Every country wants to protect its borders and monitor who comes in and out of the country. Any expanding economy will also need additional workers. Immigration policy is a power that is retained at Westminster and the title of the government’s 5-year plan, Controlling our borders: making migration work for Britain reflects an emphasis on security and having the right people to fill labour and skills shortages. It focuses on internal interests rather than the needs of people who have been forced to flee from their homes, or of people forced to look for work because of poverty.
Building a Welcoming Community
Migration Info
Page 3 of 8
Frequently asked Questions about Migrants and Refugees
Q Who is an immigrant?
A This term has been applied to all people coming into the country to work, but it is now often applied to people who intend to settle and integrate here, as opposed to being a more temporary ‘migrant worker’. It is important not to view people who are part of long-established ethnic communities and populations as ‘immigrants’.
Q Who is a migrant worker?
A Someone who leaves their country with the intention of seeking work elsewhere. In practice the words are usually applied today to people who do not intend to remain permanently in the host country.
Q Who is an economic migrant?
A Anyone who moves from their home country to improve their economic situation can be termed an ‘economic migrant’. This term is sometimes used in a derogatory way, to throw suspicion on people’s motives in seeking asylum. In fact, poverty and economic deprivation, as well as violence, are tools of those who persecute individuals and groups of people. Most economic migrants simply seek a better life for themselves and their families, as many people from Ireland have done for generations.
Q Who is an asylum seeker?
A Someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution by reason of their race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion, in their own country, and seeks refuge in another country.
The words we use…The term ‘asylum seeker’ is now regarded by many people as a depersonalising term of abuse, often associated with the word ‘bogus’. In EMBRACE, we try to use the phrase, ‘person seeking asylum’. Similarly, the broad-brush term, ‘illegal immigrant’ is best replaced by the more objective words, ‘undocumented person’. How can a human being be illegal?
Q Who is a refugee?
A Someone who applies for asylum, and is successful in being granted refugee status, under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to Refugees. ‘Refugee’ is also the general term for all people who have been displaced from their own countries by persecution, war and civil unrest.
Updated 17/11/2011
‘People who used to move drugs around now move people around.’
Phil Taylor, Scotland and Northern Ireland Regional Director,UK Border Agency speaking at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission Conference, Belfast, 20 April 2009
‘It wasn’t alright then. It isn’t alright now. Modern slavery traps more people today than in the entire 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade.’ Blue Blindfold awareness campaign web site www.blueblindfold.co.uk/
‘According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), about 12.3 million people worldwide are in forced labour, bonded labour, forced child labour or sexual servitude at any given time. Other estimates range between 4 million and 27 million. According to US Government-sponsored research, about 800,000 people are trafficked across national boundaries each year, about 80% of whom are women and girls and “up to 50%” are children.’ House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, The Trade in Human Beings: Human Trafficking in the UK, Sixth Report of Session 2008–09 Volume I p.14 www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmhaff/23/23i.pdf
What is People Trafficking?
‘Trafficking involves transporting people away from the communities in which they live and forcing them to work against their will using violence, deception, or coercion. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved: simply transporting them into exploitative conditions constitutes trafficking. People are trafficked both between countries and within the borders of a state.’ Definition by Anti-Slavery, Read in full
Stories of Victims indicate the damage this crime inflicts.
Continue reading ‘Definitions relating to People Trafficking’
Our local arrangements for identifying, rescuing victims and prosecuting crimes sit within the UK framework. Continue reading ‘The UK situation and policy’
About
EMBRACE is a group of Christians working together to promote a positive response to people seeking asylum, refugees, migrant workers and minority ethnic people in Northern Ireland.
