Theresa May: Government Migration Laws Will ‘Consign More People to Slavery’
Former Prime Minister Theresa May has slammed the government’s migration policies, warning that they will ‘consign more people to slavery’. Her comments came as MPs debated the government’s Illegal Migration Bill for three and a half hours in the Commons yesterday, after several amendments by the House of Lords were overturned, including a Lords amendment which required the Illegal Migration Bill to follow international conventions.
Speaking in the Commons, May said: “We all want to stop the boats … but this bill is not just written to stop the boats, it covers all illegal migration and its unwritten subtext is the stop-certain-victims’-claims-of-slavery bill.” May pointed to amendment 56 from the Lords, which sought to ensure victims would not be detained and removed from the UK if they had been modern slaves, and urged the government to support it.
She said: “I know that ministers have said this bill will enable more perpetrators to be stopped, but on modern slavery I genuinely believe it will do the opposite. It will enable more slave drivers to operate and make money out of human misery, it will consign more people to slavery. No doubt about it, I think if Lords Amendment 56 is overthrown that will be the impact.”
Read more: Basit Mahmood, Left Foot Forward, https://tinyurl.com/4w6wj6vy
HO to Reintroduce Use of Reasonable Force To Remove Families With Children
The government published its Child’s Rights impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill yesterday, on 4 July 2023. The document covers detention, accommodation, age assessments, removals, modern slavery, safe and legal routes, bans on grants of leave and citizenship (with exceptions), and the confiscation of electronic devices.
Ominously, the assessment states that: “We are also reviewing our existing policy position in respect of use of reasonable force, or physical intervention, to enable the Home Office to facilitate removals of families with children under this Bill … Use of force is not currently used against minors for compliance/removal purposes. We do not envisage the use of reasonable force being used for such purposes under the auspices of the new Bill unless it is necessary as a last resort where other methods to ensure compliance have failed.”
Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/my6jhdj7
Continuing Conflicts That Create Refugees - July 2023
Deteriorated Situations: Syria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Russia (Internal), Ukraine, Venezuela, Honduras, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Senegal,
CrisisWatch Identified Twelve Deteriorations in June.
In the most serious challenge ever to President Putin’s grip on power, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin spearheaded an insurrection in Russia, advancing within 200km of Moscow before abruptly aborting the mission and seemingly leaving the Kremlin reeling.
Lawmakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s self-governing entity, Republika Srpska, voted to suspend rulings by the country’s constitutional court, fuelling fears the entity is moving toward secession.
Uganda suffered its deadliest attack in years as suspected members of the Allied Democratic Forces Islamist militia raided a school near the Congolese border, brutally murdering at least 44 people, most of them children.
As political tensions surged in DR Congo ahead of December general elections, clashes between the M23 rebellion and army-backed local armed groups resumed, jeopardising a fragile ceasefire observed on the ground since April.
Amid a string of failed ceasefires, the conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces drew in other armed groups, while fighting in Darfur exploded along ethnic lines.
In Syria, deadly hostilities between Türkiye and Kurdish militants escalated in the north, while Russia and regime forces stepped up attacks in the north west to levels not witnessed since late 2021.
In a major blow to prospects for a competitive 2024 presidential poll in Venezuela, the Maduro government announced that opposition frontrunner María Corina Machado is barred from holding public office for 15 years, meaning she will be unable to participate in the election.
In Honduras, clashes between rival gangs at a women’s prison left at least 46 people dead, prompting President Castro to restore military control of prisons in a step back from promises to put civilian police in charge of the penal system.
Aside from the scores of conflict situations we usually cover, we tracked significant developments in Angola, Guatemala, Moldova, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Resolution Opportunities - None
Source: Crisis Group, https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch
UK’s Convenient Silence on Rwanda
Atrocious Human Rights Abuses by M23 Are Being Downplayed
When the UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman visited Rwanda in March to discuss the asylum transfer deal between the two countries, she presented it as a progressive solution to an “unprecedented” global migration crisis. On June 29, the UK Court of Appeal ruled the deal unlawful, concluding that there is a real risk that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be returned to their home countries, where they face risk of persecution. Yet the government is already saying it will appeal the ruling.
To justify the deal, the UK government has had to downplay Rwanda’s appalling rights record and the risks asylum seekers may face. Refugees there have been shot at and killed for protesting cuts in food rations. Critics of the government are routinely jailed, tortured, and sometimes found dead. The Rwandan president himself has crudely politicised refugee rights. And as this case has unfolded, Rwanda has been playing an active role in one of the biggest displacement crises on the African continent by backing the M23, an abusive armed group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Read more: Tirana Hassan, Financial Times, https://tinyurl.com/mudj8u32
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Shay Family Campaign - Seeking Safety, Looking for Justice
Shay Babagar, his wife and their child arrived in the UK seeking asylum as members of the persecuted Balochi people. They were placed in a SERCO run hotel in Stockport, Greater Manchester where they experienced poor living conditions and physical and verbal abuse at the hands of SERCO staff. Shay went on hunger strike and challenged his treatment. A campaign grew around him and his family, and he has now been moved to a house. Additionally Greater Manchester Police, who had attempted to charge and criminalise Shay, have dropped their case against him.
Shay is continuing his fight for justice, and for the right of his family to stay in this country and feel safe here. He also wants to share his experiences of resisting the treatment meted out to him and his family.
Read more: RAPAR, https://tinyurl.com/56y4hfh5
British Citizenship for Children of EU Citizens Born in UK Before 2 October 2000
The British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Act 2023 came into force on 29 June 2023. It inserts a new section 50B into the British Nationality Act 1981. Section 50B definitively and retrospectively confirms the British nationality status of all children born in the UK between 1 January 1983 and 1 October 2000 to an EU citizen parent who was exercising free movement in the UK at the time of their child’s birth.
This new legislation is good. It commits a long-standing Home Office policy to the statute book, and resolves a discrepancy between law and policy
Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/ymnh2ve9
2022 UK Charter Deportations: A Balance Sheet
In 2022, the UK deported 1,566 people to nine countries on 62 specially-chartered flights (1) flown by eight airlines (2). The figures are a little higher than 2021, when 1,305 people were deported on 65 charter flights. Combining Freedom of Information requests by Patrice Petit with flight data available via flight tracking websites (3), Corporate Watch can reveal which companies carried out these flights, and how much money the Home Office paid them to do it.
The Flights and the People
In terms of destinations, deportation charter flights in 2022 followed similar patterns to 2021 and previous years. Albania was by far the most frequent destination, with 35 flights deporting approximately 900 people, more than all other nationalities combined. Next were three EU countries: Romania, Poland and Lithuania, receiving 11, 8 and 5 flights, for an approximate total of 300, 145 and 94 people respectively. Flights to Ghana and Nigeria (21 people), Jamaica (7 people), Vietnam (40 people) and Zimbabwe (2 flights, 35 people) accounted for the rest. Five flights scheduled to Iraq, Jamaica, Lithuania, Poland and Rwanda were cancelled.
The most recent immigration statistics published by the Home Office state that the “vast majority of enforced returns” were of so-called Foreign National Offenders (“FNO”). These were overwhelmingly to European countries, but also included Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The Windrush scandal showed how deportations to these post-colonial territories are systemically racist in nature, and particularly susceptible to procedural abuse. Many of those on the planes will be more at home in the UK than anywhere else, regardless of any irregularities in their immigration status.
Read more: Corporate Watch, https://tinyurl.com/bdhhub38
We Need More EU workers, Admits Leading Tory Brexiter
A leading Tory Brexiter on Sunday calls on ministers to reopen the UK’s borders to tens of thousands of young workers from EU nations in order to tackle acute post-Brexit labour shortages that he says are driving up inflation.
In an extraordinary admission of the failures of immigration policy since the UK left the EU, former Tory environment secretary George Eustice said Rishi Sunak’s government should begin bilateral negotiations with EU nations immediately, with a view to offering young Europeans under 35 the right to two- year visas to work in this country.
Eustice, who was secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs under Boris Johnson, said the deals should be reciprocal so that young UK citizens under 35 would be able to live and work for two years in the same EU member states with which deals were struck. This, he said, would be part of a much-needed “post-Brexit reconciliation” with our European neighbours.
Read more: Toby Helm, Jon Henley, Observer, https://tinyurl.com/yy4bebhm
Tribunal Must Consider Home Office Decisions in Full
Can a judge ignore part of a Home Office decision if their representative doesn’t mention it in court? No, said the Court of Appeal in Shyti v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 770.
The appellant, Mr Shyti, was challenging a decision to deprive him of his British citizenship. (See here for the background to this increasingly used power.) Mr Shyti’s decision was made under section 40(3) of the British Nationality Act on the basis that he had obtained naturalisation by means of fraud.
Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/uzwtph9s
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