News: Refugees, asylum seekers & migrants

31.03.2004 The home secretary, David Blunkett, has ordered a review of the accountability of immigration officials after he was forced to admit that he and his deputy, Beverley Hughes, had not been told of systematic migration scams in eastern Europe, despite details being passed to civil servants 18 months ago.

30.03.2004 The Home Office was last night urgently investigating claims that thousands of would-be immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria are buying their way into Britain on forged documents after the consular official who leaked the claim to the shadow cabinet was suspended.

24.03.2004 The first refugees to take part in a government refugee resettlement scheme have arrived in the UK. The programme will be run on a quota basis, initially set at 500 people a year. The first group of refugees to arrive in the UK escaped war in Liberia and have been living in refugee camps for up to ten years in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

18.03.2004 The British Association of Social Workers is consulting lawyers to see how far it can go in refusing to co-operate with the new Asylum Bill which allows the children of failed asylum seekers to be separated from their families and taken into care.

15.03.2004 Asylum seekers, refugees and settled migrants in Scotland have experienced a 75 per cent increase in racial harassment since April 2003, according to a report by Scottish charity Positive Action in Housing.

11.03.2004 Lancashire police working with Chinese police have succeeded in identifying 15 of the 20 people who died while cockling in Morecambe Bay in February 2004.

10.03.2004 The UK authorities’ decision to challenge a judgement by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission that the case for detaining a Libyan man as a “suspected international terrorist” was “not established” amounts to persecution, said Amnesty International.

09.03.2004 Tens of thousands of migrant Ukrainian workers in the UK are being exposed to routine exploitation even when they have permits to work here, according to a report published by the TUC.

08.03.2004 The Home Office has offered to back down on controversial plans to curb asylum seekers' rights of appeal if a workable alternative can be found.

08.03.2004 Lord Woolf, the most senior judge in England and Wales, launched a fierce attack against government plans to limit the right of appeal for asylum seekers, saying they were "fundamentally in conflict with the rule of law" and a "blot on the reputation of the government".

04.03.2004 The government has announced a fund of £12 million to help local authorities provide care and support for unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

03.03.2004 Vast numbers of asylum seekers in Scotland are being left destitute, without accommodation or financial support, as a result of the government’s new immigration laws, says The Big Issue in Scotland.

02.03.2004 Two Latvian asylum seekers, Jelena Serenja and Genadis Suhtskis, have been deported from the UK just eight weeks before they would have been allowed to legally stay in the country.

01.03.2004 Social workers and children’s charities are calling an urgent halt to coercive asylum plans by the UK government to separate children from their parents - and stop food and housing for families.