Professional confidentiality is an essential component of our lives – it’s what enables us to feel secure with a doctor, a teacher or anyone else we may divulge personal details to. But in the newest offensive against migrants, that principle is at risk. The government’s plan to create a “hostile environment” for people who are…
Two years ago, a news investigation found abuse and violence perpretrated by staff against women at the Yarl’s Wood detention centre. And an independent report found Yarl’s Wood was holding vulnerable women for long periods in conditions causing serious distress and worsening mental health problems. This week a campaign led by Women for Refugee Women…
On the day it comes into force, the new NHS identity check system is already unravelling. A former NHS chief executive and hundreds of medical professionals have pleaded with the government to change course, and new research suggests pregnant and seriously ill migrants are already going without medical care due to fear of the new…
Austria’s recent election results show that we all need to do more to win the argument for the benefits of refugee protection and a compassionate, common-sense approach to migration. The Austrian People’s Party (OVP), and the smaller and further-right Freedom Party (FPO), have worked in coalition government before to oversee a drop of over half…
Party conference season is usually an opportunity for political parties to step away from Parliament, debate the future and present the guiding principles of their plans for the future. There is much to discuss and digest from the season – but very little on migration, despite the combination of Brexit, the Europewide refugee situation, and…
The newly leaked immigration policy paper is a disaster waiting to happen. The paper outlines an approach that has been called a “Britain first” approach but it is nothing of the sort; driving down standards for foreign residents is not the same as improving standards for citizens. For instance, a spousal income threshold…
The weather in Lesvos is improving, the sea is calmer and clearer, and so the number of migrants making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe is increasing. So are the deaths. So far 2,365 people have perished since January this year. Here we go again. With no let-up in the Syrian war; and fighting, human…
The EU Withdrawal Bill (formerly the Great Repeal Bill) goes back on the government's commitment to safeguard the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK before Brexit. The Government keep stating that they wish to uphold EU citizens’ rights. And yet the Bill grant them the power to amend, water down or remove rights…
Candy Young is a dancer from the US who met and married her husband – a fellow performer - while working in the UK. She was able to stay on via a student visa for her course at the University of Huddersfield, and the couple had their first child shortly before she graduated. But she…
As 750 Austrian troops are deployed to the Italian border, powers across Europe are once again choosing blunt force over compassion for some of the world’s most desperate people. The escalation of military action in and around the Mediterranean represents a worrying trend in policy and thinking – that the current situation at Europe’s…
