Yesterday, Mount Pleasant Park Football Club staged a mini-football-game-protest outside Vulcan House, the Home Office building in Sheffield, against detention and deportation.

At the start of May, we ran a workshop on the asylum process in Glasgow, and we were really happy to meet a couple of women representing Ubuntu Women’s Shelter.

Ubuntu are the first specialist service in the UK run and managed by people with lived experience of migration, asylum or destitution.

PhD researcher Jo Hynes wrote this week about her observations on the use of video link technology in immigration bail hearings.

During her observations, bail was refused in 31% of the cases heard via video link and never refused in instances where cases were heard in person.

We launched the Right to Remain asylum navigation board (co-developed with Dr Victoria Canning of Bristol University and Calverts design and print cooperative) in Glasgow last week.

Here, Lisa Matthews (coordinator at Right to Remain) talks to Josh at Third Works about the asylum navigation board, and the main stages of the UK asylum process (in 2 minutes!).

This week, we ran a workshop on the asylum process for volunteers at the Glasgow night shelter. The shelter provides emergency accommodation for destitute people seeking asylum, and other people with no recourse to public funds.

Since 2016, we’ve been working with Early Asylum Support Sheffield, a volunteer group who run monthly information sessions for people newly-arrived to the area, on preparing for the asylum substantive interview.

Docs Not Cops, Migrants Organise and Medact have launched a new toolkit designed to support you in advocating for people facing charges for NHS care, and in taking action to end immigration checks and upfront charging in the NHS.

There’s guidance if you’re supporting someone being charged for healthcare, the facts about the NHS charges, and tools so you can campaign for change in your local area.

“The government’s position is that obtaining legal advice is not necessary in making an immigration application and that no advantage in the application process should accrue to people who choose to access, are able to afford legal advice, over those who cannot.”

Really?

At Right to Remain, our approach is about solidarity, self-help and mutual aid. A lot of our work is finding out what practical actions people are taking to survive and succeed in the asylum and immigration system, and sharing that with others facing the same problems.

We are recruiting! A new one day per week role in Manchester, supporting the These Walls Must Fall campaign. Deadline is Friday 22 March.