GMIAU advice – “voluntary departure” calls
We have received reports that the Home Office have been calling individuals to offer ‘voluntary departure’ to Rwanda and offering money. If you or someone you know has received a call, we recommend:
Briefing: Refugee homelessness in Greater Manchester
January 2024 Click here to download this briefing as a Word document Summary Significant numbers of new refugees in Greater Manchester (GM) are being forced into precarious housing or street homelessness because the Home Office is intentionally evicting them from asylum accommodation, a situation the Deputy Mayor for Greater Manchester…
Opportunity: Finance and Legal Assistant
***Applications for this role are now closed.*** We’re looking for a Finance and Legal Assistant to work in our Manchester office. Please read all of the documents in the application pack below and return the application form and equal opportunities monitoring form by post to Applications, Greater Manchester Immigration Aid…
Asylum Streamlining Questionnaires – Information
Over the course of this year the government have announced plans to “streamline” certain asylum cases. This means processing the case without an interview, meaning a decision is made faster than usual. The reason is because the government have made a commitment to make faster decisions and clear the backlog…
Response to Penny Mordaunt and Robert Jenrick from Sudanese young people
To Penny Mordaunt and Robert Jenrick Back in May, we wrote to the Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick asking why we were seeing no extra help for people from Sudan to come to the UK. We wanted to share how we were feeling, our worries for our families. Thank you to…
A new North West fighting fund for unaccompanied children seeking asylum
“I’ve got many friends here, and everyone I talk to says they have no solicitor. It’s the biggest problem my friends are facing as well. It affects me. I feel like my heart is broken for them. I’ve heard a lot about how they struggle with the waiting. They told…
An open letter to Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick: hotel “optimisation”
Edit: On the 27th July we received a response to this letter from the Home Office. Click here to download their response as a PDF. To Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick We are writing to express our grave concern at your ‘hotel optimisation’ plans, which will increase still further the…
“We lost our lives when we arrived here”: Children in the UK’s asylum system
“I thought that as soon as I arrived they’d welcome me and give me nationality and that’s it. I had no idea about this process.” This is what we might hope for children arriving alone in the UK after fleeing war or persecution. Welcome, safety, security. But in reality, children…
Home Office asylum streamlining plans: impact in the North West (updated)
Context On 13 December 2022 the Prime Minister announced in parliament that the Home Office’s asylum legacy backlog would be cleared by the end of 2023. All the asylum claims in the legacy backlog were made in the UK before 28 June 2022 when certain provisions in the Nationality and…
Refugees are Welcome in Manchester: join us on Weds 10th May
Join us next week in Manchester to show that our city welcomes refugees. GMIAU is demonstrating to show our solidarity with people seeking safety and our opposition to the government’s attack on their rights. We hope as many people as possible will join us. The government’s “Illegal Migration Bill”, which…