South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG)
ANNUAL REPORT 2015/16
Another Year of the Hostile Environment
This is SYMAAG’s eighth Annual Report and it is nearly nine years since our first AGM. Last year we reported on a year of the Coalition government’s ‘hostile environment policy’. This year we have had the full on Conservative barrage of laws and speeches broadening the hostile environment for asylum seekers and refugees even more. Last year this is what we said about 2014/2015 and we are saying exactly the same this year!
“So it's been daunting but we are undaunted. This report shows how we have mobilised some of the considerable opposition to this abuse and racism, won some small victories, created welcoming spaces for refugees and asylum seekers where they, their experience and skills, are valued; and together learned about how inter-connected our world is.”
“We are all volunteers and our group is funded by 'no-strings' donations from sympathetic groups and individuals and – we hope –more affiliations from supporting organisations in the future. We're pleased to report that an increasing number of our organisers, public representatives and executive committee members are refugees and people seeking asylum.”
Though we work for the rights of all migrants – hence our name - our work has been primarily with asylum seekers and refugees rather than people who migrate for “economic reasons” though we recognise that people who migrate do so for many reasons and cannot simply be reduced to either of these categories.
Setting Our Priorities for 2015 / 2016
After last year’s AGM the Executive Committee of SYMAAG decided to set priorities in what the government had described as a hostile environment in the UK for asylum seekers and refugees. An open meeting was called on 28 July for SYMAAG supporters and members and partner organisations to put forward ideas for SYMAAG policies and actions in 2015/16.Below are some of these and how we carried them forward:
Campaign to end Immigration Detention
SYMAAG supported and sponsored Yarl’s Wood ‘Set Her Free’ demos on 6 June, 8 August, November, and the largest one of the year on 12 March 2016.South Yorkshire attendance on 12 March was boosted by Sheffield University Students Union paying for a coach and students organising the trip to Bedford very successfully
We wrote to MP’s and members of the House of Lords to lobby for a time limit on detention (the UK is the only country in the EU not to have a time limit) as the Immigration Bill has gone through Parliament. SYMAAG is a member of the Detention Forum and works with other member organisations in the forum to fight for a time limit.
SYMAAG members supported and sponsored the demonstration at Morton Hall IRC (Immigration Removal Centre) in Lincolnshire on the Transnational Day of Solidarity with People in Detention & Protests Against Detention Centres onSaturday 7th May 2016.Morton Hall is the nearest IRC to South Yorkshire. There were protests and hunger strikes at detention centres throughout the UK, and actions in Europe and North America.
The demonstrations inside and outside Yarl’s Wood and other detention centres and other actions and campaigns have begun to force the government to begin to reform and modify their policies on detention…. very slowly.
Opposing Charging for Primary Care / A&E and cuts to specialist care
SYMAAG organised a public meeting in February 2016 which attracted around fifty people – refugees, asylum seekers, activists, medical professionals – to plan responses to the government’s plans to extend charges for NHS care to new categories of asylum seekers.
SYMAAG joined the network of asylum rights and voluntary organisations in Sheffield in campaigning for the Mulberry Clinic to remain open when it was threatened with an open tendering process which everyone feared could result in a private company taking over services. The campaign was successful in Mulberry retaining its GP practice but the specialist asylum seeker services which have traditionally been developed there are still in doubt.
The Immigration Industry
We decided over the year to highlight ways in which creating a hostile environment means profits for companies in privatised and outsourced government provision.
International corporations and contractors like G4S, Serco, Experian and Capita were making huge profits from privatised ‘services’ for asylum seekers and refugees in South Yorkshire. Capita with its HQ in Sheffield was exposed in its role as part of the government’s hostile environment. Capita tagged a woman asylum seeker in Barnsley on her release from Yarl’s Wood. The company had already been criticised for its campaign of texting people to ‘go home’ and is now contracted to implement the Home Office ‘voluntary’ returns policy previously contracted to Refugee Action. Throughout the year Capita’s company Tascor has been criticised by government inspectors for the way in which it carries out Home Office security, transport and deportation contracts.
In campaigns around G4S SYMAAG has highlighted the large profits the company makes from providing slum housing throughout South Yorkshire for asylum seekers.
SYMAAG has worked over the past eighteen months with StopG4S, and Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign to persuade Sheffield City Council to develop an ‘ethical procurement policy’ which would allow the city to exclude serial human rights abusers like G4S from local contracts.
Campaigning with asylum tenants on G4S asylum housing & bedroom sharing
SYMAAG in a joint campaign with ASSIST and City of Sanctuary had persuaded Sheffield City Council to force G4S to ban forced bedroom sharing for asylum seekers in any new HMO’s (Houses in Multiple Occupation) used by G4S in April 2015.G4S simply ignored the ban but the Council has responded by changing its licensing rules to allow only voluntary bedroom sharing. New regulations are due to come into force in June 2016. We are proud that our work in this area, led by John Grayson and Violet Dickenson has won real practical gains for G4S asylum tenants and encouraged people to speak out, knowing that we will defend them from victimisation if need be.
The joint campaign on G4S housing presented petitions to the council which resulted in a decision by the full council to call for a Review of the COMPASS asylum housing contracts (G4S holds the South Yorkshire contract) in October 2015.
Exposes of the asylum housing contracts with the ‘Red Doors’ scandal in G4S / Jomast housing in Middlesbrough, the degrading forced wearing of the ‘Red wristbands’ in the Cardiff IAC (Initial Accommodation Centre), and the harassment and unlawful evictions of asylum tenants in Glasgow – all these exposes and campaigns have resulted in the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee announcing an Inquiry into the COMPASS asylum housing contracts in June. Our chair John Grayson’s research, writing and practical work has rightly been recognised nationally by sympathetic journalists and organisations and also by G4S!
SYMAAG believes the voices of the asylum housing tenants should be heard at the Inquiry and is organising ‘hearings’ in Barnsley and Sheffield for tenants to send their evidence to the Inquiry.
Cuts to Asylum Seekers support and for so called ‘failed asylum seekers’ and their families. Job Centre sanctioning of refugee benefit claimants.
The hostile environment applies to asylum seekers even if they gain leave to remain as refugees. Stuart Crosthwaite has connected the challenges faced by refugees in the job centres with the campaigns of his Unite the Union Community Branch. Violet Dickenson has worked tirelessly with a huge number of women asylum seekers and refugees on housing and benefit claims.
We Welcome Refugees
In the late summer of 2015 with pictures of a Syrian Kurdish child on the beaches of Turkey the mainstream and social media and publics across Europe woke up to the unfolding disaster in the Aegean. There was a massive tide of empathy and solidarity with refugees arriving into Europe, and with those behind the fences and wire in the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais. In Sheffield asylum rights organisations and the University of Sheffield organised a mass meeting in Firth Hall where 150 people came looking for ways in which they could help. SYMAAG followed the meeting with a march and rally on 10 October. Not only was there a good turnout for the march – called by the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group – but it was supported by many organisations: Sheffield University Amnesty International, Sheffield Unite Community Branch, Nether Edge and Heeley Labour Party, Sheffield Green Party, Sheffield Trade Union Council, ASSIST, People’s Assembly, Sheffield City of Sanctuary, Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, Hope and Dignity and many refugee organisations. The march was led by refugees and university students carrying a replica border fence! The rally outside the Town Hall was addressed by Shami Chakrabarti director of Liberty who said “We are shaming the politicians who cry crocodile tears for refugees”.
SYMAAG has been involved in solidarity work with refugees in Calais and Dunkirk camps directly and alongside many other groups and individuals in South Yorkshire. Food and clothing aid has been collected, transported, sorted and distributed to refugees in the Calais ‘Jungle’ and Dunkirk. SYMAAG has worked with local trade unions (one union branch gave £1000 to the solidarity work) and there have been report-backs regularly to SYMAAG meetings, union branches, students and school students in Sheffield and Barnsley.
Expanding our work around South Yorkshire
In Barnsley the Trades Union Council, and Unite the Union have ‘welcomed refugees’ through practical solidarity. Unite has established a drop in centre in the Miners Hall and NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) offices and provides advice and English language (ESOL) classes. The offices are a collection point for supplies for Calais. The Trades Council, Stand Up to Racism, the Green Party and Barnsley City of Sanctuary, organised a Barnsley town centre rally in November and a well-attended public meeting in the Library on 5 December with SYMAAG executive members speaking. The Trades Council organised an Xmas appeal for refugees which raised over £200 for the ESOL classes and for a Unite sponsored six a side football competition at Barnsley’s ground in January.
The year therefore achieved the aim we set down at our last AGM to more effectively cover South Yorkshire outside the city of Sheffield. Other Barnsley work has been led by Phillis Andrew who has spoken at many meetings for SYMAAG and was one of the organisers of the successful campaign to free a Barnsley asylum seeker Lydia Njintan from Yarl’s Wood detention centre in December. The campaign for Lydia involved local churches, trades unions and the Barnsley Trades Council, and Barnsley City of Sanctuary.
Phillis has now been recognised for his many years work in Barnsley by being appointed as chair of Barnsley Together the town organisation for diversity and cohesion.
In Doncaster Paul Fitzpatrick keeps our links to his work in the Doncaster Conversation Club drop in advice centre and ESOL centre. Paul also helps to produce one of the best newsletters anywhere for the Conversation Club featuring asylum seekers and their experiences and futures.
Eritrea: A large number of the asylum seekers arriving across South Yorkshire have come from Eritrea. SYMAAG supported reps from the Eritrean community in Sheffield in organising the first ever national demo of Eritrean asylum seekers in the UK. This took place in Liverpool on June 16 2015 against new Home Office "Eritrea is safe" guidelines – and the SYMAAG loud hailer was loaned to local Eritrean activists for the day!
Tesfam a SYMAAG executive member has spoken at meetings throughout the year educating the people of South Yorkshire about the barbaric regime in Eritrea and why people are fleeing from conditions there. In Barnsley local Eritrean asylum seekers using the drop in centre at the Miners Hall joined a local union trip to the Durham Miners Gala in July 2015 – they had connections with the coalmining industry in Eritrea.
Immigration Bill: The year of the hostile environment has been dominated by the backdrop of the 2015 Immigration Bill winding its way through Parliament. The Bill this time has been fought line by line by the Labour Party led by Sheffield Central M.P. Paul Blomfield, and Rotherham M.P. Sarah Champion. Paul spoke to a packed
Immigration Bill meeting of 80 people at the Quaker Meeting House in Sheffield on 14 January 2016.SYMAAG has continued to lobby to support amendments to the Bill in the Commons and the Lords. David Price has excelled in his skilled work of writing to South Yorkshire M.P.’s and politicians, Bishops in the Lords – in fact anyone who could be mobilised to oppose the draconian piece of legislation which further criminalises asylum seekers and turns landlords and doctors into border guards.
Joint work with other organisations: In addition to working alongside our longstanding partners Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, ASSIST and City of Sanctuary Sheffield we have organised joint campaigns with Regional Asylum Activism (over proposed health charges for migrants). We have worked with Manchester Migrant Solidarity, Beyond Borders (Tyneside) and Right to Remain to set up a new northern network called Migrant Solidarity.
Manuchehr and Rodrigo SYMAAG executive members have expanded our work with university-based groups and departments organising joint events on Kurdistan, immigration detention and Calais. Marian has spoken at the Sheffield Trades Council. We are working with others to organise events in Refugee Week on immigration detention and on solidarity with refugees in Europe. We worked with the Stop G4S campaign to organise a national Day School in Sheffield on 9 April 2016 entitled “Knowledge for action against G4S: we can and will challenge corporate power!”