Open borders are the answer for migrant families
Sun 20 Dec, 2009
Immigration authorities are the real danger to the children of foreign nationals, says ANNA MORVERN
BBC NEWS reports this morning that an 18-month-old toddler, Audrey Nyanor, has been taken from a police station in Britain. It is reported that ‘A woman went to Walworth police station saying she was a friend of Audrey’s mother and was there to collect her, but it later transpired she was not.’ This story may not be, as it first seems, a tragic tale of a malevolent kidnapper, but may be the story of adults desperate to keep a child safe from state harm being perpetrated in the name of immigration control.
It is reported that the mother had been taken in to the police station due to ‘alleged immigration offences’, and she is likely, therefore, to be in fear of deportation, with or without her child. Recent changes in the law increase the objective nature of this fear, as automatic deportation can now be used in many more cases, whilst appeal rights have been eroded. Britain’s immigration policy, within the context of European-wide immigration policy, forces immigrant parents of children into terrible moral dilemmas and horrifically desperate choices. In 2005, just before he was due to be deported, Angolan asylum-seeker and father Manuel Bravo, hanged himself in Yarl’s Wood, one of the UK immigration detention centres, leaving a note for his 13-year-old son, who was detained with him, saying:‘be brave, work hard, do well at school’. His suicide was understood to be the extreme sacrifice of a parent who wanted his son to have a better life and who knew that the child would not be deported alone, but would have faced deportation with his father.
Around 2,000 children are locked up in UK immigration detention each year: it is current immigration policy to remove families from the North of Ireland to one of the ten British detention centres in order to deport them. Immigrants who are removed from the UK are documented as being subject to the use of ‘excessive or gratuitous force’ whilst being escorted to the airport, at the airport, or on the plane prior to take off, the most common form of documented injury being ‘handcuff injuries, including swelling and cuts to the wrist, sometimes leading to lasting nerve damage’.
The facts of the situation in which Audrey Nyanor, described as of Ghanaian descent, finds herself are not clear. If it does transpire that the child has been deliberately taken into hiding, Audrey’s future seems pretty bleak. If hidden, she may be safe from removal but is unlikely to be brought to a doctor or to school indefinitely, for fear of the immigration authorities. If she is found, a seemingly happy end to the horrible, kidnap news story, this could be only the beginning of the horror in reality as she could then face forced removal with her mother.
The Outcry! campaign, led by Bail for Immigration Detainees and the Children’s Society, is currently calling for the end to immigration detention of children, whilst there seems to be growing public interest and support for this. The British government is not wholeheartedly against this, and the Home Office has recently piloted various schemes as alternatives to detention, all of which nonetheless have the aim of facilitating removal of adults and children. Will the anti-detention campaigns go as far as championing open borders? Freedom from immigration control is the only way to put a stop to the impossible hurdles placed in front of desperate parents seeking freedom to move to a better place with their children and would stop the daily, systematic horror of forced deportations.
Anna Morvern is an immigration and human rights lawyer in the North of Ireland. She has previously acted as a trial observer abroad for Amnesty International and has tutored in law. She writes here in a personal capacity.
‘Toddler Audrey Nyanor taken from police station’: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8422969.stm
‘Two asylum seekers took their lives within 24 hours’:http://www.irr.org.uk/2005/september/ha000021.html
‘In memory of Manuel Bravo’: http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/may/ha000021.html
‘Outsourcing abuse: the use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum-seekers’: http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk.
Outcry campaign: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/all_about_us/how_we_do_it/campaigning2/OutCry!/18634.asp
COMMENTS
Wahtever seems to be the reason for the immigration offences when a child is involve the policy of ‘the interest of a child’ should be the ultimate consideration i had hoped that sicne November 2009 when the child rights law came into practice that all these children detetnion will be over but here we are all is still bleak for the innocent children born in this country by foreign parents
Well the immigration authority should do something fast about this so that the embarassment of locking up children and forcing of parents with children into gaol or detetion will be over.
TIght Border check and security remains the best alternative from deterring the would be stoppage for those who might come here to start breeding.
By David HENRY on 2009 12 20
Whilst recognizing that it’s frequently impossible to have a worthwhile discussion about human issues with anyone who suggests that no more value should be placed on humans than animals…
I add: who decides the best interests of the child? If it’s the parents, who decide that their child will have a better chance of survival, or work, or prosperity, in a different country to the one where they were born - why shouldn’t they be free to travel there, or to move there?
Anna Morvern
By Anna Morvern on 2009 12 22
” Whilst recognizing that it’s frequently impossible to have a worthwhile discussion about human issues with anyone who suggests that no more value should be placed on humans than animals “
Well done, Anna, you have managed to misrepresent the intentions of a whole section of the population, i.e., those who believe that this nation has the right & duty to secure its borders and put the interests of its own citizens first.
But while on the subject of the relative value of humanity and animals - may I ask your opinion of legalised abortion? Do you weep at the sight of a fox run over by a car, while wilfully ignoring the millions of tiny, broken corpses thrown in the trash around the world - and all in the name of “choice” & the abortionist’s bank balance?
By Craig on 2010 02 01
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