Editorial: A Refugee Week call…

Editorials

Editorial: A Refugee Week call for change

Twenty years in prison. Fines of 50,000 Euros. It’s 2019 and this is the shameful price of saving human lives on Europe’s borders. Pia Klemp, captain of the NGO ship Iuventa, faces two decades in prison if convicted for her role in rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean, while a new law passed in Italy last week (seen as a barely concealed attempt to halt search-and-rescue operations) means ships that enter Italian waters after being banned from doing so can be fined up to 50,000 Euros. In the same week, a…

Twenty years in prison. Fines of 50,000 Euros. It’s 2019 and this is the shameful price of saving human lives on Europe’s borders. Pia Klemp, captain of the NGO ship…

Editorial: A step towards integration

A Home Office document on integration published on 3 June has provided some welcome and unexpected hope for us and for newcomers to this country. The “Indicators of Integration framework 2019” outlines the factors involved in “successful integration”, what good integration looks like and how (if at all) it can be measured. Its tone and main messages are welcome – it’s about time that we focus on how integration is everyone’s responsibility and isn’t at all about assimilation or the loss of migrants’ identities. There are also several pages of…

A Home Office document on integration published on 3 June has provided some welcome and unexpected hope for us and for newcomers to this country. The “Indicators of Integration framework…

Editorial: Media mis-information

Almost ten years ago, we set up Migrant Voice to challenge bad reporting about migration in the media. This week, courtesy of the Daily Mail and the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, we’ve had a painful reminder that our work is still necessary. On 24 May, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report into the government’s response to allegations of cheating on an English test by international students in 2014, something we’ve been campaigning on for the last 18 months. Based on evidence given to the Home Office by…

Almost ten years ago, we set up Migrant Voice to challenge bad reporting about migration in the media. This week, courtesy of the Daily Mail and the BBC Radio 4…

Editorial: The criminalisation of decency

The criminalisation of acts of solidarity is continuing to spread across Europe, and we urge governments across the continent, including our own, to put a halt to this and to reinstate the values of humanity and decency that Europe claims to stand for. This week, British man Tom Ciotkowski went on trial in France for contempt and assault after documenting police abuse of migrants and challenging a police officer who was behaving violently towards a fellow volunteer in Calais. We’ve also heard this week about plans in Italy to fine…

The criminalisation of acts of solidarity is continuing to spread across Europe, and we urge governments across the continent, including our own, to put a halt to this and to…

Editorial: You'll never have a home

Detaining and deporting people who were brought to the UK as children and whose whole life is here is a particularly cruel part of this government’s immigration policy, and we are calling urgently for a new approach. Migrant Voice member Kelvin Bilal Fawaz – who we know as Bilal – was brought to the UK aged 13, abandoned and forced into domestic slavery. He grew up in Nigeria, but his parents (from Lebanon and Benin) are both dead. He’s not a citizen of any of those countries. Now 31, he’s…

Detaining and deporting people who were brought to the UK as children and whose whole life is here is a particularly cruel part of this government’s immigration policy, and we…

Editorial: Home Secretary, hear these voices

We welcome the news that the National Audit Office is investigating the Home Office over its handling of allegations of cheating on the TOEIC English test, and we look forward to continuing to work with them on this issue in search of truth and justice. We’re also pleased that the students whose lives were devastated in 2014 when the government wrongly accused them of cheating are finally being heard. Coverage in The Guardian and on the BBC – adding to earlier reports in The Independent, the Financial Times and on…

We welcome the news that the National Audit Office is investigating the Home Office over its handling of allegations of cheating on the TOEIC English test, and we look forward…

Editorial: Denied access to healthcare

Too many people in this country are unable to access the healthcare they are entitled to. Anyone resident in the UK is allowed to register with and to see a GP, but many migrants face discrimination, ignorance and a slammed door when they try to access this basic right. A few weeks ago, we met Grace, who told us about a time when she was in a lot of pain. She was advised to go to the local GP but they refused to register her. She was too scared to…

Too many people in this country are unable to access the healthcare they are entitled to. Anyone resident in the UK is allowed to register with and to see a…

Editorial: The fees must fall

Disproportionate and discriminatory immigration fees in the UK mean that thousands of people are never able to claim their rights. They are priced out of citizenship, often priced out of legal status. We are disappointed by the response of the Home Office to the independent inquiry into immigration fees and we are renewing our call for urgent action by policymakers to reduce these extortionate costs. Why should someone taking up their right to citizenship in the UK have to pay 5 times more than someone in Germany, and 25 times more…

Disproportionate and discriminatory immigration fees in the UK mean that thousands of people are never able to claim their rights. They are priced out of citizenship, often priced out of…

Editorial: It's not too late on citizens' rights

For millions of people, 29 March 2019 has long been synonymous with one thing: Brexit. Around 3.6 million of those people are EU nationals living in the UK. For them, today may bring hope, that the future isn’t yet set in stone; it may bring despair, that the uncertainty of the last years is being prolonged; it may bring a new determination to hang onto the homes and lives they’ve built here, or to relinquish them and seek a new life elsewhere. This afternoon, we’ve seen the government’s Brexit…

For millions of people, 29 March 2019 has long been synonymous with one thing: Brexit. Around 3.6 million of those people are EU nationals living in the UK. For…

Editorial: Students need more than token gestures

The UK must urgently overhaul its policies if it is to keep attracting international students, as the government has recently said it wishes to do. But the latest policy change – a small extension to the time that foreign students can stay and work in the UK after graduating – is no more than a token gesture. Universities have been clamouring for years for a return of the post-study work visa, which allowed international students to stay and work in the UK for two years after graduating and which was…

The UK must urgently overhaul its policies if it is to keep attracting international students, as the government has recently said it wishes to do. But the latest policy change…

Editorial: A Refugee Week call for change

Editorials