The Immigration Bill: The Home Office will publish a summary of those responses in due course.The Immigration Bill with explanatory notes can be found at:
Further Home Office documents on the Bill (including an Overarching impact assessment, Overview factsheet and Delegated powers memorandum), can be found at:
Resettlement information and action
The Government has also published a briefing paper on its plans to resettle up to 20,000 Syrians during this Parliament. In an e-mail to NASF members the Home Office said that they “are looking at how the current VRP process can be expanded and if and how parts of it need to be changed. We are also looking at UASCs which will now be a strand of the VRP where it wasn’t previously.”
There is currently a petition on the parliamentary website calling on the UK to accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugees in the UK. It currently has 438,931 signatures. Being able to point to hundreds of thousands of people who support more progressive policies on asylum seekers and refugees will be extremely important for all advocacy work on asylum issues (whether it is on resettlement itself or on amendments to the Immigration Bill). Please sign this petition and encourage as many others to do so as possible. Go to: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105991
JCWI’s Right to Rent evaluation
JCWI’s evaluation of the Right to Rent pilot found that 42% of landlords are unlikely to rent to those without British passports. Over 25% would not rent to someone with a foreign name or foreign accent. In addition, those who cannot provide documentation immediately, including BME tenants, British citizens and those with valid leave to remain have also encountered problems. The full report and a briefing note are attached as files.