VOTERS are being urged by the Churches' Refugee Network to
demand that candidates sign up to a 28-day cap on immigration
detention in the UK.
The network is urging voters to ask all General Election
candidates to back the recommendations of an All Party Inquiry into
the Use of Immigration Detention in the UK (News, 6
March), which demanded the end of the indefinite detention of
migrants and asylum-seekers.
A statement released by the network said that many who came to
the UK came from countries where decisions made by the British
government had contributed to their plight.
"Successive governments in Britain have seen huge deterrent
measures placed in the way of those who get here, creating
detention centres little different from prisons, refusing
opportunities to work and find dignity in work, providing meagre
sustenance, and erecting a caseworking climate of disbelief, in
which those seeking asylum must first prove their credibility, with
scarce resources."
A conference held by the network last Friday also called for
those seeking asylum to be given adequate support, and the right to
work and have a dignified standard of living.
The keynote speaker, Dr Alexander Betts, director of the
University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, said that the legal
framework for claiming asylum no longer fits a world in which there
are so many survival migrants: while countries neighbouring Syria
are giving hospitality to millions of refugees, fewer than 30,000
Syrian refugees have reached Europe.