finally been told they can stay in the country, the Home Office said last night.

They are among the first tranche of 52,000 cases that have been looked at as part of a Home Office “legacy” drive to clear a backlog of between 400,000 and 450,000 files.

The disclosure was made as the Home Office embarrassingly announced that urgent immigration background checks on all its private security guards had been ordered after an illegal migrant was identified last Friday working at the department’s Marsham Street headquarters in London.

Taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights

Even though the HRA has now come into force in the UK it is still possible to make an application to the ECHR. There are three key requirements that you must meet:

1. You must be a victim of a violation of one or more of the articles of the Convention. Generally, this means you must be directly affected by a breach of the Convention. In some cases it will be enough to show you are likely to be affected by a breach or that you belong to a group of people, some of whom are likely to be affected. For example, gay men were permitted to challenge laws that criminalized gay sex even though it was unlikely that the individual applicants would ever be prosecuted because the laws were rarely enforced.

Simplifying immigration law for the 21st century

6 December 2007A proposal to use a new Government Bill to simplify immigration law has received positive feedback, the Home Office revealed today.

Home Secretary today sets out plans to manage migration and protect British values

5 December 2007The countdown to the transformation of the immigration system began today when the Home Secretary announced new rules for highly skilled foreign workers applying to come to the UK.