News: Refugees, asylum seekers & migrants

29.06.2004 MPs, trade unionists, business organisations and political activists are launching a new group to defend Britain's migrants and make the case for more legal migration.

25.06.2004 With the UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery due to meet in Geneva, Switzerland, next week, campaigners are calling for special attention to the "migration and trafficking nexus". Despite a growing demand for migrant labour, governments are making immigration policies more restrictive, with migrants increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking.

22.06.2004 The Home Office has said it will continue to send failed asylum seekers back to Mogadishu against advice from the Somali government and the United Nations.

18.06.2004 Up to 23,000 Bulgarians and Romanians who came to Britain in the last two years on a controversial visa scheme for the self-employed are being told to provide evidence that they have set up businesses or face being sent home, the home secretary announced on 17 June.

16.06.2004 A former open prison now used to detain failed asylum seekers has been condemned for its filthy and dilapidated state.

02.06.2004 The Court of Appeal has ruled that asylum seekers who launch appeals against deportations will not be allowed to remain in the UK while their case is being heard.

01.06.2004 The Home Office has published its latest asylum figures for the first quarter of 2004. Asylum applications for January to March fell by 17.5% since the end of 2004. If quarterly figures stay at this level, the end of the year would see the lowest numbers of applications since 1998, when the Home Office recorded around 46,000 asylum applications.