The Guardian view on this year’s charity appeal: join the fight against immigration injustice
Callers to the charities we are supporting with this year’s Guardian and Observer appeal often hang up part way through their first conversation. A week or two later they might try again, only to cut the line once more. Sometimes it takes three or four attempts before they can be persuaded to give a clear account of why they need help. The reason is fear. By the time they reach out to one of the small charities that help with problems related to immigration, most people are desperate. Every day new cases turn up.
When they walk through the doors of the Refugee and Migrant Centre branches in Wolverhampton or Walsall, or the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants or Praxis Community Projects in London, some people bring their lives with them in carrier bags. They could be homeless, or on the verge of deportation. Virtually all are carrying with them a burden of shame and dread. That is despite the fact that most of them have the right to be in the UK. Their problem is they lack the documents to prove it. As a result, usually following some encounter with the state – the NHS, the police, their place of work – they have had their lives pulled apart.
The Windrush scandal, which erupted in the wake of the Guardian’s revelations of the brutally unjust treatment of Caribbean migrants, shone an unforgiving light on the UK’s immigration system. The stories uncovered by reporter Amelia Gentleman, beginning with that of Paulette Wilson, the 61-year-old former House of Commons cook who was held at Yarl’s Wood detention centre and taken to Heathrow before finally being granted leave to remain, shocked people. Above all,
it was the strength of this reaction that forced the government to act. But while the prime minister’s apology was welcome, and the granting of papers to around 2,400 people, most of whom came to the UK as children from the Caribbean, was life-changing for them, the truth is that the hostile environment policy designed by Theresa May has not gone away.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has jettisoned the term “hostile” in favour of “compliant”. But those on the ground say the cruelty continues, and is spread far wider than many people realise. The National Audit Office was scathing about the Home Office’s refusal to review the detention and deportation files of 160,000 Commonwealth nationals from non-Caribbean countries. MPs highlighted the cases of 1,000 highly skilled migrants, including doctors and engineers, wrongly threatened with deportation following discrepancies in paperwork. New obstructions have been placed in the path of those seeking papers so that, as one writer described at the weekend, even if you don’t start off illegal you can end up that way. Some are simply priced out of their right to citizenship by the fees. Legal aid can only be accessed with great difficulty and in exceptional cases, which is why funding for law centres is essential. The Home Office’s attitude of institutional scepticism remains. The guiding assumption, that people are illegal until proven legal, remains.
The consequences of this presumption of guilt can be devastating. Case officers describe victims of the system who have been so brutalised, and are so tired, that they want to give up. A letter threatening detention or removal was sent to a baby of six months old. On Saturday, Guardian journalists answered the phones as generous readers donated £45,000 in a single day. With calls still coming in (to 0151 284 1126) we are fast approaching £350,000, with Christmas still a week away. We hope with our readers’ help to raise much more, to enable these frontline workers to continue to fight injustice.