We like books. It’s one of the things we talked about before lockdown when we were catching up over the tea round (on our floor: lots of coffee, an Earl Grey and a builders brew with a splash of milk) or standing around the office photocopier while it spewed out…
In 2019, our 30th birthday gave us a chance to look over some materials from our early days, from the founding of GMIAU in 1989. As we approach our 31st birthday, the events of 2020 have shed new light on our history and our role, then and now. The Covid-19…
What do you dream of? Here are Hanna’s dreams. She wants to study finance and accounting. She’s thinking about which universities – maybe Scotland or Wales. Time to get to know another part of the UK. She’s got big dreams. Of travel. Of soaking up learning like a sponge. It’s exciting.…
This week’s blog is expertly written by someone we support at GMIAU. For more information about the #LiftTheBan campaign, and the campaign’s newly released report, go to https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/ I want to speak with you. But I can’t tell you my name. I live in Greater Manchester. I’m a mum.I’m a doctor. I’m seeking asylum.The…
The 2019-21 Domestic Abuse Bill is currently moving through the Houses of Parliament, and is now in the Report stage. Various groups – like Safety4Sisters, Southall Black Sisters, the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, and the Step Up Migrant Women coalition – have spoken out about the inadequacies of the…
30 June 2021. One year today. The last day for our friends, family members and neighbours affected by Brexit immigration changes to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme. The opening of the EU Settlement Scheme in March 2019 seems a world away. The bus stop posters with cups of tea,…
We wrote recently about lockdown providing “opportunities to make gains against the Hostile Environment that seemed wildly optimistic at the start of 2020” especially for last month’s low skilled migrants, re-branded as the essential keyworkers they always were. There are so many differences in our individual experiences of the last…
What is NRPF? Hundreds of people in Greater Manchester are living with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) conditions on their immigration status. It sounds like a technicality, added to a visa as an afterthought. In practice it is a brutal, racist, misogynistic and immoral part of the Hostile Environment.…
This week the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill – which will end EU free movement in the UK – faces scrutiny in the House of Commons as a group of selected MPs go through it line by line. For the government the Bill is all about exerting…
January feels like another world. Social distancing, shielding, self-isolation: words that weren’t part of our vocabulary as we began 2020, preoccupied with the brutality of the Hostile Environment and the government’s Brexit immigration plans. Instead, like everyone else, through February and March we scrambled to keep up with the impact…