Brand new videos about the UK asylum system

Legal Updates

We are very excited to announce the launch of brand new videos about the UK asylum system, a joint project between Refugee Info Bus, Right to Remain and Sara Khyat Art Work.

Based on the Right to Remain Toolkit, with translations by Refugee Info Bus and with stunning animation by Sara, these videos will help people understand their rights at crucial stages of the asylum process.

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Bureaucratic barriers to rights

Legal Updates

As anyone attempting to make an online immigration application in recent weeks will know, the system is in a mess. A right royal mess.

In recent months, many applications have been made online only and the process has been outsourced to a company called Sopra Steria.

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Leave to remain as a stateless person in the UK

Legal Updates

A stateless person, as defined by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons is “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”.

Although the UK signed up the 1954 Convention, there was no formal mechanism for recognising and providing protection to stateless people until 2013.

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Thinking about evidence in family life, rights of the child cases

Legal Updates

At one of the training sessions we ran this week with volunteers who are keen to learn more and do more for people seeking the right to remain in the UK – we looked at evidence.  What ‘evidence’ means, in the context of asylum, immigration and human rights cases.  How someone can get this evidence, and how others can help them.  We discussed how important documentary evidence is, when so many legal cases are refused on the basis of credibility – the Home Office or the courts don’t believe you are telling the truth.

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checklist

Preparing in case of detention

Legal Updates

Much of the Right to Remain Toolkit is based on people’s direct experience of the asylum and immigration system, and the ideas and actions they have found helpful to navigate the system and survive.

That’s particularly true for the Toolkit section on Preparing in Case of Detention.

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Detention centre walkway

Post-detention accommodation – briefing from BID

Legal Updates

Last month, the organisation Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) released a briefing on the current situation of post-detention accommodation.

Already a problematic area, post-detention accommodation is now a crisis situation following the changes made in January 2018 (which you can read about on our blog here) which included the abolition of Section 4(1) accommodation. This accommodation was provided by the Home Office to people released from detention with nowhere else to stay, and with no other forms of support available to them.

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Detention centre walkway

Children taken into care as Home Office breaks own guidance on family separations

Legal Updates

The Guardian newspaper reported this weekend on a distressing story of three children aged eight, six and five, who were taken into care when the Home Office detained their father, Kenneth Oranyendu.

The three children, and the children’s mother, are British citizens. Their mother is currently in Nigeria, attending a family funeral. Mr Oranyendu does not currently have the right to remain in the UK, and the Home Office is attempting to deport him from the UK (he has completed a three-year criminal sentence).

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8 reasons to hate the new bail procedures

Legal Updates

This is a guest post by Tom Kemp. Tom is a member of SOAS Detainee Support and a PhD Student at Kent Law School. He is currently writing about anti-detention activism and political thinking in the everyday work of anti-border social movements.

Most of Schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016 were brought into force this month. Here’s 8 reason to hate them.

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