Anti-racism

...the UK Border Agency's own Professional Standards Unit has found that the agency's Cardiff office is not 'institutionally racist' or has a pervasive culture of abuse following a series of allegations made by ex-employee Louise Perrett in March this year.

Are you a Zimbabwean asylum seekers and were you granted 5 years refugee leave in 2005?

If so, please read the important information below and pass on to your friends.

From August 2005, refugees were granted 5 years refugee leave rather than indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Asylum seekers granted humanitarian protection (HP) were given HP for a 5 year period.

In August 2010, leave to remain will expire for the first of these people. It is VERY IMPORTANT that people do not wait for their leave to expire before making applications for further leave to remain or ILR.

They should apply for further leave to remain or ILR about a month before their leave expires.

And in another court decision, this time in the Supreme Court, the Home Office's challenge to an EU directive that asylum seekers who have already had one claim turned down but have submitted a fresh claim be allowed to look for work if their claim has not been processed within a year has been dismissed.

The Daily Mail and the Sun have been forced to eat humble pie in the court yesterday after falsely accusing Parameswaran Subramanyam, who went on a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square last year, of breaking his fast by eating hamburgers. His action was part of the 3 month long protests last year in Westminster during the later stages of the Sri Lankan civil war aimed at bringing about a ceasefire.

In another 'setback' for the government operates its immigration policy John Vine, the Chief Inspector of Immigration, has criticised the blanket use of dawn raids to detain families prior to their deportation. In his review of 42 deportation cases he found the the majority of arrests of families by UKBA snatch squads occurred between 6:30am and 6:40am.

Yet another piece of governmental gerrymandering abrogating the legal rights of refugees to seek protection under international law has been ruled illegal. The history of anti-immigration laws are littered with knee-jerk reactions to racist agitation and political sentiment. And when each incremental restriction of our freedom of movement proves to have not cut the numbers of those deemed as undesirable by the political classes, those same political classes tinker with the ways in which each new piece of restrictive legislation is applied, further restricting supposed safeguards under the law.

Controversy has broken out in Malta over an incident involving the rescue of a group of Somali refugees from a sinking dingy by the Maltese military last week. The Somali's boat was spotted by Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) and Libyan vessels south of the island on Sunday 18 July and they mounted a joint rescue. The 55 Somalis were divided into two groups, with 28 (22 men, five women and a child) who required medical attention boarding the AFM boat and the remaining 27 immigrants 'voluntarily' boarding the Libyan vessel.

London NoBorders Press Release:

Forward Intelligence Team was not authorised to monitor NoBorders Meeting. Protestors acquitted in Crown Court.

London NoBorders welcomes the Crown Court decision to clear three activists of the charges of "obstructing the police". The Inner London Crown Court ruled that police surveillance of a public political meeting had not been proved to be lawful and that the police had failed to provide any evidence that they were pursuing a "legitimate aim".

Three activists were arrested at the meeting called by London NoBorders in June 2008 when they protested against the surveillance of the meeting by the Metropolitan Police's "Forward Intelligence Team."

Even by the Daily Express' extremely low standards, the paper's response (the usual mixture of exaggeration, misrepresentation and down right lies, all exploited in the pursuit of its seemingly ever more reactionary editorial line) to Nick Clegg's announcement of the imminent closure of the family unit at Yarl's Wood has surely surpassed its previously vituperative worst, out 'knee-jerking' the competition on the way.

Despite Nick Clegg's gaffe yesterday when he claimed that the government would "close Yarl's Wood Detention Centre for good", later clarified by the Home Office as being only the family unit, everyone should welcome even that limited good news. However, the confusion goes further than just Calamity Clegg's faux pas.