Working Together to Help Each Other

NCADC is of a coalition of anti-deportation campaigns, working together to help each other. Deportees are able to speak to those with similar cases to their own, to share experiences and advise on how to cope with the strain and uncertainty of their situation.

NCADC meetings form a focus for the exchange of information on campaign tactics, legal approaches, and sources of information or contacts which may help further both their legal cases or their campaigns. Through these meetings deportees and their supporters learn about the overall policy issues which effect their legal status in the UK and how overall policies are effecting others in similar circumstances to their own.

Although NCADC has witnessed the success of 60 of our member campaigns (as of December 1998) this has not been as a result of a change in Government policy. Rather, it reflects the success of work individual campaigners have carried out.

The Government's recently published White Paper suggests that a possible 10,000 asylum applicants who applied for asylum before July 1993 could be granted permission to stay on the basis of long residence and that a further 20,000 who applied between 1993 and 1995 could benefit from a discretionary policy taking into account their connections to the UK.
Although this would suggest that many compassionate cases will easily be resolved without any need for campaigning, the opposite is true for many deportees.

The Government's White Paper also emphasises that greater action will be taken towards removing applicants from the UK and enforcing refusal decisions. Emphasis has been placed on ensuring that cases of new immigration applicants will be dealt with more quickly and that those refused will also be removed quickly (presumably before the applicants form close ties in the UK). However, the fact that more robust and faster action is to be taken in all cases facing removal is evidence that many long residents campaigning against their deportation will face an increased risk of their forced removal from the UK.

The new Labour governments äFairer, Faster, Firmerä has in reality meant ãFaster Firmerä with deportations up 12.1% on the same period last year.

They have stood idly by whilst right wing media whip up racist hysteria against asylum seekers.

Figures on the following pages will show why NCADC will continue to support campaigns against unjust immigration laws-old or new