Strangers into Citizens on the Fourth Plinth!

At 6pm last night, Strangers into Citizens was featured on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Supporter Giuseppe Spadone, from Yorkshire, had an hour on the plinth as part of the ongoing One and Other project, and chose to use it to publicise our call for the regularisation of long-term undocumented migrants.

With music, flags and banners - and the curious questions of lots of passers-by - it was certainly a memorable hour. Thanks to Giuseppe for using his spot to support Strangers into Citizens.

UK's top Conservative blogger backs SiC

I've only just been alerted to this post of 16 June by Tim Montgomerie at the much-read conservativehome site. His backing for Strangers into Citizens adds another significant voice to the growing chorus of support in the Conservative Party, along with Boris Johnson, John Bercow, Anthony Browne, Philip Blond, etc.

Montgomerie described how he was "instinctively against" regularisation until he read an article by Anthony Browne, Boris's policy man.

Browne set out the three options very clearly: We can oversee a massive deportation of illegal immigrants but "no country that sees itself as civilised wants to send immigration officials into schools, yanking distraught children away from their distressed classmates." There is also the stubborn fact that Britain has a very poor record at deporting large numbers. An estimated two-thirds of illegal immigrants have been here for more than five years. Do we really believe that that is going to change? We can accept the status quo where immigrants and their children live in a limbo land - half in the economy and half out. Or third we can offer immigrants an 'earned regularisation' if they haven't committed crimes.

[snip]

I only support an amnesty as part of a comprehensive immigration policy. It will only work if we have effective border controls and, in a ideal world, that would mean a new deal with the EU so that Britain has full control of the numbers of people entering our country.

Both the Conservative and Labour frontbenches oppose an amnesty (the Liberal Democrats are supportive) but I've come to see earned regularisation as a humane policy. Today's LSE report suggests that it is economically beneficial too.

New Commons speaker backs SiC

The new speaker of the House of Commons, the Conservative MP John Bercow, is a longstanding supporter of Strangers into Citizens. He is one of the first signatories of the early day motion.

Clandestino conference

Strangers into Citizens was one of the scheduled presentations at the Clandestino conference on Friday 27 March.

This conference was organised by the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) an umbrella organisation for over 400 NGOs all across Europe that work with irregular migrants.

150 attendees packed the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre in Shoreditch, London, for a day full of valuable information sharing and networking.

At the conference PICUM presented the results of their major research project into numbers of irregular migrants in European countries like the UK, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal and others. You can read more about this on the PICUM website.

Their findings are in line with what we have always claimed: that the number of migrants in the UK is not above the European average; that the percentage of irregular migrants is not on the rise; that there need to be effective mechanisms for measuring how many irregular migrants there are in a country in order to create policies accordingly.

One of the workshops at the conference focused on regularisations programmes, and Strangers into Citizens was leading the debate along with the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICPMD), based in Vienna.

Our colleagues from Vienna had done their own research on a regularisation programmes in the European Union and have given us more evidence to claim that regularisations do not produce more irregular migrants. You can read more about the report on the ICPMD site.

Our presentation was much applauded and commented on by all attendees - our colleagues over in France were very impressed with the fact that Strangers had pulled 15,000 people to Trafalgar Square back in 2007.

As always, there was a mix of views from the crowd as to what a regularisations would entail in the long run. Our proposal is simple and aims to put forward a model for regularisation that governments can draw ideas from to create new policies. You can read about our proposal on our website.

Our presentation has put us on the map for the rest of Europe. We cannot disappoint. We need more people than ever to come and rally with us on May 4th, 2009 for our day of Action and Celebration. Visit our website for more details.