“Since April 2022, Right to Remain has been stepping up our efforts to boost the migration justice movement. We met with and listened to the people who are going through the asylum and immigration system and our Radical Solidarity Hub; hundreds of groups across the UK who are doing amazing solidarity work, many by using our Toolkit. We reflected on and modified our methodology, and tested and introduced new ways of doing things. The new webpages showcase how we do our public legal education now in 2024. 

The Right to Remain Toolkit has gone through an unprecedented period of revisions, to keep our community informed about the cruel changes introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act and the ‘Illegal’ Migration Act. New Toolkit pages such as ‘10-year route to indefinite leave to remain’ and ‘work exploitation and migrant workers’ rights’ have proven to be immensely popular – our initiative to strengthen immigration aspects of the Toolkit is clearly meeting our community’s needs. 

We continue to receive an extremely high number of requests for our workshops. We are frustrated by our very limited capacity that stops us from fulfilling all the requests but humbled by the trust our community places in us. And there is so much more to our public legal education work than just the Toolkit and workshops – it is about relationships, solidarity and power. We invite you to take a look at our webpages to learn more and work with us. 

Our public legal education work is more important than ever. Between September 2018 and March 2023, over 30% of immigration and asylum advice providers with legal aid contracts stopped doing legal aid work. A recent report by the Public Law Project describes an advice sector that has ‘collapsed’, where referring a person to an asylum or immigration solicitor is no longer a realistic option and ‘support organisations’ referrals are going unanswered’. It’s no surprise that Right to Remain’s public legal education is in such high demand, and we expect this demand to only skyrocket. 

We believe knowledge is power, and we are determined to continue to empower our community, increasing their ability and confidence to navigate and challenge this hostile asylum and immigration system and protecting them from harm and border violence as much as possible. The asylum and immigration system is designed to disempower our community of people seeking asylum, refugees, migrants and those who stand in solidarity with them and creates division in our society. Our work to democratise knowledge builds radical solidarity and power, as we continue to build a society that protects us all. 

We have new initiatives planned for 2024, which we hope to share later in the year. We look forward to working in solidarity with you, for a world where no one is illegal.”