UK Border Agency aims to eject homeless Europeans
Immigration officers stake-out soup runs
UK Borders Agency staff are staking out soup runs as part of a tough new campaign to kick homeless European nationals out of the UK.
The UKBA is targeting soup runs in a bid to find unemployable EU nationals. Anyone they find who has a criminal record or they believe has no opportunity to work is handed a letter saying they must go to a police station with proof they are working, in education or are self-sufficient. If they fail to provide this evidence, they are given a month to leave the country or told they will be forcibly removed.
A total of 365 people from the 10 new European states made a homelessness application between April and June 2009.
A spokesperson for the Home Office confirmed the UKBA was serving ‘minded to administratively remove’ letters on EU nationals sleeping rough in the Westminster area. She said the letters tell them ‘that we require them to provide documentary evidence that they are exercising their treaty rights - i.e. were working, in education or self-sufficient.
‘If at the [police] interview they can’t prove they have a right to reside, we give them a month to leave the country. If they don’t leave voluntarily, we enforce the removal.’
Overall, the campaign met with a mixed reaction.
Jeremy Swain, chief executive of homelessness charity Thames Reach, said he supported the move because homelessness services were struggling to cope. ‘This [the current situation] can’t carry on,’ he said. ‘For some people it’s [rough sleeping in London] going on for years.’
He confirmed UKBA staff were heading to soup runs in the evenings to find EU nationals.
Alastair Murray, regions co-ordinator at charity Housing Justice, said there were often conflicts at soup runs between people from Eastern Europe and other rough sleepers looking for food. But he added that the system ‘must respect the right of people to come here and work.’
Jo Nurse, community manager at the homelessness charity The Simon Community, said the crackdown was ‘a bit heavy-handed because people are entitled to be here’.
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Readers' comments (4)
Harry Lime | 07/05/2010 9:43 am
I agree with it in principle, if someone comes over here not to work, it's no different from "NHS tourism" where people obtain services they otherwise wouldn't get at home. It's slightly farcical though that they are given a letter and told to report somewhere at a later time, like that's going to happen, after all London's virtually a village, you're bound to bump into them the next day if they don't keep their appointment.......
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Joe Halewood | 07/05/2010 11:17 am
Just how do they 'target' East Europeans?
Well that ones black he cant be from Poland! or Psst want some rye bread with that soup? Or are that more subtle than that and just waft smells of keilbasa that leads to man-traps?
Unemployable? Surely all the evidence suggests that East Europeans are more employable than the indigent White British person given they will work for less money? Or is that just right-wing scaremongering?
Nice bit of overtime for UKBA staff though.
Interesting that those who have openly declared that soup runs be banned support this policy though - a contradiction of principle or just closet racism or perhaps both .... though his open support for such a policy (or is that just a rentaquote) fails to spot the obvious flaw that Harry Lime picks up.
Principle? - So your destitute and hungry and the first questionasked is are you employable!!! Overseers and newly landed slaves anyone?
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Joe Halewood | 07/05/2010 8:02 pm
The issue is not skin colour but identity - and Somalis are not one of the European Accession countries as well as many other differences between them and Poles / Eastern Europeans. (By the way are Northern, Western and Southern Europeans ok?) What about the Swiss and Norwegians are they ok and not a target for UKBA our own white Stasi? God Forbid they'll be targeting Aussies next and there will be no bar staff at all in London!
Or maybe the real Stasi are the ethnic cleansers of East London - the ones that advocate removal of all soup runs and other sevicess that we used to called Christian but they call incentivising and encouraging homelessness and want to section those poor vulnerable bas***ds caught there, you know the ones who are seeking to follow the USSR example in 1979/80 of clearing a given area of 'itinerant vagrants, tramps, dossers, hobos, hangashores, Schnorrers and bums" ahead of the worlds cameras and especially Johnny Foreigner ones!!!
Only in England you say ILAG? Probably, I mean the arch capitalists that employ these Eastern Europeans on less than minimum wages for short-term contracts and even house them 12 to a house, but they after they've made their money from them they kick them out and then petition for their removal back to .... the East..... MY God thats its... the East ....
East German.... Stasi... Ethnic Cleansing....Eastern Europeans....East London is just a logical extension isnt it....a map yes why is the East always shown on the far right?
Hmm
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kjetilniki | 10/05/2010 12:55 pm
we show the east on the far right because we designated that east when we place north on the top. if we place south at the top then east will be to the far left
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