Let My Wife Join Me - An Unreasonable Delay For Family Reunion

A refugee doctor who fled persecution in Iraq begged Home Office officials to allow his wife to join him. Aziz Hashim pleaded with government officials to cut through red tape and allow his wife, Eman Hasan Mustafa, to join him at his home in Stockport.

Dr Hashim, a father whose adult children remain in Iraq, was granted refugee status shortly after travelling to the UK from his homeland in October 1998 to visit his sister. He learned that his home and private clinic in Iraq had been raided by plain clothes policemen and that documents, books and his car had also been seized.

Dr Hashim had treated injured opponents of the Iraqi regime during the uprising of 1991. He applied for asylum and after extensive enquiries he was granted full refugee status 12 months after he arrived here in the UK.

His wife applied to join him at the British Embassy at Amman, Jordan on 13 October 1999. Meanwhile Dr Hashim is seriously ill with a kidney disorder, and is desperate for his wife to be with him. Dr Hashim said: ãI just want to be with my wife. Why is the Home Office keeping us apart?ä A spokesman for the campaign added: ãThe usual procedure is that when a person has been granted refugee status the spouse has the right to join them. The visa should be granted simply on establishing the relationship. In this case, the delay is totally unreasonable, particularly having regard to Dr Hashimâs ill health. Instead of six months, this matter could be sorted out within hours.ä

The good news is that Dr Hashimâs wife was given a travel document and entered the country in June.

Alieu Nying, (Lancaster) After a long battle has finally got indefinite leave to remain.

"I am overwhelmed"ä he said. "I now know that I can build a future for my wife and myself. The relief is tremendous, no more sleepless nights. I am a lucky man to have a wife like Helen who has fought so hard for me."

Narayan Bhattacharjee, (London) an asylum seeker from Bangladesh since 1991, is waiting for the date to be set for his Judicial Review. This is a positive development since our last update because his first appeal for Judicial Review was refused. Narayan's campaign group gathered and submitted to the Home Office a petition of around 1,500 signatures in support of Narayan's claim.

Hussein Kassuja (London) is re-launching his campaign while he is waiting for the date to be set for his Judicial Review. Hussein is a refused asylum seeker from Uganda, who was kept in immigration detention for 15 months. At the recent public meeting "Behind Closed Doors - Racism in Prisons and Detention Centres" he gave moving personal testimony about the horrors of prolonged detention he was subjected to.

If you"ãget on your bike" to look for work in Britain, you are a credit to the nation but if you "get on the back of a lorry" to look for work in Britain you are, according to the right wing media, any one of the following: a criminal, bogus, abusive, a benefit scrounger, a dirty beggar, human sewage, an asylum cheat, gipsie (for Gypsie, gip being a term to defraud), visitor in shell-suit, unwelcome guest, a barbarian, evil foreigner, aggressive beggar, illegal immigrant, economic migrant, foreign scum, giro thief, scum of the earth, comfort seeker, Nike nicker, like the mafia, potato patch dollie (alleged refugee prostitutes charging "the price of a spud"), fraudster, unlawful, illegal immigrant hooker.