Latest News from Positive Action in Housing

By Paul Kirby
EU reporter, BBC News

After years of dispute, the EU has struck an accord on the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants.

“We have 10 to 12 million illegal persons in the EU… they are modern slaves,” said German MEP Manfred Weber, who described the deal as a “big step”.

He said there would be a six-month limit on detention for most people and a readmission agreement would have to be struck before they were sent home.

A final decision will now have to be made by MEPs and member states.

The deal was hammered out by the Slovenian Presidency of the EU, along with members of the European Commission and the parliament, but it is opposed by some MEPs.

The Socialist group has refused to give its consent to the accord, saying it objects to some of the terms.

“We have serious reservations about numerous aspects of the text, particularly on the duration for which immigrants can be held in detention centres,” said French MEP Martine Roure, who took part in the talks in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

While France currently has a 30-day limit on detention, some EU countries such as Malta have an 18-month maximum and seven others, including the UK, have no limit.

Instead of the agreed six-month limit on detention with a possible further year for exceptional cases, the Socialists believe there should be a lower limit with an absolute maximum of six months.

But Dutch Liberal MEP Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert told the BBC News website that while the agreement was not perfect, it was definitely a step forward.

“They (the Socialists) are acting politically irresponsibly and are completely immature,” she said.

British Green MEP Jean Lambert said that the difficulty for some French MEPs was that while some countries would have to reduce their limit for immigrant detention, France would substantially increase its own.

Although the agreement was far better than if it had been left to governments to negotiate, she said the Greens would probably vote against it because of some of the provisions.

“If you’re married to a British citizen but don’t have the right to stay and are forced to leave, you can now find yourself banned for five years,” she said.

The Socialists are also concerned about the treatment of unaccompanied children.

But Manfred Weber, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the return of illegal immigrants, said that social services would be responsible for the return of children rather than the usual authorities.

The plight of illegal immigrants has become a major issue in a number of EU countries. In Germany, campaigners complain that if an illegal immigrant goes to a hospital for treatment, doctors are required to inform the authorities.

That, says Mr Weber, leads to a situation in which many do not seek treatment.

In France earlier this month, Malian immigrant Baba Traore died after jumping into the River Marne while trying to escape from police east of Paris. He fled when he was asked for his identity documents.

Protesters took to the streets demanding rights for immigrants and the closure of detention centres.

The French government, which takes up the EU presidency in July, has made reaching a European immigration pact a priority.

Italy’s incoming interior minister, Roberto Maroni, has called for “more rigour” against illegal immigration, speaking of a need for “more cleansing and more police”.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said that the new agreement meant that there would now be an effective return policy across the EU which, until now, had not been in place.

“If you want to make a serious effort to come up with a comprehensive package on migration, you cannot ignore that we have to tackle the problems of illegal migration,” he said.

BBC NEWS ONLINE

Asylum seekers should be given the right to work after six months in the UK, a leading children’s charity says.

Thousands of children are condemned to a life of poverty as current laws stop their parents from working while their cases are processed, Barnardo’s said.

It said there could be as many as 100,000 children of asylum seekers in the UK; the government disputes this.

It said Barnardo’s view did not reflect reforms of the past year, adding that asylum claims were at a “15-year low”.

‘Shocking’ disadvantages

New procedures brought in by the Home Office mean families arriving in the UK claiming asylum will now be swiftly returned to their own country if their claim is unsuccessful.

Barnardo’s says current laws mean asylum seekers cannot support themselves and their children while they are waiting for their claim to be dealt with.

It wants the backlog in cases to be dealt with as quickly as possible, with any parents staying in the UK longer than six months being allowed to work.

In a report, called Like Any Other Child?, it said some asylum seekers had had to wait as long as 10 years before their cases were resolved.

It said their children faced “shocking” disadvantages because of their parents’ small benefits allowance, often living in damp and unsafe housing.

It added some youngsters also suffered “aggressive racial abuse” and had to move schools.

Asylum seekers also had to deal with the uncertainty of living for years without knowing whether they may have to leave the UK and take their children back to countries the youngsters’ had no experience of.

Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey said: “For those whose cases have been languishing in the old system, often for years, there is a desperate need for a new approach and in particular a moral and economic case for allowing parents trapped in the backlog to work and support their children.

“Often they have skills the UK needs and they have no wish to live on government handouts.”

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne described the report as “pretty wide of the mark and way behind the reform of the last 12 months”.

He said: “The facts are that asylum claims are now at a 15-year low, new fast-track asylum teams are on track to resolve the majority of new cases in six months or less, and families with children are amongst the top priority that our new 900-strong legacy team will conclude this year.

“We will, I’m afraid, remove anyone with no right to be in the UK, as humanely as possible.”

Monday, 7 January 2008, 00:04 GMT

Each year around 4,000 refugee children arrive alone in Britain. Without friends or family, and unable to speak English, they face a frightening future. Sarfraz Manzoor reports on a project that lets them use photography to tell their own stories

Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian

When Amir arrived in Britain last December he was 16, fleeing Iraq on a false passport after the kidnap and murder of his father. He landed at Heathrow with nothing except a scrap of paper on which his name was scribbled in English. “I did not know where I was; I could not speak English,” Amir recalls, his hands fidgeting nervously. “I was scared - I had no family, no friends. Who is going to help me? Who is going to give me support?”

In the stark terminology of Home Office bureaucracy, Amir is one of an estimated 4,000 “unaccompanied young refugees” who arrive in Britain each year from everywhere from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Congo and Rwanda. Separated from their families and far from home, many suffer from depression, insomnia and anxiety. The vast majority - 80% - settle in London and their experiences are rarely understood.
“Mainstream society only hears certain things about immigration,” says Tiffany Fairey. “They never hear direct stories from the people who are coming here or what they are dealing with.” Fairey is the co-founder of PhotoVoice, a charity that uses photography to enable marginalised groups to tell their stories. It has been working with young refugees since 2002, most recently on New Londoners, in which 15 of them have been mentored by professional photographers. The photographs can be viewed online and a book is being planned for next summer. “The biggest barrier to integration is misunderstanding,” says Fairey. New Londoners enables the young people “to tell their own stories from their own perspective”.

PhotoVoice was helped in the project by Dost, a London charity that supports young refugees. Dost is based in Trinity Centre, a converted redbrick church in East Ham in east London. On one of the afternoons that I visit the centre, a group of elderly Sikh men are playing cards while four young refugees are immersed in Connect 4. Among them is Sacha, who arrived as a 13-year-old from Ukraine five years ago. “It was like a bad dream,” he recalls, “like taking too many painkillers.” Since leaving eastern Europe, Sacha has had no contact with his parents. “It isn’t easy, it takes a lot out of you having to get by without parents,” he says sadly. “You need lots of emotional support, you need stimulation, spiritual and physical contact with people.”

“People don’t live in a vacuum,” adds Yesim Deveci, who set up Dost. “If everyone who has been part of your life does not exist any more you need to feel that someone cares about you.” For the young refugees who visit Dost, most of their interactions with mainstream society are institutional - social workers, the Home Office, their housing office and their solicitor; the New Londoners project allows the young people to transcend their refugee identity.

The recurring themes in New Londoners’ images are, perhaps unsurprisingly, being far from home, and the contradictory emotions that come from being in Britain. Mussie, a 17-year-old from Eritrea, photographed food that he had cooked. “This picture is about my new life in England,” he says. “In my country I had never cooked before.”

Amir also photographed one of his meals. “For someone here, it’s just my breakfast,” he explains. “Two eggs, some bread, tea. But if I showed this picture to someone in Iraq they wouldn’t believe it because in Iraq we imagined English breakfasts to be tables full of lots of food.” Another of Amir’s photographs shows dinner being eaten by candlelight. “They hadn’t been able to pay for electricity so it had been cut off,” he tells me. “In Iraq we don’t believe things like this happen in England.” Many of Amir’s photographs are taken in the dark; like many young refugees, he finds it hard to sleep at night. “Many of the kids are so anxious,” explains Liz Orton of PhotoVoice. “When we first gave them cameras, they came back after a week with dozens of images of each other taken during the night. You could just see the time passing.”

Rosalita is a sad-eyed 18-year-old who arrived in Britain two years ago after fleeing the Congo following the death of both her parents. Her father was Rwandan and her mother Congolese, and as a young girl Rosalita was raped by Congolese soldiers who thought she was Rwandan and Rwandan soldiers who accused her of being Congolese. Even though she is sitting less than two feet from me, I have to strain to hear her speak and her whispery voice tapers off into silence. Having arrived unable to speak English, she is now fluent in English and Spanish as well as Swahili. She says she wants to work for a charity after leaving university. I ask her to tell me about her favourite photograph from those she took. “I saw an old woman lying on the street,” she murmurs. “She was so old and no one cared about her - it was Liverpool Street, where there are lots of banks and big buildings. I don’t know if she had any children but everyone was ignoring her. It made me sad; in Congo, families live with their grandmothers and grandfathers. Not like here.”

Chen, 18, photographed another old person. “I felt the strangeness of the old man lying on the ground,” he says. “He was not Chinese but he was asleep in China Town.” Chen’s mentor was the artist and photographer Gayle Chong Kwan, who found that working with the young refugee opened her eyes to her own Chinese heritage. “It was not about me teaching, so much as having a conversation,” she says. “With photography there is none of the frustration of having a limited language. These young people can express thoughts that they could not do in English.”

It is almost impossible to imagine the journeys that have led these young refugees to Britain. Many have been orphaned by war; most of them are having to grow up without things the average Briton takes for granted. Their photographs are hopeful, but tinged with loss and uncertainty. Many of the refugees are still awaiting Home Office decisions on whether they will be allowed to remain in this country. Those who have been granted the right to remain have complicated feelings about the prospect. “I feel safe here and I have a chance to do something with my life,” says Amir, “but life here is not easy. I want to use my photographs to tell people in Iraq, ‘Don’t think that living in England is easy, don’t think this country is better than Iraq. Life here is very hard.’ I would like one day to return to Iraq, my country, and when I go I will take a camera”. Some names have been changed.

· To find out more about the New Londoners project and to view the photographs, visit www.photovoice.org and www.projectdost.org.