----- Forwarded Message ----- From: PICUM Communications
<communications@xxxxxxxxx>To: William Mejia <wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx>Sent:
Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 10:33:23 AM GMT-5Subject: PICUM January 2021
Newsletter
| Welcome to the PICUM newsletter, where we will update you about issues
concerning undocumented people. The updates will focus on systemic issues
including regularisations, criminalisation of solidarity, detention and
returns, labour rights and channels, access to health-care, access to justice,
undocumented children and families.
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| Welcome to the PICUM newsletter, where we will update you about issues
concerning undocumented people. The updates will focus on systemic issues
including regularisations, criminalisation of solidarity, detention and
returns, labour rights and channels, access to health-care, access to justice,
undocumented children and families.
Let us know what you think of our newsletter on communications@xxxxxxxxx.
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| Undocumented migrants and the COVID-19 vaccine |
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| As countries around the world are rolling out the first COVID-19 vaccines,
several international and regional bodies have recommended the inclusion of
migrants (including those who are undocumented) in national vaccine deployment
programmes.
The International Organisation on Migration (IOM) issued a statement
highlighting that COVID-19 vaccination plans must include migrants if they are
to be effective and calling on governments to include all migrants present in
their territories (regardless of migration status) in their vaccine deployment
plans. IOM is also partnering with the Gavi Vaccine Alliance to improve
immunization coverage for migrants, in humanitarian and emergency settings as
well as in support of routine immunization through primary health caresystems.
Between October and December 2020, the European Centre for Disease Prevention
and Control (ECDC) issued two reports which consider migrants in relation to
the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. The first classifies “migrants and
refugees” as potential target groups for the vaccination campaigns; the second
advises that consideration should be given to settings with “little ability to
physical distance” including migrant centres, crowded housing and homeless
shelters.
The European Commission issued a Communication (October 2020) on vaccine
preparedness, which - in quite vaguer terms - includes “communities unable to
physically distance” (such as “refugee camps”) and“vulnerable socioeconomic
groups and other groups at higher risk” (such as “socially deprived communities
to be defined according to national circumstances”) as “possible priority
groups” for vaccines deployment.
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| BORDER MANAGEMENT
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| Croatia: New reports of police violence and illegal pushbacks against
migrants |
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| In December 2020, the Croatian Centre for Peace Studies filed two criminal
complaints against unknown police agents for allegedly keeping in detention
thirteen migrants, two of whom were children, and then handing them over to ten
armed men dressed in black uniforms, with balaclavas on their heads. According
to the complaints, the migrants were tortured, humiliated and pushed back from
Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina; one of the victims was raped. These cases
build on previous reports by UN experts highlighting the use of systematic
violence towards migrants by the Croatian police. |
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| CHILDREN
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| UN condemns the Netherlands over failed protection of stateless child |
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| The UN human rights committee has found that the Netherlands violated a
child’s rights by failing to acknowledge that he was stateless and eligible for
international protection. The case involves a boy named Denny, born in the
Dutch city of Utrecht in 2010 to a stateless Chinese mother who was trafficked
tothe Netherlands. With nothing to prove that her son was without a
nationality, Denny was registered as “nationality unknown” and they were put in
a centre for refused asylum seekers with young children, under a permanent
threat of deportation. |
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| Brexit: Migrant parents of British children in danger of becoming
undocumented |
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| Hundreds of migrant parents of British children living in the UK are in
danger of becoming undocumented after 1 July 2021. The process by which the UK
Home Office grants residence to them may be indiscriminate and unlawful,
according to lawyers. 60% of people whose residence is required to enable a
British child or dependent adult to live in the UK, saw their residence
application rejected in June 2020. |
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| DETENTION AND RETURNS
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| European Parliament calls for prioritising alternatives to detention |
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| In mid-December, the European Parliament approved the Resolution on the
implementation of the ReturnDirective, which moves away from the exclusive
focus on the rates of returns, and stresses that “sustainable returns and
successful reintegration are important indicators in the assessment of the
effectiveness of returns”. The Resolution further includes important references
to the need to prioritise alternatives to detention and provide individual case
management and assistance, to prioritise and facilitate voluntary returns, and
stresses that children should never be detained. |
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| Greece commits to stop detention of unaccompanied minors |
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| On 18 November 2020, the Migration and Asylum Minister of Greece, Notis
Mitarakis, committed to ending the practice of detaining unaccompanied migrant
children in jail cells. He also reported that, as of that date, no
unaccompanied migrant children remained in police custody. The practice had
been condemned bythe European Court of Human Rights, which considered it a
violation of the right to liberty and security. |
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| New research on Covid-19 contingency plans in detention centres |
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| A recent survey by the European Migration Network on how countries are
dealing with Covid-19 in immigration detention shows that detainees who test
positive are either transferred to a medical facility (Croatia, Bulgaria,
Italy) or treated in the detention unit unless their condition deteriorates and
a transferis deemed necessary by the centre’s doctor (Belgium, Estonia,
Finland, Greece, Latvia, Sweden, Spain). Distribution of protective gear to
detainees was only reported in Poland and Slovakia. |
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| Migreurop exposes illegal detention in several EU member states |
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| A new report by Migreurop on immigration detention in Germany, Greece, Italy
and Spain finds that, in 2019, administrative detention was increasingly
happening outside or at the margins of existing legal frameworks, and in
informal settings, such as police stations and border zones. The EU Pact on
Asylum andMigration will likely generalise this practice and turn it into law.
The report includes information about detention conditions, including
deficiencies in the provision of accommodation, and medical, interpretation and
administration services. |
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| Italy: new report shows detention conditions in “quarantine boats” |
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| Several Italian NGOs have published an analysis of the use of boats to
quarantine migrants after search and rescue operations, on which nearly 10,000
people have been detained since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, including
families and children. The analysis points to lack of adequate health services
availableon the boats, the impossibility to maintain social distancing, the
high costs of the procedures (which are more expensive than similar structures
on land) and issues regarding the legality of the measure. In October, a
15-year old boy died after spending ten days on a quarantine boat on which
there was only one doctor available for 600 people. |
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| HEALTH
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| WHO publishes new study on the pandemic’s impact on migrants |
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| In December 2020, the World Health Organisation published the results of its
survey on the impact of COVID-19 on migrants, including people with irregular
status, as experienced and reported by them. 35% of the (more than) 30,000
migrants surveyed said they did not seek health care for suspected
COVID-19infection because of financial constraints, while 22% avoided doing so
because of fear of deportation. Responses show that many civil society and
other support organisations played an important role in disseminating
accessible information on COVID-19. |
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| US government extends COVID aid to households with undocumented family
members |
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| In December 2020, the United States Congress passed with broad bipartisan
support a 900 billion USD coronavirus relief package that will allow mixed
status households (comprised of U.S. citizens and undocumented family members)
to receive 600 USD of direct COVID-19 related financial assistance, with
anadditional 600 USD for each dependent child. The legislation also makes mixed
status households retroactively eligible for one-time payments of 1200 USD per
household and 500 USD per child under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic
Security Act of March 2020, from which they had been excluded. |
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| JUSTICE
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| UK police watchdogs alarmed at sharing of victims’ data with immigration
authorities |
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| In December 2020, three police oversight bodies published a report raising
concerns about police sharing information about a victim’s immigration status
with the UK immigration authorities. The report recommends that police stop
sharing the information of domestic violence victims with immigration
authorities“where there is no clear evidence an immigration offence has been
committed”, and that the Home Office establish safe reporting mechanisms for
migrant victims and witnesses when accessing police services. |
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| LABOUR
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| New UN study reveals little progress in labour migration pathways over last
decade |
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| The UN Development Programme has published a review of its 2009 study on
human mobility, which finds that little progress has been made on visa
liberalisation for low skilled migrants in the last decade. On the contrary,
policy developments in the field of labour migration pathways were found to
increasinglyfavour “people with skills or wealth”. |
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| Trade unions call for support to undocumented fishers following Brexit |
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| The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) Co-ordinator for Ireland
and Britain has requested an urgent meeting with the Irish Minister for
Agriculture, Food and the Marine to discuss the situation of undocumented
fishers in the wake of Brexit. According to the federation, undocumented
migrants arethe main workforce on Irish fishing vessels. ITF calls for
protections for all fishers that are left without work due to Brexit, including
interim financial support via Ireland’s COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment.
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| REGULARISATION
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| Global civil society platform calls for regularisation in the post-COVID
recovery |
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| The Civil Society Action Committee, a global platform for civil society
engagement on migration policy, has called world governments to take action on
regularisation as the keystone to implement the Global Compact for Migration.
The calls are included in a paper on the implementation of the Global Compact
forMigration in the context of COVID-19, released in December 2020. |
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| Italy: New research shows flaws in migrant regularisation programme |
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| Research by Human Rights Watch on the Italian 2020 regularisation programme
found important flaws in its design and implementation. In particular, the
research points to the restrictive scope of the programme, the lack of clarity
about eligibility and the employer sponsorship approach, among others,
excludinghundreds of thousands of people and failing to reach most of the
farmworkers it was supposed to benefit. Numbers show that only 15% of the
applications under the employer sponsorship pathway came from the agricultural
sector. |
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Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants
Rue du Congrès/Congresstraat 37-41, post box 5, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
General Tel. +32/2/210.17.80
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