Islington Anti-Deportation Campaign are celebrating!
After months of legal battling, petitioning, lobbying, pickets, meetings and the support of our local MP Jeremy Corbyn, the Home Office has at last granted Nigerian born Gillian Achu "exceptional leave to remain in Britain.
Now she and her children can begin to live normally again in their community, from where they were suddenly picked up and detained last year.
Gillian has lived in this country ffor eight years, after fleeing Nigeria. As such she was one of those hoping for an amnesty following the government’s recently published white paper on immigration. But what do these new proposals really mean for refugees and asylum seekers in the future?
Headed "Fairer, Faster, Firmer", the white paper announces a "modernising and streamlining" of immigration policy in the interest of greater efficiency and fairness.
Yet it has already been condemned by refugee organisations and others as having little to do with fairness. It will lead instead to greater exclusions, restrictions, intelligence gathering, detention and enforcement.
Looking at the list of new forms of control and policing proposed, we see immigrants and asylum seekers yet again presented as "abusers of the system" and as criminals rather than as people with legitimate rights
New pre-entry and on-entry restrictions will involve extending visa requirements, increasing the number of Airline Liaison officers abroad (both aimed at developing countries) and strengthening the powers of the 1987 Carriers Liability Act.
The last point has meant that airlines are subject to £2,000 fine if they admit passengers whose travel documents are not in order.
As was said when the Act was first introduced, people fleeing from wars and dictatorships often do not have all their papers in order, if they have them at all.
Increasing these powers will only result in a further denial of asylum to the most distressed, desperate and vulnerable refugees of the world. This is a violation of Britain’s obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on refugees.
Asylum seekers who are actually allowed entry into the country will face harsh changes in applications and appeals procedures. After the initial interview with an immigration officer, it is proposed to allow only five days instead of the present month for all applicants to prepare documentation before awaiting a decision on their case.
This is a woefully inadequate time to examine and present often lengthy histories of persecution, and to obtain all the necessary documents, including from the country of origin.
If their application is refused, they will be allowed only one appeal, if this is lost they can then be detained and deported.
The whole process of application and appeal will be "fast-tracked" to last no longer than 6 months.
As to material support available, asylum seekers are to be excluded in future from Social Security benefits and dealt with through the Home Office. In fact the white paper proposes that they initially be expected to fend for themselves "with the help of relatives, friends and community groups".
Only if this fails will a basic safety net of centrally designated housing and benefits in kind be offered.
Apart from cruelly miss-assessing the situation and needs of people arriving traumatised and often destitute after fleeing persecution, such systems socially isolate and leave refugees vulnerable to racist discrimination and harassment. The horrific arson attacks on hostels in Germany are an example.
The new proposals on enforcement and deportation are based on a view that links immigration and asylum to criminality. Despite recent damming criticism from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and from the Inspector of Prisons, use of detention will actually increase once a claim has been refused.
Immigration officers will also be given new powers of search, entry and arrest, making them into a sort of special immigration police – without even the limited constraints on them that exist with the Police Complaints Authority.
Particularly unpleasant is that whilst asylum seekers are to be starved of assistance, no expense will be spared in the employment of new technology to increase surveillance and control of refugees and their communities.
The collaboration of benefits agencies, marriage registrars, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and its new wing the Organised Immigration Crime Section, as well as Europol will all be secured in combatting "immigration related crime".
The Home Office has made a few concessions, such as abolition of the "White List" of countries from which asylum claims will not be accepted, and the right of appeal against refusal of entry to family visitors. People who have been waiting longer than five years for their cases to be heard are also likely to stay, although the government insists there will be no amnesty.
But despite this, and despite the lip-service paid to human rights and improving race relations, its proposals will do just the opposite. New Labour has presented us with a package of measures against immigration and asylum rights even meaner, nastier and more repugnant than the Tories.