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Around the Campaigns Thursday 31st December 2008

John O | 31.12.2008 14:50 | Migration | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Birmingham | World

January to December 2008, 74 public Anti-Deportation Campaigns




Another year bites the dust, NCADC publicized 74 campaigns in the last twelve months for family's/individuals facing imminent removal. As ever it was a mix of won some, lost some, but the main thing is that the majority 68% of those who campaigned are still in the UK, and a tiny handful got some form of status.

There were many more campaigns that were not put into the public domain family's/individuals who feared reprisals for relations in country of origin, and they too had a mixture of success & failure.

There were lots of 'Parish pump' campaigns not connected with or needing help from NCADC. Just concerned citizens who would not stand still to see members of their community removed from the UK and set up petitions/lobbied for all they were worth and more power to their collective elbows won some lost some but won more than they lost.

Local city/town media were more supportive than ever in the last twelve months in publicizing the plight of their citizens facing deportation.

'Ethnic Charter Flights' saw a significant increase in there frequency and an increased number of destination countries, there are now regular charter flights to Afghanistan/KRG(Iraq)/Jamaica/Nigeria/Eastern Europe. NCADC suspect there have been flights to other countries but due to the secretive nature of the Home Office there is no hard data.

The year ahead in the UK/EU will without doubt be another hard one for those family's/individuals/migrants without papers.

All NCADC can say to those facing removal in 2009 for what ever reason, do not go quietly, resist removal through campaigning; it doesn't have to be a public campaign but it should be a campaign of some sort, with as much local/national support as you can get.

John O
- e-mail: JohnO@ncadc.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.ncadc.org.uk