News

The ordeal of Kessie Moyo

The refusal of a visa to attend the inquest of her son’s death added to the grief and distress of a bereaved mother. On 3 January 2005, Godfrey Moyo, a 25-year-old Zimbabwean who suffered from epilepsy, died at Belmarsh prison after being restrained face down outside his cell by prison officers. The inquest into his

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Comment

Shockwaves: Romanians in Belfast

The recent racist attacks against migrant workers have turned my stomach. But two things have shocked me more than the attacks themselves. The first shock was the police tactics in dealing with this crisis. The Romanians have apparently been moved en masse under armed guard to a secret location. A large proportion of the local

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Review

Cancelled!

The introduction of the points-based system, together with the habitual contempt for foreigners shown by immigration staff, is turning the UK into a pariah destination for artists and creative workers, according to an important new report. The Manifesto Club’s report UK Arts and Culture: Cancelled, by Order of the Home Office: The Impact of New

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News

SOAS occupied after cleaners detained and forcibly removed

Students have taken action after nine cleaners, who campaigned for a ‘living wage’ whilst working at a top London university, were detained in a dawn raid by immigration officers dressed in full riot gear. Six of the workers have since been forcibly removed to South American countries, including Colombia, where gross human rights abuses against

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Comment

Universities must not ride the wave of xenophobia

We reproduce below a statement by a number of UK-based academics. ‘We called for labour power’, playwright Max Frisch once said, ‘and human beings came’. The British government has called for higher education fees, and is discomforted by the actual arrival of non-EU students along with their overseas students’ fees. Apparently, it cannot tell the

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News

Academics refuse to police immigration

IRR News reproduces a collective letter by academics who ‘decry the insidious way in which [they] are being used to monitor foreign students and staff’.[1] ‘We are among the growing number of academics across the UK voicing our concern about being drawn into playing a key role in an ever-tightening system of immigration control. Many

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Comment

Growing academic campaign against immigration rules

Thirty-seven academics have begun a boycott of government immigration rules on students, labelling them as discriminatory. Under the new points-based immigration system, universities require academic and administrative staff to monitor the attendance of international students and to check the ID of students and colleagues. The thirty-seven academics involved in the boycott, who describe themselves as

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Review

‘Papers Please’

A new report finds that exploitation of vulnerable undocumented workers continues despite new laws. Jack Dromey (deputy general secretary of Unite) estimates in the foreword to ‘Papers Please’, a new report by the Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN), that there are half a million undocumented migrants in the UK, pointing out that they are among the

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Comment

Revival of the numbers game?

The new Migrationwatch report is dissected by immigration lawyer Frances Webber. From the press reports greeting the launch in September 2008 of Balanced Migration: a new approach to controlling immigration, it sounded as though this was an official or at least authoritative report by a cross-party group of MPs, perhaps under the House of Commons

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