- Conference
- 2004 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 20 February 2004
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that the government is determined to introduce still another round of asylum/immigration legislation that will further restrict refugee rights, having already announced dramatic cuts in legal aid for asylum cases. Features of the forthcoming legislation will include:
1)added restrictions on the right to appeal negative decisions, with little or no access to higher courts;
2)a new criminal offence for failure to provide good explanation for being without travel documentation;
3)new powers for the immigration services commissioner to seize and examine documents from solicitors’ offices;
4)fast track deportation for families to so-called safe third countries, and
5)termination of all support to families who refuse paid voluntary repatriation to countries such as Afghanistan.
Conferences notes that these proposals will mark the fifth major piece of asylum/immigration legislation in the space of a decade and come in the wake of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 that:
a)featured Section 55, which effectively denies any form of support to late applicants and has already left some 3,500 single adult asylum seekers destitute by October 2003;
b)renewed the white list of countries, which originated in 1996, from which all asylum applications would be routinely rejected, and
c)substantially extended the use of arbitrary detention in “removal” centres such as Harmondsworth, that have been heavily criticised by the chief inspector of prisons.
Conference believes that:
i)the successive rounds of legislation have fundamentally eroded Britain’s commitment to the 1951 Geneva convention on refugee rights and sent out the message asylum seekers are not welcome here;
ii)the government has pandered to a media agenda dominated by right-wing newspapers, which have been consistently hostile to immigrants for generations;
iii)the current home office policies and the home secretary’s rhetoric have helped legitimise the propaganda of the British National Party, rather than undercutting support for this fascist outfit;
iv)trade unions should be to the fore in opposing attempts to scapegoat refugees for a range of social problems and the government’s drive to criminalise asylum seekers through the use of arbitrary detention.