Immigration and asylum - new material (3)
01 July 2009
Our Hidden Borders: the UK Border Agency’s powers of detention, Dr Nazia Latif and Agnieszka Martynowicz. Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission April 2009, pp. 99. This report examines the Immigration Service's work in Northern Ireland. It expresses concern that migrants could be abused at the hands of increasingly powerful officials and argues that the right to liberty and freedom from degrading treatment must be respected. The authors’ recommend that the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman take powers to address complaints about the immigration service, concluding: "This investigation has revealed a range of rights that appear to be compromised by the way in which immigration enforcement is carried out in Northern Ireland". See: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/apr/Our%20Hidden%20Borders%20April%202009.pdf
The relationship between migration status and employment outcomes, Prepared by Sonia McKay, Eugenia Markova, Anna Paraskevopoulou and Tessa Wright. EU Sixth Framework Programme Final Report, January 2009, pp. 83. This report presents the findings of the Undocumented Workers' Transitions (UWT) project, which used information from seven EU Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Spain and the UK) to answer a number of questions related to the factors that underlie migration flows. One of programme’s main tasks was: “to understand not just how undocumented migration occurs and its consequences for the workers concerned, their families and those around them, but also to unpick the relationships between documented and undocumented status”. The report makes three main recommendations: 1. Improved healthcare and education for migrants and their partners/families; 2. Improved access to information on services, such as welfare and health services, emergency accommodation, language courses, civic engagement and support for support networks, and 3. Ratification of the convention on migrant rights: http://gabinet.ath.cx/downloads/FinalReportUWT.pdf
Transatlantic Trends: Immigration, German Marshall Fund with support from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Compagnia di San Paolo, and Barrow Cadbury Trust. Transatlantic Trends November 2008, pp. 32. This publication provides the results of a survey in which members of the public from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States answered questions concerning immigration and integration problems currently facing policymakers. The results offer both a broad overview of common concerns (the economy and crime are shown to be universally the most important issues) and also illustrate more nuanced national issues. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the survey shows that a significantly larger number of American interviewees agree with the statement that “Muslims have a lot to offer your country’s culture” (61% of US respondents said this compared to an overall European average of 47%) and that “Western and Muslim ways of life are reconcilable” (54% in the US versus a European average of 53%). The British are shown to be the most sceptical of immigration – 65% of Britons interviewed believe immigration will lead to higher taxes as a result of increased demand for social services by immigrants (compared to an average of 50% in continental Europe) despite recent evidence that arrivals from new EU member states have paid 37% more in taxes than they have taken in welfare payments (A Study of Migrant Workers and the National Minimum Wage by professors from the Economics department of University College London can be found at http://www.econ.ucl.ac.uk/cream/pages/LPC.pdf). Furthermore, Britons are the least willing to adopt EU-wide immigration legislation. For more information or to download a copy of the results, visit http://www.transatlantictrends.org/trends/