Immigration - new material (71)
01 January 2004
Campsfield Monitor. November 2003, pp.16. This latest issue of the newsletter of the Campaign to Close Campsfield coincides with the tenth anniversary of the detention centre. Two years ago Home Secretary, David Blunkett, announced that Campsfield would close by 2004, because it was "outdated" and "inappropriate" in the 21st century. Now immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, has announced not only will it stay open but that its intake is to be expanded from 184 to 290 people. Demonstrations outside the detention centre condemning the tenth anniversary were received with the heaviest policing in a decade, during which vehicles were stopped and searched and people filmed in an attempt to intimidate them.
Asylum from deterrence to destitution, Frances Webber. Race and Class Vol 45 no 3 2004, pp77-85. Excellent article providing a recent history of government immigration policy. Recounts the adoption of deterrence over welfare as a system of handling asylum seekers, starting with the Conservatives in the early 1990s and accelerated by the subsequent Labour governments. Webber provides damning evidence against Labour's National Asylum Support Service (NASS) citing many examples of its inadequacy in providing health care and protection from racist attacks to those seeking asylum. Not only has it led to a decline in provisions and condition for asylum seekers, but has "far outweigh[ed] the costs of the more generous welfare benefits it replaced". Webber also analyses the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, in particular its notorious Section 55 which highlights "the move from restriction to exclusion of asylum support". Those childless "late claimants" who had not claimed asylum as soon as "reasonably practical" are denied support unless it would breach their human rights. The supposed logic behind this being to stop those who have been in the UK for months or years from abusing the system. Yet, as the Court of Appeal ruled, Home Office officials interpret this far too strictly (construing ignorance as being tantamount to evasion) and in the first quarter of 2003 two-thirds of claimants were refused. Webber argues that though the number of immigration claimants has recently gone down, this is likely due to less people claiming asylum upon arrival than anything else. Faced with the prospect of no welfare support, no right to work, and children being taken into care, seeking illegal "underground" work is increasingly appealing. The Labour government has strived to "ensure that claiming asylum is both difficult and counterproductive", the next proposed step is to reduce public funding for legal aid in asylum cases.
Rapporto sui centri di permanenza temporanea e assistenza. Medici Senza Frontiere, January 2004, pp. 207. An in-depth report on Italy's detention centres by the international humanitarian organisation MSF. Based on interviews with staff and detainees, it concludes that "The failure to comply with the laws and procedures in the CPTs (immigrant detention centres) all too often results in the violation of human right and dignity of individuals", and calls for the establishment of an independent authority to monitor the conditions in these centres. The treatment of asylum seekers is also criticised, as is the fact that 60% of detainees are interned after serving prison sentences for offences, thus becoming an "inexplicable extension of their period of detention". Available on:
www.msf.it/msfinforma/dossier/missione_italia/prima_pagina/24012004.shtml