Gordon Brown est sur la défensive à propos de l'immigration et de l'intégration, devenues préoccupations numéro un des Britanniques, selon les sondages.

Distancé par l'opposition conservatrice, le Labour a pris des mesures restrictives. Mardi 30 octobre, le secrétaire d'Etat à l'immigration, Liam Byrne, a annoncé la prolongation de douze mois des restrictions imposées à l'arrivée des Roumains et des Bulgares. Il a fait part de son intention de lancer, en 2008, un système d'entrée "à points" à l'australienne pour attirer la main-d'oeuvre qualifiée et décourager les migrants non qualifiés. Une police des frontières devrait être créée pour améliorer la lutte contre les clandestins.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-973047,0.html

Senior lawyers, doctors and immigration officials even claim such destitution is, in effect, now being used by the Government as policy, in an attempt to force desperate people out of the country.

There are at least 280,000 people living in poverty in Britain after having their leave to remain refused. Some of them are appealing those decisions. Some just go completely underground, taking their chances on the streets of the UK with no money or shelter.

http://www.tns-sofres.com/etudes/pol/081007_immigration-uk.htm 

Jan Shaw is the Refugee Programme Director at Amnesty International UK and author of 'Down and Out in London: The Road to Destitution for rejected asylum seekers'.

In January 2006 I attended a meeting about destitute refused asylum seekers. Although no one could put an exact figure as to how many people there were in this situation we knew that it involved hundreds of thousands, a life of abject poverty, living a hand to mouth existence on the charity of others.

During the first six months of last year, I carried out research on the affects of such destitution on refused asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Sudan.  All of them were destitute, at the end of the asylum process and all expressed a fear of returning home.  They faced the prospect of living in poverty indefinitely, or until their departure to their country of origin was enforced as none of them would return voluntarily.

http://refugeecouncil.typepad.com/stillhuman/2007/09/what-should-we-.html

The latest News Review looks at the Liberal Democrat call for a selective amnesty for undocumented immigrants, amongst other immigration policies. It also highlights a new development over deportations to the Democratic Republic of Congo, some recent asylum statistics, and criticisms of the fast-track asylum process.

14 August - 10 September

Liberal Democrats call for selective amnesty

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Nick Clegg has called for an amnesty for immigrants who have been living in the UK illegally for years and show potential to be good citizens. The package of proposals on immigration also includes giving a new border control force police-style powers, and more money for local authorities to integrate immigrant communities. The policies will be debated at Liberal Democrat conference.

http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/news/reviews/newsreview.html

In response to a High Court ruling today that removing asylum seekers to third countries without first considering their claims is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, Donna Covey, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council said:

http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/news/press/2007/july/20070702_b.htm

In case you have been on holiday for the past few days and this blog is the first thing you read when you come back (a limited demographic, I know), we have a new Prime Minister!  Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair on Wednesday and has spent the last few days (terrorist threats aside) appointing his new ministers.  Now everyone seems to be referring to this as a 'reshuffle', but surely you can't reshuffle until you have first shuffled?  And to have shuffled, first you must have appointed.  So I reckon this is Gordon appointing his ministers, not reshuffling them, but no-one else seems to agree with me so I'll just plough on and let you know the details instead of wittering on about the semantics.

http://refugeecouncil.typepad.com/poliblog/