Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign and Cambridge Calais Refugee Action Group invite you to two workshops run by Right to Remain.

• Do you want to know more about how the UK asylum and immigration system works (or doesn’t work?!)?
• Do you know newly-arrived asylum-seekers in the UK and want to know what you can do to support them?
• Maybe you’ve spent some time in Calais or Dunkirk, or have sent aid to the camps, and want to know what you can do here in the UK …
• Or perhaps you’ve got involved in the Refugees Welcome movement and want to know what practical acts of solidarity you can take for people yet to get legal protection in the UK.
• Do you want to meet others who are interested in this or are already doing this?

Most people now know about the perilous journeys refugees make in an attempt to reach a place of safety and security. Of how many that lose their lives en route, or are stranded at borders across Europe, or are encamped in squalid conditions and under constant attack in Calais and Dunkirk.

A dark corner of this story is that, for the refugees and other migrants who make it to their destination – the UK – the struggle isn’t over. People seeking the right to remain in the UK are faced by a bewildering, complicated and hostile asylum and immigration system and with diminishing legal help to navigate it.

The policies and procedures of the UK’s asylum and immigration system are increasingly complicated, with many people forced to navigate them alone, unable to access free legal advice and representation. These procedures can exclude people from accessing justice, and can mean that people are denied their rights, denied protection in the UK, and face forcible return to the situations of war, persecution and insecurity that they have fled.

But there are important actions that the person going through the legal process, their friends, supporters and communities can and should take to overcome these barriers to justice and safety.

This series of two workshops will look at:

• the different routes into and through the asylum and immigration system: arrival, applying for asylum, human rights cases, dispersal accommodation and support, interviews, reporting requirements, detention, decisions and determinations.
• the legal rights and options for people seeking the right to remain: legal aid, representation, advice and information; the key stages in the legal process
• practical things people can do to prepare for the different stages of the process, and what supporters, friends, communities can do to help.

The workshops will be based on Right to Remain’s toolkit (an accessible guide to the asylum and immigration system), and our work with asylum and migrant support groups across the UK. The workshops are free (though those who can afford it will be asked to donate £1 per session towards the venue cost), and will be in English.

If you are not in or near Cambridge and would be interested in these kinds of workshops, please click on the ‘register’ button and tell us where you are!

Register by email for the workshops