News & Views Monday 8th January to Sunday 14th January 2018  


It Would Be Nice To Get An Apology’ After Being Detained At Yarl’s Wood IRC

A grandmother who was told she was an illegal immigrant, detained in an immigration removal centre and threatened with deportation despite having lived in Britain for 50 years has finally received official leave to remain in the UK. Paulette Wilson, 61, a former cook who served food to MPs in the House of Commons, has been denied benefits and access to healthcare and refused permission to work for the past two and a half years. After a week in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in October, she was taken to Heathrow for deportation to Jamaica, a country she had not visited since she left at the age of 10 and where she has no surviving relatives. Coverage of her situation in the Guardian last month prompted anger among politicians and readers. This week she received a biometric residency permit, confirming her settled status in the UK and bringing her a step nearer to gaining British citizenship. “It’s great news. I’ve been really struggling for the last two and a half years – it’s hard without money,” Wilson said. She remains puzzled by why she was told she was an illegal immigrant, when she had worked and paid taxes in the UK for most of her life.“I’ve never done anything wrong; how could I be an illegal? It would be nice to get an apology from the government saying: we are sorry we put you though this.”

Read more: Amelia Gentleman, Guardian, http://bit.ly/2mmdPtE



Financial Appeal for 'No-Deportations' - 2018

'No-Deportations' provides 'Signposting' to any one in the UK subject to UK immigration controls and does not want to leave the UK, for whatever reasons. Whether they fear return to their country of origin for political reasons, fear of religious/ethnic persecution, would face persecution for their gender preferences, or wish to remain in the UK for economic reasons, in that they can get a better standard of living for their families/themselves, can send remittances back to their families in country of origin.

To this end 'No-Deportations' sources up to date reports on conditions in countries, which are a source of people travelling to the UK for asylum/political/gender/religious/economic reasons.

Provides up to date UK immigration case law, rulings of UK Immigration Courts/Tribunals, UK Supreme Court, European Court of Human Rights, European Court of Justice that may benefit those UKBA are trying to remove/deport from the UK.

Where those subject to UK immigration controls, fallen foul of those controls and are required to leave the UK. 'No-Deportations' helps:

families/individuals/campaigners set up Anti-Deportation Campaigns, will try to find alternate legal avenues for them to remain in the UK.

We do not give legal advice or provide legal advice, but will read persons UKBA documents refusing them leave to remain in the UK and 'signpost' accordingly.
All information is provided freely to anyone seeking help without fear or favour.

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Take out a 'Standing order' to 'No-Deportations'
'Standing orders' are the best way to support 'No-Deportations', as this provides regular monthly income.

Download Standing order

As PDF File      Here . . . .

As Word.doc    Here . . . .

If you take out a standing order please notify ''No-Deportations' of date standing order is to start and amount.

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You can donate to 'No-Deportations' ' by cheque:

Very important make cheque out to 'Freemovement' and post to"
No-Deportations
C/o 22 Berners Street
Birmingham
B19 2Dr

With thanks, John O for 'No-Deportations'



Significant Change to the Case Law on Deprivation of British Citizenship

The Supreme Court ruled on 21 December 2017 in the cases of R (Hysaj and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Bakijasi v Secretary of State for the Home Department that if a person made misrepresentations during an application for British citizenship they can be deprived of their citizenship under sections 40 and 40A of the British Nationality Act 1981, instead of having it nullified.

The appellants in the two cases created false identities for themselves in order to obtain asylum and subsequently ILR on that basis. In 2004 Mr Hysaj was granted citizenship after an application where he provided the same details as for his previous applications – his real name, but his wrong place of birth, date of birth and nationality. Mr Bakijasi was granted citizenship after an application where he provided a false name, false date of birth, a false nationality and a false place of birth. In 2013 both Mr Hysaj and Mr Bakijasi had their citizenships nullified.

The previous case law provided that where an applicant has made an application on the basis of a false identity, the citizenship should be nullified. Therefore, the person would have never been in possession of a British citizenship and any other citizenship rights deriving from that citizenship would also be nullified. In this instance, the children of Mr Hysaj and Mr Bakijasi would have had their British citizenships nullified as well.

However, the Supreme Court’s decision rejected this approach in the instance where the false identity is a fake identity, rather than a stolen identity. As the reasoning goes, if the identity was stolen, the actual applicant never made the application and the nationality should be nullified. Thus, the person had never held this nationality.

However, if the identity used was a fabrication, the applicant had made false representation and they should be deprived from their British nationality under section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981. Therefore, they would have held their nationality up to the moment they were deprived from it. As this was the case with Mr Hysaj and Mr Bakijasi, such an approach would provide them with a right of appeal and would not affect the nationality held by their children.

Interestingly, after the Court of Appeal previously upheld the old approach taken to such cases, once the case was taken to the Supreme Court the Secretary of State for the Home Department agreed with Mr Hysaj and Mr Bakijasi’s appeals and provided her own reasoning as to why their decision was incorrect.

Source: Gherson Immigration, http://bit.ly/2CDbiCz



Historical Injustice for Persons Born Out of Wedlock and Their Right to British Citizenship Lingers On

This article concerns only one of several historical injustices in British nationality law. For decades, it discriminated against people born out of wedlock to British fathers by not allowing those fathers to pass on their nationality to their child.

On 1 January 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 took effect. From that time, British nationality law no longer recognised jus soli – the right to the nationality of a state merely by having been born within its territory. Instead, the 1981 Act sought to restrict British citizenship to those with a particular tie to the country.
From the 1981 Act’s commencement, people acquire British citizenship at birth if they are born in the UK to a parent who is either British or settled. Someone born outside the UK to a British parent also acquires British citizenship at birth (referred to as acquisition by descent) if that parent had not themselves acquired British citizenship by descent.

Originally, the 1981 Act did not permit a British father to pass on his citizenship to his child in this way if he was not married to the child’s mother. However, if the father and mother subsequently married, section 47 of the Act would take effect treating the child (whether or not she or he was still under 18 years) as having been British from birth.

Read more:  Legal Voice, http://bit.ly/2CX3TBl





Home Office: Banks Must Check Immigration Status of Account Holders

Banks and building societies have started immigration checks on holders of millions of current accounts under a government crackdown. The scheme was introduced by ministers as part of attempts to create a “hostile environment” for those staying in the UK unlawfully. It requires banks and building societies to check the immigration status of all current account holders against details of known illegal migrants held by authorities. Where an illegal migrant is found to be operating an account, this will be flagged to the Home Office. After checks, officials will instruct the bank or building society on what action to take, which could include shutting the account. Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said the measures would “make it more difficult for people with no right to live or work in the UK to remain here.”

Guardian, http://bit.ly/2D65XqQ



More than 300 Human Rights Activists Murdered in 2017

Dedicated to the more than 300 human rights defenders murdered this year, the Front Line Defenders Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders At Risk opens with two pages listing the names of the deceased. The report details the physical attacks, threats, judicial harassment, and smear campaigns used by state, non-state, and corporate actors to hinder the work of peaceful human rights defenders (HRDs) around the world. In 2017, 312 defenders in 27 countries were killed for their peaceful work, according to data collected by Front Line Defenders. More than two-thirds of these, 67% of the total number of activists killed, were defending land, environmental and indigenous peoples' rights, nearly always in the context of mega projects, extractive industry and big business.
Of the cases tracked, only 12% of all murder cases resulted in the arrest of suspects. Impunity for acts of violence against HRDs continues to enable an environment of frequent killings, said the organisation, as does a chronic lack of protection for HRDs at risk. Of the cases for which data on threats was collected, 84% of murdered defenders received at least one targeted death threat prior to their killing.

Read more: Front Line Defenders, http://bit.ly/2lWNNxV




Crumbling DR Congo – The Making of a Humanitarian Emergency

The scale of the humanitarian crisis requires an urgent international response – but the world is yet to step up to the challenge. The number of people who do not have enough food to eat has surged by 30 percent this year to 7.7 million. The number of children suffering severe acute malnutrition stands at 1.9 million, exceeding those of Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria combined.

Congo is the country worst affected by conflict displacement – for the second year running. An average of 5,500 people flee their homes every day, bringing the total number of displaced to over four million. The UN sounded the alarm by declaring the country a Level 3 emergency – the worst-of-the-worst of humanitarian crises. But aid has been extremely slow to arrive for the 13 million people in need. Less than half of the $812 million appeal for 2017 is currently funded. The provinces of Kivu, Kasai and Tanganyika are the current epicentres of the violence in the country.

In South Kivu, IRIN has documented the rape and sexual violence committed by government soldiers since September as it cracks down on a new rebel alliance - the National People’s Coalition for the Sovereignty of the Congo. Victims and witnesses provided IRIN with dozens of horrifying first-hand accounts of the sexual violence committed by the national army, the FARDC, which is forcing communities to flee, and building support for the insurgency.

Read more: IRIN, http://bit.ly/2CzTOqp



Reclaiming the Right to Life: Hunger Strikes and Protests in Denmark’s Deportation Centres

Farjad and twenty-seven other fellow-residents at the Kærshovedgaard so-called ‘departure’ centre (udrejsecenter) had been on hunger strike for the seventh day when we met them. They live cut-off at Kærshovedgaard, one of two recently-opened Danish deportation centres, the other being in Sjælsmark, about 35 km North of urban Copenhagen. Kjærshovedgaard is a former prison placed in the remote woods in the Mid-Jutland peninsula. Today the buildings quarter about 200 asylum seekers, men and women. Most of these people had their application rejected by the Danish authorities; others are awaiting to appeal their first instance decision (they are so-called ‘phase-two’ asylum seekers).
The Kærshovegaard and Sjælsmark deportation camps bear

witness to the widespread implementation, across northern Europe, of practices of ‘crimmigration’ (Stumpf 2006). These policies create a strict relationship between criminal and immigration law. This mutual dependence accomplishes a twofold strategy: on the one hand, within criminal law, a process of exclusion, resulting in physical and societal segregation from the rest of the society enacted through physical confinement and detention-like conditions. On the other, policies of exclusion entailing the isolation and then expulsion/deportation of criminalized migrants from the national territory (Aas and Bosworth 2013). Thus Denmark follows apace the developments observed in the rest of Europe, also triggered by European measures such as the 2008 EU directive on returns (2008/115/EC). This prompts the enactment of return schemes based on ‘common standards and procedures’ in the member states to ‘return illegal stayers from third countries’. The directive entails the possibility of detaining people for up to 18 months and putting in place a 5-year ban from EU territory. The implementation of these regulations have resulted in the physical and spatio-geographical control and isolation of the ‘undesired’, ‘unwanted’, turned into ‘deportables’. These people, according to the Danish Minister for Immigration, Integration and Housing Inger Støjberg ‘must be sent out of the country as soon as possible’, and their life in Denmark made as ‘intolerable as possible’.

Read more: Open Democracy, http://bit.ly/2m9UJHl





Judgment in Case C442/16 Florea Gusa v Minister for Social Protection

An EU citizen who, after more than one year, has ceased to work in a self-employed capacity in another Member State because of an absence of work owing to reasons beyond his control retains the status of self-employed person and, consequently, a right to reside in that Member State 

Judgment in Case C442/16 Florea Gusa v Minister for Social Protection, Ireland and Attorney General

Court of Justice of the European Union

http://bit.ly/2kw9FQ1


Belgian Government at Risk of Collapse Over Sudan Migrants Scandal  

Belgium’s coalition government is at risk of collapse over a scandal involving the forced repatriation of 100 people to war-torn Sudan. The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, appeared on TV on Monday to insist he would not be intimidated by “blackmail or threats” after the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), a Flemish nationalist party that is one of his three coalition partners, warned that it could withdraw support for his administration over the affair. The consequences of decisions taken by Theo Francken, a member of the N-VA and the minister for asylum and migration, are being examined following claims that some Sudanese migrants came to harm after he allowed three of the country’s officials to inspect their cases before they returned.
Fears have been raised that Sudan’s government, led by Omar al-Bashir, was in effect allowed to handpick political opponents for repatriation from Europe. Bashir, who came to power in 1989 after a military coup, is wanted in The Hague over allegations of crimes against humanity. On Sunday, Bart De Wever, the N-VA leader, said he would rather bring down the government than allow such a senior representative of his party to be forced out.

Read more: Daniel Boffey, http://bit.ly/2AHbUVU