European

Third country cases: Dublin III Regulations compared to Dublin II

Published by NCADC on October 17, 2013 | 1 Response

This guest blog post is written by Robert Swinfen, a member of the Management Committee of NCADC. He has been closely involved in a few campaigns for the right to remain, including a successful campaign to prevent a transfer under the Dublin II regulations. “Dublin” is the term often used to refer to the agreement between the EU countries about where people’s asylum claims are heard. The numerals after the name is the official way they are written: so Dublin II which means Dublin 2 and Dublin III means Dublin 3). The normal rule is that it the asylum claim Read the full article…

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Campaign for Syrian refugees at port of Calais

Published by NCADC on October 4, 2013 | 1 Response

As more and more people flee the war in Syria, a small number of refugees have managed to reach Europe, seeking sanctuary. Around 65 Syrian refugees are staging a blockade of the Calais ferry terminal, demanding to speak to a representative of the UK Home Office. Some are on hunger strike. Last month at the G20 meeting in Saint Petersburg, David Cameron said that responding to the war and displacement in Syria was “…a moral imperative. This is the big refugee crisis of our time.” And yet the UK refuses to offer sanctuary to Syrian refugees. It’s time that the Read the full article…

Dublin III - The Common European Asylum System

Published by NCADC on July 23, 2013 | 1 Response

The Dublin III Regulation enters into force Statement from ECRE and JRS Europe (link here). Brussels, 19 July 2013 – Today, the Dublin III Regulation enters into force. For the European Union and its member states, this is a pivotal moment because it heralds the arrival of what they consider to be the Common European Asylum System. It is also a pivotal moment for asylum seekers: the way in which EU member states implement Dublin III will undoubtedly impact their ability to seek protection in Europe. This year, both the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and the European Council on Refugees Read the full article…

Guest post: a tradition of deterrence

Published by NCADC on July 10, 2012 | 1 Response

The NCADC blog is pleased to welcome three guest posts from Molly Haglund, who has just completed a Masters Degree in Human Rights Practice at the Universities of Roehampton, Gothenburg and Tromsø. They are edited excerpts from her thesis entitled Punished for Persecution: An Analysis of the Criminalization of the Asylum Seeker in the United Kingdom which you can download here. The three posts examine the issues of (1) The Criminalization of asylum seekers, (2) A Tradition of Deterrence and (3) Why Criminalize the Asylum Seeker? You can read Molly’s first post on the criminalisation of asylum seekers here. Today’s post considers the Read the full article…

Asylum seekers and Europe: the Conservative government’s pet hates

Published by NCADC on October 14, 2011 | Leave a response

The Immigration Minister, Damien Green, yesterday announced that the UK will not be opting into the the two EU asylum directives. This will hardly come as a surprise from a government not known for its cosiness with Europe, and seemingly determined to issue new hate-speech against immigrants on a daily basis, but the justifications given for opting out were fairly astonishing even by Home Office standards. One can only imagine what would have happened if we had opted in - asylum seekers and Europe? The Daily Mail would have had a field day. While the statement begins by suggesting that Read the full article…

Driven to desperate measures - the realities of Fortress Europe

Published by NCADC on October 18, 2010 | 1 Response

The racism that kills The recent death of Jimmy Mubenga adds to the grim statistic of those who have died as a result of the UK’s brutal immigration laws. Harmit Athwal of Institute for Race Relations writes at the Guardian website on the launch of the new IRR report, Driven to Desperate Measures: 2006-2010, which documents 77 deaths of asylum seekers and migrants in the UK. These deaths rarely make the news, a strange parallel world of refused asylum seekers who are petrified of being sent back to face the dangers from which they fled. Harmit argues that racism in the Read the full article…

UK suspends returns of asylum seekers to Greece

Published by NCADC on September 20, 2010 | 4 Responses

The UK Border Agency has announced today the suspension of the return of asylum seekers to Greece under the Dublin Regulation. With immediate effect, the backlog of approximately 1300 cases and all new cases will have their applications heard in the UK, and not Greece. This will come as a great relief to all those facing return to the “broken asylum system” of Greece. The decision-making process in the UK leaves a lot to be desired but at least we have legal aid (for now, and only just) and the initial success rate is more than Greece’s 1%. The decision comes as Read the full article…

UNHCR on deportations of Iraqis from Europe

Published by NCADC on September 3, 2010 | 1 Response

As another round of EU-coordinated Iraqi refugee collective expulsions gets underway, the United Nations Refugee Agency has called for European governments to provide protection for Iraqi refugees. From the UNHCR press statement: UNHCR is very concerned by on-going forced returns of Iraqi citizens from Western European countries. On September 1st, a chartered flight with 61 people on board, mainly Iraqis who had been residing in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom, landed at Baghdad airport. UNHCR has so far not been able to confirm reports that three Iranians were among those on board. UNHCR considers that serious risks, including Read the full article…

Frontex general report published

Published by NCADC on May 10, 2010 | Leave a response

download pdf About Frontex, from No Border Network 5 years ago in May 2005, Frontex, the European border agency, started its work with a few pilot projects. Today, Frontex is permanently involved in militarized sea- and land-operations against refugees and migrants on the European border as well as in the coordination of charter-deportations. Frontex is the driving force on different levels intensifying the repressive system of migration-control even beyond EU-borders. In their mission, to combat so-called illegal migration, Frontex is willing to accept the death of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Thus Frontex represents one Read the full article…

Asylum applications in the EU remain stable in 2009

Published by NCADC on May 10, 2010 | Leave a response

Source: ECRE On 4 May 2010 Eurostat published the 2009 statistics on asylum in the EU-27. According to the report, nearly 261,000 persons submitted an application for international protection or have been included in such application as a family member. Asylum seekers came mainly from Afghanistan and Russia (both 8%), Somalia and Iraq (both 7%) and Kosovo (5%). France registered the highest number of applicants (47,600), followed by Germany (31,800) and the UK (30 300).