(c) Holger Ellgaard

I am republishing the following article as found on openDemocracy. It was written by John Grayson, who works with the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group. The article discusses the contract won by G4S to house asylum seekers/refugees (having beaten beaten Sheffield City Council to it on costs), and of his frustrations with local MPs and various asylum charities who have failed to speak out against the G4S takeover. 

G4S have a chequered history. They were implicated in the deaths of Jimmy Mubenga and Eliud Nyenze, they provide services to illegal settlements in the West Bank, and are accused of overworking and underpaying their staff, to name but a few of their crimes. As John points out in his conclusion, we should be concerned about G4S's (militaristic?) expansion into the criminal justice system, and the effects that this will have for all detainees who become nothing more than commodities and assets on the G4S balance sheet.   

G4S turns a profit in “asylum markets”: who's speaking out and whose lips are sealed?

The vast private sector security company, G4S, feared and distrusted by asylum seekers, is about to be awarded contracts to run asylum seeker housing throughout the North East, Yorkshire and Humberside. Last Friday a group of asylum seekers’ advocates and academics met with government and company representatives to explain why this is a thoroughly bad idea.

That the meeting happened at all was some kind of victory for the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG), of which I am a member, for local people who protested outside the UK Border Agency’s Sheffield offices ↑ on 15 February, and for 28 outraged academics from Yorkshire universities whose protest letter was published in the Yorkshire Post ↑ . The academics — researchers and university teachers in the fields of housing and immigration in the Yorkshire region — cited the death of Jimmy Mubenga in G4S’s care, and the 773 complaints lodged against G4S in 2010 by detainees including 48 claims of assault, and said:

“Asylum seeker tenants already feel intimidated and threatened by the prospect of prison guard companies being installed as their managing landlords.”

Soon after the 15 February protest, the UK Border Agency declined to speak with us, saying the contracts were as good as done. Then they appeared to change tack, agreeing to meet with us at a Sheffield refugee centre on Friday afternoon (24 February). The people they sent were not procurement or due diligence experts but serving members of UKBA Local Immigration Teams (one in full uniform) who had been working closely with G4S apparently in the period since last December when preferred bidders were announced.

It emerged during the meeting that since December 2011 a project called COMPASS TRANSITION UKBA, scheduled to begin after contracts were signed, had been actively cooperating with G4S to ‘minimise’ the effects of evicting potentially 900 asylum seeker occupants of local authority housing in Yorkshire. They had not been scrutinising the costings or human rights risks or, as UKBA claimed, working to “ensure that there are no material risks” with the contracts. They had not, it emerged, bothered to check on the impacts on asylum seeker families and children’s human rights, on education and health by referring the contract to Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) who have statutory responsibility for impact assessments of public sector of contracts this kind.

In the meeting G4S switched from its denials of being a “prison guard company” (as we had described them in the Yorkshire Post), to now claiming that G4S was developing a specialist and very separate housing division to take on asylum seeker housing as part of its interest in “asylum markets”.

This reinforces the view already held by some analysts that it is G4S’s intention to continue expanding its management of the prisons, criminal justice and immigration ‘estates’, while managing a housing contract (with effectively no legal rights for tenants), and to use this dubious base to expand into the wider privatised housing market. Housing academics and voluntary sector organisations amongst the campaigners have made clear to G4S their distaste for this enterprise, rooted as they are in traditions of public and charitable housing provision with statutory rights for tenants as both customers and citizens.

The meeting clearly demonstrated that a G4S takeover meant the end of sixty years of government and council funded humanitarian housing in South and West Yorkshire boroughs for vulnerable individuals fleeing torture and persecution and applying for asylum in the UK under international treaties.

Repatriation of German children after
WWII - source German Federal Archive

Sheffield City Council was the first ‘City of Sanctuary’ and still embraces the label. The Council certainly did not want to get rid of asylum housing which at present serves 60 per cent of local asylum seekers – they were simply outbid on ‘cost’. When local Sheffield asylum rights organisations presented a petition opposing the G4S takeover at the city Council meeting on 1st of February the whole council applauded.

Councillors and campaigners understand that the G4S contract not only privatises this humanitarian function but destroys it and replaces it with the clear message adopted by both Labour and the Coalition that asylum seekers are not welcome here, indeed they should be treated like criminals with prison guards as their landlords, as part of deliberate policy of deterrence. As one Zimbabwean asylum seeker in Sheffield declared, “I do not want a prison guard as my landlord.”

Besides the Yorkshire Post we’ve had positive coverage on Sheffield local radio, Big Issue in the North and the Barnsley Chronicle. There’s been little interest from the mainstream national media, although the Independent ↑ reported on our public letter, which also featured in Socialist Worker ↑ . OurKingdom and the Institute of Race Relations ↑ have published our journalism, we have a growing social media presence, and a newly established website ↑ .

But for all our awareness-raising, some people you might expect to care don’t seem too bothered. In Sheffield, after Liberal Democrat local councillors helped to get a petition before the city council supporting the campaign, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a local MP, wrote to immigration minister Damien Green on 3 February and is apparently still waiting for a reply.

Labour politicians in South Yorkshire have not even responded to e-mails from their own constituents about the matter. In Barnsley, where shadow culture minister and ex-SAS hero Dan Jarvis has his seat alongside shadow Cabinet minister Michael Dugher, there has been absolutely no response.

As the campaign has spread the picture is little different. Across in Hull, campaigners lobbying Labour MP Diana Johnson to intervene before contracts were signed at the end of February, were advised by Ms Johnson to go away and get an e-petition with 100,000 signatures so that there could be a debate in Parliament.

Two Labour politicians have responded with positive action. John McDonnell promised to raise the matter in Parliament. Crucially, perhaps, the Rt Hon David Winnick MP has asked for a detailed research report from the campaign to be sent to members of the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee on Friday 24th of February which only two weeks ago published a report strongly critical of G4S ↑ .

Whilst campaigners are astonished at how far we have come in very little time, we’re disappointed about the apparent lack of advocacy for asylum seekers that we’ve encountered in some surprising places. Refugee Action’s sole contribution was referring us to its chief executive’s statement ↑ about his ‘concerns’ on its otherwise campaign-free website.

Distributing food aid in Congo refugee
camp (c) Julien Harneis

Refugee Action receives funding under UKBA’s voluntary returns programme, with volunteers at Vulcan House, UKBA’s regional headquarters in Sheffield, handing out leaflets to asylum seekers fleeing persecution, suggesting that they return ‘home’. The Refugee Council website search facility cannot locate a reference to G4S and the campaign, the Council of course eschews ‘politics’ and receives (much reduced) government funding.

Other asylum charities, funded through subcontracting for companies like international security company Serco, avoided the campaign. Some voluntary organisations and local authorities have been negotiating for work with G4S before contracts have been signed. Others have negotiated to reduce the impacts of the takeover — but they have still failed to voice support for the campaign.

The Yorkshire grass roots charities, refugee and asylum seeker groups, church groups, political networks and campaigners are much more vocal in their opposition to G4S and possible threats to the human rights of asylum families. In Sheffield the Children’s Society in South Yorkshire’s Embrace Project (supported by the national Society) is backing a submission to the Sheffield Safeguarding Children Board (SSCB) to demand that UKBA does a thorough children’s rights assessment of the contract.

In Barnsley local council officers are publicly backing a similar approach. In Kirklees the Local Safeguarding Children Board approach is spearheaded by Huddersfield University’s Applied Childhood Studies Department. In Bradford and Kirklees ↑campaigners are now active and the human rights organisation Just West Yorkshire is reporting the issues.

The security of UK borders and "others"

The UK border at Heathrow airport (c) dannyman

Republished in full from The Pryer. 

I can hear loud bangs outside … not sure what is going on … could it be guns … bombs …? Yes, the UK border force decided not to check the biometric passport details of hundreds of thousands of foreigners entering the UK … they could be criminals … or terrorists.

As we celebrate a night of fireworks in honour of an UK-born terrorist, and I climb off my sarcastically high horse, I find it apposite that the Daily Mail is referring to foreigners (“others”) in similar terms. If what they say about UK borders being relaxed is true, there are a couple of questions that need answering:

1. For which non-EU countries’ citizens were these checks relaxed?
2. Do citizens from these countries require visas to enter the UK?

Having practised immigration work myself, I know a little of the system and the back-office “administration” that takes place.  The questions that I raise have important implications for the moral panic now engulfing British consciousness, and the supposed safety of British citizens.

If the answer to these questions is that biometrics checks were relaxed for countries that require visas, then this should not a big security issue. Firstly, the majority of these countries do not have biometric passports. In fact, the majority of nations do not have biometric issuing facilities yet (please see the graphic below, where dark green represents those countries where biometric passports are available to the public, and light green those who have announced that biometric passports will be made available). In the countries that do have a biometrics system, most have only been in operation in the last few years; many citizens will still be using their non-biometric passports.

Availability of biometric passports (c) Igor Alexandrov

Secondly, we issue visas to citizens from many non-EU countries. This means that the basic “security” checks are performed outside of the UK. After this, application forms are checked, people occasionally interviewed, and if successful, visas are issued. In fact, anyone entering the UK with a visa has faced far more risk assessment than citizens from countries, such as those in the EU, that do not require visas. Why, then, waste the time of an immigration officer, when the work has already been performed overseas by an entry clearance officer?

From what I can read into the situation, this is a political and ideological power struggle. Like other government departments, UKBA will be cutting a third of its staff by 2014. Whilst biometric passports appear to be the panacea that deters “foreign” threats, all they contain is the basic biographical details, and a photograph, of the person holding said passport. Moreover, the chips within these passports can be cloned and altered.

The technological security measures that states use are forever being tested and challenged. Although we think that we are safer, based on our understanding of technology and in this case, biology, this is a misconception. Surveillance mechanisms are designed by man, and rely on enculturated ideas along ethnic, gender and other divisions. In terms of passports, biometric chips are not objective. People have implanted these differences into the data that the chip collects. Therefore, we are sanctioning racialised, and group, differences in the name of security.

From being Jewish at the turn of the 20^th century, to being Irish in the 1970s, to being Muslim in the 21^st century, we have used immigration as a means of identifying so-called problem groups. Without the full details behind it, this story is nothing more than a ruse to sell “news”, and more dangerously, replants the seeds of fear and loathing of “others” during troubled times.