Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Migrants’ ‘American dreams’ turns into a nightmare

FOR 800,000 DREAMERS the morning of 5 September saw their American Dream turn into a nightmare. Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced the end of Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme. Introduced in 2012, this allowed undocumented migrants under the age of 16 to obtain residence and work permits lasting two […]

Workers Power  ·  01 September 2017

Support the Labour Campaign for Free Movement

THE UK is at a crossroads in its relationship to the rest of the world, and so is our party. Immigrants and free movement are being scapegoated by a political and economic elite that is subjecting ordinary people to cuts and austerity. During the greatest refugee crisis in recent years, the Tories have responded with […]

Workers Power  ·  01 September 2017

Free movement: a self-inflicted wound that will fester unless we act

JEREMY CORBYN kicked off 2017 by announcing that Labour was not committed “in principle” to defending freedom of movement for workers within the European Union. This major retreat represents an attempt to reposition Labour as a pro-Brexit party, despite the fact that 65 per cent of Labour voters and an overwhelming majority of members oppose […]

KD Tait  ·  18 January 2017

Let’s have the argument about immigration

THE PAPERS, TV and radio say Britain is under siege from immigrants. They blame them for higher taxes, crime, housing shortages, hospital waiting lists, cheap labour and terrorism. During the Brexit campaign, and since, this has reached fever pitch. There are two possible reasons for this. Only one of them can be true. The first is […]

Jeremy Dewar  ·  12 December 2016

Labour MPs ditch free movement

PAUL NUTTALL’S threat to “replace the Labour Party and make Ukip the voice of patriotic Britain” seems to have thrown some Labour MPs into a panic. Dan Jarvis MP, for example, thinks that, “the Ukip fox is in the Labour henhouse and we have got to make a decision about what we want to do […]

Workers Power  ·  12 December 2016

Attacks on immigration won’t help Labour

JEREMY CORBYN told the Labour Party Conference, “It isn’t migrants that drive down wages, it’s exploitative employers and the politicians who deregulate the labour market and rip up trade union rights. It isn’t migrants who put a strain on our NHS; it only keeps going because of the migrant nurses and doctors who come here […]

Rebecca Anderson  ·  07 November 2016

Welcome the refugees: open the Calais border

THE ABANDONMENT of over 1,000 children in tin containers at the squalid Calais “Jungle” refugee camp is the culmination of 13 years of inhuman and criminal efforts by the French and British governments to escape responsibility for the refugee crisis. After the French government used riot police and bulldozers to clear up to 10,000 refugees, […]

Workers Power  ·  07 November 2016

Freedom of movement is a right

IN THE LAST weeks of the Referendum campaign the Brexit campaigners, led by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, decided to play their ace – the widespread fears about immigration. With the mass readership of the right-wing Tory tabloids going into overdrive, administering their daily of horror stories about migrants, no one should have been surprised it had […]

Dave Stockton  ·  30 June 2016

Let all the refugees in

By Jeremy Dewar David Cameron claims, “This migration crisis is the greatest challenge facing Europe today. […] Where we can help, we should.” How to “help”? By sending warships to aid NATO, not to rescue refugees, but to “stop the desperate flow of people crammed into makeshift vessels from embarking on a fruitless and perilous […]

Workers Power  ·  17 April 2016

Cologne attacks spark racist backlash

We need to challenge the social causes of sexist and racist attitudes inflamed by the refugee crisis ON New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, hundreds of women were intimidated and threatened. At least two rapes were reported. There are now over a hundred reported assaults, often including sexual harassment and robbery at the hands of so-called […]

Workers Power  ·  26 January 2016

David Cameron has smeared Muslim women

ISLAMOPHOBIA  David Cameron has smeared Muslim women by suggesting that their supposed failure to learn English and integrate into British society is a cause of “radicalism” and terrorism. In fact most of those who carried out terrorist attacks in Britain, Belgium and France were fluent speakers of these countries’ languages. He added the threat that […]

Workers Power  ·  26 January 2016

Europe Turns Its Back On Refugees

IT DOESN’T take long for memories to fade. The picture of drowned three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey went viral across both social and mainstream media back in September. The image humanised the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war in Syria. Its immediate effect was to […]

Workers Power  ·  08 November 2015

Fortress Britain

THE TORIES’ response to the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War is to allow a mere 20,000 Syrians to settle in the UK over the next five years – an average of 4,000 a year. It will take nearly a year for the first refugees to arrive, so bureaucratic are the rules governing […]

Workers Power  ·  08 November 2015

No refuge for Cameron in asylum crisis

By Jeremy Dewar 13 September 2015 Over 100,000 people marched through the streets of London on Saturday 12 September under the slogan, “Refugees Welcome Here”. It was the biggest pro-migrant demonstration we have seen for many years. Not only did the crowd cheer every point that brand new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn say, but it […]

Workers Power  ·  13 September 2015

No more deaths – welcome refugees now

3 September 2015 The drowned body of three year old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey on Wednesday 2nd. The photograph has concentrated the minds of millions on the catastrophe unfolding on Europe’s Mediterranean shore. Aylan drowned along with his five year old brother Galip, his mother Rehan and nine other […]

Workers Power  ·  03 September 2015

Calais crisis: the English Channel is becoming a river of blood

By KD Tait 30 July, 2015 On Tuesday night a young Sudanese man was crushed to death by a lorry. Nine people have been killed trying to cross the channel this month. What kind of desperation would convince you to leap onto the back of a moving lorry? What kind of existence leaves you no […]

Workers Power  ·  30 July 2015

Deterrent by drowning: Mediterranean tragedy is official policy

By Dave Stockton and KD Tait ONCE AGAIN, the seas surrounding Fortress Europe run red with the blood of migrants. The mass drowning of 900 migrants in the Mediterranean is the result of the European leaders’ criminal policy of discouraging immigration by letting desperate people die.Only 28 people were rescued from a boat that capsized […]

Workers Power  ·  22 April 2015

Berlin School Strike: refugees are welcome – no one is illegal !

Thousands of school students strike in solidarity with refugees fighting racist violence and deportation. Tobi Hansen reports  On February 13, more than 3,000 school and university students went on strike to demonstrate their solidarity with refugees on the streets of Berlin. For nearly two years, there has been a camp on Oranienplatz in Berlin protesting […]

Workers Power  ·  21 February 2014

Solidarity with the school and refugee strike in Berlin

This statement was originally published by the Revolutionary Socialists – Britain. Comrades, We – the Revolutionary Socialists , a youth organisation in Britain – send our warmest solidarity to the Berlin school students’ strike in defence of the rights of refugees. From London to Lampedusa those fleeing the violence of poverty and war are hunted […]

Workers Power  ·  13 February 2014

The Palestinian struggle in Syria: an interview

A member of the League for the Fifth International’s German section interviewed Thaer, a resident of Yarmouk, Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, located in Damascus. He escaped the camp, currently besieged by the Assad regime’s forces, in December 2012. LFI: How is life in Yarmouk going now? Thaer: There are 125,000 residents in Yarmouk, and […]

Workers Power  ·  14 May 2013

Syria: Legitimacy and Division

As the rival imperialist powers manoeuvre to gain an advantage from the mass uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, Marcus Halaby examines the regime’s strategy and tactics as it struggles, if not for outright victory, then at least to cling on to some vestiges of its power. One of the historic claims to legitimacy of Ba’athism, […]

Workers Power  ·  14 August 2012

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