Immigration, asylum and anti-deportation

Far right outnumbered in Rotherham

Three or four hundred people came to Manvers, near Rotherham, on 18 February 2023 to confront the fascist-organised mobilisation targeting a hotel where refugees are being housed. The far right will have hoped to build on their four hundred-strong crowd which fought police outside a hotel with asylum-seekers in Knowsley, near Liverpool, on 10 February . Only around fifty fascists came, Patriotic Alternative, Yorkshire Rose, and British Bulldog being the known groups among them. They were held by the police on a roundabout on the main road, while the counter-demo was outside the front of the...

Letter: Let asylum-seekers work!

I enjoyed reading the article headlined: Rights for under-18 asylum-seekers! in Solidarity 663 . In England, care is short of 165,000 workers and health needs 130,000. Half of UK building firms are short-staffed and a third of all UK firms say they lack a full complement of staff. Yet this same government is spending somewhere over £1bn a year billeting able-bodied Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians and Albanians in hotels, paying them and their families pocket money on the strict condition they do no work. Should they sneak out to become hospital porters, road diggers, fruit pickers or care assistants...

Rights for under 18 asylum seekers!

Since 2021, the UK government has contracted hotels to house Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) in lieu of moving them into Local Authority care. A recent investigation by the Observer found that dozens of under-18s had gone missing from a Brighton hotel with reports that they were being picked up from outside the hotel by traffickers, sparking outrage and protests. Fundamentally, this child protection failure is the result of decades of dehumanising anti-migrant sentiment and policy. Months before that investigation, another report counted over 200 children missing from hotels on...

Protest over under-18 asylum-seekers

Hundreds turned out for a hastily-organised vigil in Brighton on 25 January in solidarity with kids who the media reported have gone missing from local hotels. Police have said that as many as 137 under-18s have been lost from the system. And 76 are still reported as missing from a hotel in Hove. According to media reports they are mostly Albanian boys. What is certain is that the authorities charged with their care have no idea where they are or if they are safe; and that the Government, immigration authorities and the local Green-led Council have completely failed to care for these...

"Test cases" against asylum-seekers

On Monday 16 January, three men went on trial at Canterbury Crown Court, facing charges related to small boat crossings in the English Channel. These cases now happening are considered "test cases", after a court ruling in December 2022 confirmed that asylum seekers can be prosecuted for piloting boats across the Channel. Yousef Yari, an Iranian asylum-seeker who was identified as having piloted the boat he arrived on for 15 minutes, pled guilty and was sentenced to nine months in prison and a further fine. Ibrahima Bah, 19 years old, faced a hearing for charges of illegal entry and...

UK trade unions speak out for migrant workers

Most national UK trade unions have signed the "Migrant Workers' Pledge" coordinated by migrant rights organisation JCWI . This is very welcome. Trade union activists should push and organise to translate this into much stronger concrete action. We note that GMB and CWU have not signed. We know activists in both are pushing for them to do so. We would also draw attention to the wider demands for migrants' rights and free movement raised by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement , and the model motions for union branches, Labour Parties and other organisations they are promoting. Migrant Workers'...

Myanmar migrant workers

More than a million Myanmar working-class people are unemployed, according to data given by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 18 months after the brutal military takeover. According to fresh figures made public by the ILO, employment for both men and women is down by 1.1 million, and the quality of work is declining compared to 2020. Thus, workers from Burma (Myanmar) have no choice but to become migrant workers in neighbouring countries. However, the Burmese expatriate workforce is also purportedly being targeted by the military junta in Myanmar as well. The Myanmar military regime...

Keep up the fight for free movement

On 19 December, the High Court ruled that the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful. This did not close the matter — appeals are planned, and a European Court of Human Rights injunction prohibits deportations while the legal process is ongoing — but it should remind us that we cannot rely solely on a legal strategy and must prepare to resist removals via direct action and worker action. On the same day as the judgement, asylum seekers housed at a Haringey hotel were sent letters saying they were to be moved to be held in the notoriously poor conditions at Napier...

Letter: Focus on rejoin and free movement

Mohan Sen’s article ( Solidarity 654 ) ends by stating: “The labour movement should demand the UK rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union immediately, and launch a serious discussion about reversing Brexit”. It is wrong to propose demands for Single Market (SM) and Customs Union (CU) membership. We should focus straightforwardly on the demand to rejoin and transform the EU, and short of that, to restore and extend named, specific working-class rights we have lost or are in the process of losing — chief among them, free movement. Workers’ Liberty summarised its stance on Brexit as “Remain...

The Morning Star against free movement

Keir Starmer addressed the CBI last week and said Britain needs to get off its “immigration dependency” and companies need to be weaned off “cheap labour” from oversees and to “start investing more in training workers who are already here”. This marked a big shift in Starmer’s position: in 2020, while standing for party leadership, he’d championed freedom of movement and implied he’d continue to campaign for it even after Britain left the EU. Few commentators (the exception being the i ’s Ian Dunt) seem to have noticed that Starmer’s argument made no sense: as Dunt put it: “Is the problem with...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.