Saturday 22 November 2008

Boris' the Man

Boris gives support
In October 2008, the London Assembly passed a motion backing the Mayor's support for an amnesty and calling on the Government to bring this about.
The following month, London's Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, gave an interview to Channel 4 news endorsing the idea in terms almost identical to the Strangers into Citizens proposals.
He said the expulsion of London's 400,000 illegal immigrants was "just not going to happen". While he is powerless to change national policy on the issue, Johnson said he wanted to "lead the debate" by commissioning a study into the feasibility of the idea. He said he favoured the idea of an "earned amnesty", whereby after a period of about five years individuals could "show their commitment to this society and to this economy" to earn the right to stay. "We want to look in detail at what the economic impact of such an earned amnesty system would be," he said.
The Government dismissed the idea as "naive" and "irresponsible". (source: wikipedia)

1 comment:

MOSONGA RAPHAEL said...

Strangers into Citizens is a campaign by the London-based Citizen Organising Foundation, better known as London Citizens. The campaign is calling for a one-off naturalisation of long-term irregular migrants in the United Kingdom. This is also known as an earned amnesty or path into citizenship.

Since it was launched in Autumn 2006 with the backing of church leaders, trade unions and migrant support groups, the campaign has made rapid political progress, now counting the Conservative mayor of London and the Liberal-Democrat party among its principal advocates.

The Home Office calculates there to be at least 500,000 refused asylum-seekers and visa overstayers who have made new lives in the UK, and admits that most will never be expelled.

Strangers into Citizens argues that a large number of them should become legal by means of a two-year work permit available to asylum-seekers or economic migrants who can show they have been in the UK for four years or more. The proposals put forward by the campaign would give indefinite leave to remain at the end of a two-year period, subject to criteria such as an English language test, a clean criminal record and valid references from an employer and community sponsor for those qualifying for a work permit. Campaigners describe this as a "pathway to citizenship" of the sort advocated by the Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama. In Europe, they point to the Spanish amnesty of 2005, in which 700,000 were granted legal status, as a possible model for the UK.

Endorsements
The campaign was inspired by a call by the Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who first raised the possibility at a Mass for Migrant Workers on 1 May 2006.

His call was echoed by faith leaders across the UK, as well as by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. trade unions, migrant and refugee organisations, as well as policy think tanks from all sides of the political spectrum, among them Compas

Strangers into Citizens is supported by the major migrant NGOs in the UK (among them the Immigration Advisory Service, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Refugee Action, the Migrant Rights Network, the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Churches' Refugee Forum).

The campaign's proposals have been supported by editorials in The Independent, The Tablet and The Universe, and advocated in articles published in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Voice, the Observer, and the Spectator. The campaign has been strongly attacked in the Daily Express and the Sun. MigrationWatch also opposes the campaign.

On 7 May 2007 15,000 people gathered in the rain in Trafalgar Square to call for regularisation. Among those addressing the Strangers into Citizens call were the (Catholic) Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor; the (Anglican) Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler; Dr Mohammed Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain; Rabbi Shissler (representing the Chief Rabbi); Baroness Williams of Crosby; Jon Cruddas, the MP for Barking and Dagenham; Jack Dromey, deputy secretary-general of the TGWU; Dave Prentis, head of UNISON; the singer Billy Bragg; as well as the campaign's co-ordinator, Dr Austen Ivereigh.

On 20 June 2007 the proposal was debated in the House of Commons.

Progress of the campaign
In June 2006, the Institute for Public Policy Research applauded the apparent openness by Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, to the idea, following the Institute's study of the benefits of regularisation to the UK. IPPR calculated that £4.7 billion would be needed to be spent to deport all illegal residents, whereas the extra tax revenues from regularisation would result in a £1bn bonanza to the Exchequer in unpaid taxes. But this figure was criticised by Damian Green, the Shadow Minister for Immigration.

By regularising the most eligible, IPPR argued, the enforcement effort on the remainder can be reduced by at least half, perhaps even by as much as three quarters or more. Currently, the Home Office repatriates up to 25,000 illegal immigrants a year, and has openly admitted it does not have the resources to remove all illegals in the country.

On 19 February 2007, the immigration minister rejected the idea, saying "it would act as a pull factor in drawing illegal immigrants to this country." However, a Spanish expert on the issue told the BBC Today Programme on 7 May that the Spanish regularisation of 700,000 migrants in 2005 had reduced the numbers of illegal immigrants.

A Council of Europe report in February 2007 argues that regularisation should be seen as part of a package of immigration reforms which reduce illegal immigration. Through measures that aim to crack down on the informal economy, cut down on impractical bureaucracy, and give immigrants a legal option for admission, Spain hopes to better control unauthorised immigration. A BBC report in June 2006 found that the Spanish regularisation had been a success, and that most Spaniards believed it had worked. Strangers into Citizens believes the Spanish model could provide a way forward for the UK.

Endorsement by the Liberal Democrats
The campaign scored its first major success in August 2007, when following meetings with campaigners the Liberal Democrats announced it would be consider adopting the proposal at its party conference. Its immigration minister, Nick Clegg MP, argued in The Observer that "a route of earned legalisation should be made available to those who have lived here unauthorised for many years", and promised to "set stringent criteria - this is not a blanket amnesty". Among the criteria were

that the applicant should have lived in the UK for many years;
should have a clean criminal record; and
should show a long-term commitment to the UK.
Clegg also said the applicant would be subject to a public interest test and an English language and civics test, and would be required to pay a charge.

"Frankly this is just in recognition of the fact that, because of incompetence or mismanagement in the immigration system over many years, we have very large numbers of people who live in this twilight world of illegality and - in many cases - exploitation in the workplace which we need to deal with," Mr Clegg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

(refer to wikipedia on this paragraph) "There's a fork in the road on this issue", he said at a fringe meeting organised by the Immigration Advisory Service and Strangers into Citizens campaign.

London mayoral candidates' endorsement, 2008
A major advance for the campaign came in the run-up to the London mayoralty election on 1 May 2008. At a public assembly organised by London Citizens on 9 April 2008, the four leading mayoral candidates all agreed to brand London a "Strangers into Citizens" capital, and to throw their weight behind the campaign. (please refer to wikipedia website for complete paragraph)

"If an immigrant has been here for a long time and there is no realistic prospect of returning them, then I do think that person's condition should be regularised so that they can pay taxes and join the rest of society," Boris Johnson told the 2,500-strong assembly.

Despite a Sunday Times report after the election the mayor had "quietly dropped" his commitment, Johnson has since become the campaign's highest-profile advocate.


Endorsement by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales
In March 2007, Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Birmingham, added his support for the campaign proposals at a Birmingham Citizens assembly.

In April 2008, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales issued a major policy document, "Mission of the Church to migrants in England and Wales", which included a call for regularisation, without specifying conditions. Noting that "many [undocumented] migrants have been here for several years; some have even set down roots and started families", the bishops said:

"Without condoning illegal immigration, the Church’s position on this, as in other fields of human endeavour, does not allow economic, social and political calculations to prevail over the person, but on the contrary, for the dignity of the human person to be put above everything else, and the rest to be conditioned by it. The Church will continue to advocate compassion to allow the ‘undocumented’ an opportunity to acquire proper status, so that they can continue to contribute to the common good without the constant fear of discovery and removal."

Speaking at the third Mass for Migrant Workers at Westminster Cathedral in London, on 5 May 2008, the Bishop of Brentwood, Thomas McMahon, pledged support for Strangers into Citizens and described as "shameful" and "unjust" the Government's failure to regularise the position of thousands of long-term illegal immigrants in Britain.

The bishop called on Catholics to remain "resolute" and "steadfast" in backing the campaign proposal.

"For any Government to choose to do nothing about regularisation is irresponsible and leaves countless migrants vulnerable to exploitation and living in fear and in limbo," Bishop McMahon told the congregation. "They cannot work, they cannot claim benefit, they cannot get public housing. I can only describe it as shameful and unjust."

The bishop added that there would be another demonstration in Trafalgar Square on May Bank Holiday in 2009 “to demonstrate to the Government that this issue has not gone away”.

An idea gaining momentum?
Starting in 2007, the UK Border Agency (formerly the Border and Immigration Agency and, previously, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office) began an attempt to clear the backlog of unresolved asylum cases. Although not officially an amnesty but a 'case resolution exercise', this "regularisation by stealth" has led to a number of asylum-seeking families whose applications had been refused being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK.

Because this legal recognition was given on the basis of their "long association with the UK", according to wording of the letters that these families have received, it has obvious points in common with the Strangers into Citizens campaign, and may well have been influenced by it.

In July 2008, the liberal policy thinktank Centre Forum published a policy paper whose title -- "Earned amnesty: bringing illegal workers out of the shadows" -- borrowed heavily from the Strangers into Citizens campaign's language and concepts. But while many of the arguments were the same, Centre Forum proposed that immigrants pay their way into British citizenship, spending £5,000 over a period of years, and requiring a residence of just three months.

In September 2008 The Independent reported that Anthony Browne, director of the Conservative policy thinktank Policy Exchange who is soon to start as the Mayor of London's policy director, would be releasing a policy document favouring regularisation. In a comment piece in the newspaper, Browne argued for a "permanent earned amnesty for those who have been in the country a long time", halving the current long residency concession of 14 to seven years before reducing it still further.

The new Labour Immigration Minister Phil Woolas told The Times that "An amnesty... starts with a discussion among politicians and ends with dead bodies in the back of a truck in Calais."

Boris gives explicit support
In October 2008, the London Assembly passed a motion backing the Mayor's support for an amnesty and calling on the Government to bring this about.

The following month, London's Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, gave an interview to Channel 4 news endorsing the idea in terms almost identical to the Strangers into Citizens proposals. He said the expulsion of London's 400,000 illegal immigrants was "just not going to happen". While he is powerless to change national policy on the issue, Johnson said he wanted to "lead the debate" by commissioning a study into the feasibility of the idea. He said he favoured the idea of an "earned amnesty", whereby after a period of about five years individuals could "show their commitment to this society and to this economy" to earn the right to stay. "We want to look in detail at what the economic impact of such an earned amnesty system would be," he said. The Government dismissed the idea as "naive" and "irresponsible".

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor repeated his support for the idea, backing mayor Boris on the BBC Sunday programme. (source: wikipedia.org)