Visualizzazione post con etichetta Immigration and Asylum. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta Immigration and Asylum. Mostra tutti i post
Unaccompanied teenagers from Afghanistan, Yemen and Eritrea who had reached the Calais refugee camp will be barred from entering the UK according to Home Office guidelines.
In a decision that was condemned by refugee charities and campaigners, the move will limit the intake of teenagers who do not have family in the UK to those from Syria and Sudan except in exceptional circumstances.
The Home Office’s guidance said it would take children 12 or under of all nationalities, those deemed at high risk of sexual exploitation, and those who “are aged 15 or under and are of Sudanese or Syrian nationality” because people from those countries are already granted asylum in the UK in 75% of cases.
Lady Sheehan, the Liberal Democrat peer, said the new rules, details of which emerged on Tuesday night, were “unacceptable”. Sheehan said they would come as a “horrible shock” to refugees from other countries who had been led to believe they might be able to come to Britain. “It is quite arbitrary. We had no idea they were going to apply this sort of criteria,” she said. Sheehan said she feared that teenagers awaiting asylum decisions in reception centres across France would now escape and return to Calais to risk their lives jumping on lorries. “People will be just devastated,” she said in relation to some of the refugees she has campaigned for in Calais.
Rabbi Janet Darley, the leader of Citizens UK, accused the government of back-tracking on its promises. “The UK is unforgivably backtracking on its commitment to vulnerable refugee children in Europe. Citizens UK’s safe passage team estimates that around 40% of the children who were in Calais at the time of the demolition are Eritrean or Afghan,” said Darley.
“By ruling out children from these countries, the home secretary is arbitrarily preventing many vulnerable children from being helped by the Dubs amendment, and will make it impossible for her to keep her promise that the UK would take half of the unaccompanied children in Calais.”
The new guidelines were issued to Home Office staff on 8 November and have been seen by the Guardian after they were shared on Tuesday with charities which have worked in the Calais migrant camp. They follow claims by some tabloid newspapers that some of the youngsters coming to the UK were over 18. The Calais camp was demolished two weeks ago, with an estimated 2,000 children and young adults of 16, 17 and 18 years old now scattered across France in reception centres while their cases are examined by French and Home Office officials. The UK has so far taken about 330 children from the Calais camp.
Unaccompanied children who have a family member in the UK are currently allowed in as part of a “fast transfer” family reunification programme, mandated by EU lawe.
The remainder have no family in the UK, but qualify for entry under an amendment to immigration laws pushed through parliament by Lord Dubs earlier this year. 
Citizens UK also said that the Home Office process of transferring children to the UK has virtually ground to a halt. A group of girls aged between 15 and 17 arrived in Scotland under the Dubs amendment at the weekend, but the charity has not been made aware of any others in the past week.
Of the unaccompanied minors who have been brought to the UK from France so far this year, about 250 are part of the “fast transfer” family reunification programme.
The chaotic clearance of the Calais migrant camp caused bitter tensions between the French and British governments, with France’s president telling the UK it had to do its “moral duty” and take 1,000 children from the camp.
The Home Office said that “all children who have close family in the UK will be considered for transfer” and those that do not have family ties would be assessed according to the new guidance. Fonte  - Lisa O'Carrol - TheGuardian

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08:30

Migrant teenagers without family in UK barred except Syrians and Sudanese

Unaccompanied teenagers from Afghanistan, Yemen and Eritrea who had reached the Calais refugee camp will be barred from entering the UK a...
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Conditions for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in Calais are worsening because of a shortage of safe accommodation, according to a report.
The Refugee Youth Service (RYS), a key child protection agency in the Calais camp, has produced a report called Nowhere To Go that documents the deteriorating situation and disturbing lack of support for some of the mostvulnerable residents of the camp. The report also warns that deteriorating conditions mean that hundreds of children are at risk of disappearing.
The report is published as senior councillors from the Local Government Association prepare to visit the Calais camp on Thursday to consider how local government in France and the UK can work together to keep unaccompanied children safe and ensure they receive the care and support they need.
The report analyses the current scarce accommodation for children in the camp and in surrounding areas and calls for more accommodation to be provided as a matter of urgency. The report warns that unless safe areas are provided as soon as possible many of the estimated 608 unaccompanied children will disappear.


The report states: “The complete lack of child protection measures or any form of safeguarding in other informal camps or on the road to their next destination highlights the danger these young people are forced to put themselves in due to lack of feasible options.
“If something is not done in the immediate future we are at risk of repeating the catastrophic mistakes of the past.”
The report examines three on-site and three off-site centres around Calais that should be providing support for unaccompanied children but, for various reasons, are providing little or none. One, the Jules Ferry Unaccompanied Minors Accommodation Centre, is supposed to accommodate 72 unaccompanied children on the site but has not yet been built.
Approximately 183 children are living in a container camp known as Le Cap. While this provides a safer option for children than taking their chances in the ramshackle huts and tents on the site it is operating at capacity and has no space to accommodate more children.
RYS has called on the French government to provide safe accommodation for the hundreds of unaccompanied children and states that hundreds of children disappeared when the southern section of the camp was demolished in March. RYS tracked a number of these children to other parts of France and Europe.
The report highlights the cases of some individual children, including a 14-year-old boy who is self-harming, smoking hash and living between two tents and a caravan. He tried to claim asylum in France but was told he must wait in the camp until a space became available in an accommodation centre in Calais. He lost hope because of the delay and continued to make dangerous attempts to get to the UK each night instead. A 16-year-old boy arrived at the camp with nowhere to stay and was forced to move into a tent with strangers while waiting to be granted asylum in France.
A team of experienced therapists, including a group from the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, are making regular visits to the camp. Known as the Calais Resilience Collective, they are working to enhance coping strategies of refugees, staff and volunteers, building on work carried out by the refugee team at the Tavistock.
A spokeswoman for the collective expressed alarm at the findings of the RYS report and said conditions for children were “very grim”.
Campaigners have criticised the UK government for not doing more to bring unaccompanied child refugees to the UK in line with Labour peer Alf Dub’ s amendment to the immigration act promising sanctuary. The Home Office said it was involved in active discussions to speed up mechanisms to identify, assess and transfer children to the UK. When the Guardian checked again the Home Office said there were no developments on these discussions to report.
The report follows a warning by Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, that hundreds of child refugees have been unacceptably left in limbo in Calais camps by Home Office delays, despite having the legal right to be reunited with families in the UK.
Autore: Diane Taylor



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08:29

Conditions for unaccompanied children in Calais camp worsening, says report

Conditions for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in  Calais  are worsening because of a shortage of safe accommodation, according to a r...
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