US Woman Who Has Lived in UK for 53 Years Wins Deportation Appeal

A 75-year-old American woman who uses a Zimmer frame and is unable to digest solid food has won her appeal to remain in the UK after living here for 53 years. The Home Office attempted to deport Polly Gordon after she served a 12-month sentence for supply of a controlled drug. She was convicted of the offence in July 2019 at Edinburgh sheriff’s court. According to a judgment in the immigration tribunal, she has a past history of substance abuse and addiction to alcohol. Gordon first appealed against the Home Office’s plans to deport her to America, a country she has not lived in since her early 20s, to the first tier tribunal of the immigration court.

The judge there accepted that Gordon was frail with limited mobility and had a range of health problems including atrial fibrillation, colitis, difficulty consuming solid food, and had recently suffered from shingles. He said: “I presume that given her age and infirmity she will feel the impact of leaving her home country of the last five decades more than most.” He also accepted that she would not be able to access US government healthcare programmes as she had lived outside the country of her birth for more than five decades. He said her risk of reoffending was “relatively low (but not trivial)”. However, in his judgment he agreed with the Home Office that she should be deported.

Gordon appealed further to the upper tribunal in the immigration court where three senior judges found in her favour, allowing her to remain in the UK after finding that the first judge made an error in law in the way he calculated her prison sentence.

The upper tribunal judges found that Gordon, who was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 1977, had been lawfully resident in the UK for most of her life and was socially and culturally integrated into life in the UK. They accepted her offence was at the lower end of the scale of offending.

Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://rb.gy/isdfm0

Informing the Struggle for Immigration Justice

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) warn this week of the dangers posed by a clause inserted quietly, a couple of weeks ago, into the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will allow some British citizens (mainly dual nationals) to lose their citizenship without being notified in a wide range of circumstances, which could put them at grave risk. As vice-chair Frances Webber told the Guardian, ‘the message it sends is that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants, so that their citizenship, and therefore all their rights, are precarious and contingent.

As those working in the migration and refugee sector know only too well, the problems with the Nationality and Borders Bill currently going through parliament, do not end there. Other provisions will allow for the trial of humanitarian rescuers in the UK, with defendants facing sentences of life imprisonment. As we go to press, the trial in Lesvos of the Irish student Seán Binder and Syrian refugee Sarah Mardini - just 2 of 24 humanitarian volunteers who face prosecution – has been adjourned. Read our twitter thread on the case.

Read more; IRR, https://rb.gy/k8ibfn

Liars Can Still be Genuine Trafficking Victims

Some important points on inconsistency and credibility in trafficking cases: In a case where a person has suffered substantial trauma from repeated beatings and other unspeakable behaviour at the hands of those who controlled him/her, the psychological consequences of those events may result in the applicant’s recollection of events being entirely incoherent and thus of no value at all in deciding what had happened to him/her or him/her may continue to be so fearful of those who were controlling him that him/her may deny there was any abuse, coercion or forced labour. This is expressly recognised in the Guidance. In such a case, the applicant may be lying or his account of events may have no value whatsoever but the evidence of the physical or psychological condition of the individual will nonetheless be more than sufficient evidence that the person was a victim of trafficking.

Steve Harvey, who has long experience in the police and in Europol in trafficking matters, is that he has never known a trafficking case where there were no inconsistencies in the account of events given by the victim. Inconsistencies may, of course, be evidence to suggest that a person is lying but in this context it is important decision makers recognise that there are many other potential explanations for inconsistencies.

Source: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/ghue10

Conflict, Violence, Climate Change Drove Displacement of More Than 84 Million in First Half of 2021

The trend in rising forced displacement continued into 2021 - with global numbers now exceeding 84 million - as more people fled violence, insecurity and the effects of climate change, according to the Mid-Year Trends report released today by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. The report, for January-June 2021, showed an increase from 82.4 million at end 2020. This resulted largely from internal displacement, with more people fleeing multiple active conflicts around the world, especially in Africa. The report also noted that COVID-19 border restrictions continued to limit access to asylum in many locations.

“The international community is failing to prevent violence, persecution and human rights violations, which continue to drive people from their homes,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “In addition, the effects of climate change are exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in many areas hosting the forcibly displaced”. Nearly 51 million people are now internally displaced, as conflict and violence flared around the world during the first half of 2021. Much of the new internal displacement was in Africa, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.3 million) and in Ethiopia (1.2 million). Violence in Myanmar and Afghanistan also forced people from their homes between January-June 2021.

Read more Relief Web https://rb.gy/wnhq0f

Stuck in Limbo Between Poland and Belarus

“Die here or go to Poland.” This was the “choice” that a Kurdish man from Syria told me a Belarusian border guard had given him, as he described his horrific experiences on the Poland-Belarus border, pleading with the guard to be allowed go back to the capital, Minsk. He told me he had been pushed back from the Polish side of the border several times, sometimes violently and that his pleas for asylum were ignored by Polish border guards. He ended up, as many have, back on the Belarus side, a place many migrants described as pure hell.

Migrants described the Belarussian border as a place of brute violence, where they were forcibly kept in open spaces without shelter, food, or water for days to weeks, vulnerable to theft and other abuse, and blocked from returning to Minsk or their home countries. They told me how Belarusian border guards pushed them – exhausted and abused – to try again to enter Poland, in most cases unsuccessfully, resulting only in their forced return to Belarus and further abuse.

Read more: Lydia Gall, Human Rights Watch, https://rb.gy/r47khe

UK Home Office’s “Early Settlement Concession” for 18 to 24 year-olds

The Home Office has introduced an important new concession in their policy guidance which will allow those aged between 18 and 24 to be granted indefinite leave to remain after 5 years of limited leave in the UK. Previously, unless there were exceptional reasons to grant indefinite leave to remain, applicants in this age group could only be granted indefinite leave to remain after 10-years of residence in the UK with limited leave. The Immigration Rules allow people aged 18-24 inclusive, who were born or entered the UK as children and who have spent at least half of their lives living continuously in the UK, to apply for permission to stay in the UK.

The reason for this change is the Home Office’s recognition that the 10-year settlement policy may not apply proportionately to everyone and that those who were born in the UK or entered the UK as children and who are fully integrated into UK society cannot always be considered responsible for any previous non-compliance with immigration laws. In addition to checking that various eligibility requirements are satisfied, the Home Office will also consider the applicant’s personal circumstances such as the age at which they arrived in the UK, their length of residence in the UK, the strength of their connections and integration in the UK as well as their previous immigration history.

Posted by: Gherson Immigration, https://rb.gy/4j6sd7