Immigration Advice for people who are detained by the Immigration Service

The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, in partnership with the Law Society of England and Wales, the Law Society of Scotland, the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and the Legal Services Commission, have produced a leaflet aimed at people who are detained by the Immigration Service.

In addition to explaining the right to legal advice, the leaflet provides guidance on who can provide immigration advice, how to find a legal representative, what to expect from a legal representative and how to complain about a legal representative.

The leaflet is initially available in 16 languages. Copies of the leaflet can be obtained by their website www.oisc.gov.uk under what's new/Legal Advice for Immigration Detainees Leaflet 01/05/2003

Blunkett’s plans for asylum seekers

10 things you need to know

  1. The government, under pressure, is scrapping the hated voucher scheme, but it is replacing it with Smart Cards – in essence, electronic tagging. With photograph and fingerprints, they could be the forerunner to every government’s dream – identity cards for all. Moreover, although the vouchers have gone, asylum seekers will still not get straight cash handouts. The French multinational Sodexho will distribute “giros” which asylum seekers will have to exchange for cash at post offices. This means they will still be idendifiable to racists – one of the central issues behind protests in the first place.
  2. Asylum seekers, who will still not be allowed to work, will continue to receive just 75% of normal income support – around £40 a week.
  3. The government’s main aim is to, as much as possible, segregate asylum seekers from the bulk of the population, helping to fuel the ugly levels of racism which its policies have already fostered. A three-layer system of accommodation and detention centres is centrepoint of its policies.
  4. Induction centres – such as the controversial Oakington centre near Cambridge – will “process” the claims of arriving asylum seekers.
  5. Accommodation centres will then house those asylum seekers allowed to remain. The centres will provide full board, education and health facilities – cutting inmates off from the wider community. Asylum seekers who refuse to stay in the centres will lose their rights to all state support.
  6. Those asylum seekers who lose out in the state’s lottery for refugee status will be banged up in Removal Centres – “soft” prisons. The government plans to have the capacity to lock up around 4,000 men, women and children in such places over the next two years.
  7. The system of forcibly dispersing asylum seekers to some of the most deprived parts of the country will remain.
  8. The government is quadrupling the number of people it deports each year to 30,000 – a totally arbitrary figure which goes against the Geneva Convention’s principle that every case be treated on its own merits. That means the number of asylum seekers either taking their own lives, or who die fleeing or fighting snatch squads of police and immigration officials, is set to increase markedly.
  9. The government’s new anti-terrorism measures – in themselves the biggest attack on civil liberties for decades – will directly affect asylum seekers by giving immigration officials even more power to discriminate against specific ethnic groups and individuals.
  10. In contrast to hysterical claims of “waves” of asylum seekers which New Labour has encouraged, Britain only takes 0.05% of the world’s refugees. It is New Labour’s backing of IMF/World Bank policies, US imperialism and repressive regimes around the world which is helping to fuel the massive increase in the world’s population of asylum seekers.