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Zoe Gardner Profile picture
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16 May, 11 tweets, 6 min read
Well, friends, it has been quite a week hasn't it.
I think it warrants a bit of a round-up thread 🧵😊

To begin, on Tuesday we had the Queen's Speech. A new Brutal Borders Bill was announced. Thread here explains why we must resist it & why we can
Also Tuesday @BellRibeiroAddy tabled an EDM in support of @JCWI_UK's campaign #WeAreHere
It calls for a new route to regularisation for our undocumented migrant population & better routes to secure permanent status for all migrants making the UK their home edm.parliament.uk/early-day-moti…
I wrote an article for @GreenWorld_UK about how Priti Patel's Nasty New Plan for Immigration shows she has learned all the wrong lessons from the Covid pandemic, continuing to push migrant workers into precarity, exposing them to greater risk greenworld.org.uk/article/govern…
By Thursday, all eyes were on Kenmure Street in Glasgow, where an incredible community came out in solidarity with their migrant neighbours and put the Home Office's racist vans to shame.

Somebody no one cares about in Labour made a stupid comment on the matter and people were UP IN ARMS at the suggestion that a daughter of migrants who was born HERE in the UK could possibly be deported.
They rightly pointed out how racist this is... 🧐🤔🤨
By this time, people were taking to the street in solidarity again, in huge numbers. This time in support of Palestinian lives.
@KateOsamor reported that the police were intimidating protesters by asking about their immigration status on the street.
I wrote another short article, this time for @LabourHub about how the spirit of the Glasgow protest shows that with strong communities we can protect each other.
Migrants need stable, permanent ground to build their lives on, and pathways to regularisation labourhub.org.uk/2021/05/15/ref…
This week @Another_Europe also launched our new Brexit Spotlight website, keeping track of the impact of Brexit on our communities.
I have a short interview, about how Priti Patel's the threat posed by Patel's post-Brexit decimation refugee protection brexitspotlight.org/asylum-after-b…
Overall this week has been one that clearly shows the dichotomy we are working in: the government is hell-bent on cruelty and division, but when our communities stand united we are powerful and we win.
Support #WeAreHere & write to your MP about it here jcwi.org.uk/we-are-here-ta…
Hope everyone has a restful cloudy Sunday. Thanks for the new follows this week.
Let's never lose hope in what we can achieve when we stand up for one another ❤️💪😊
(apologies for the gobbledeegook in the tweet about the Brexit Spotlight launch... I don't know what to tell you. But I'm sure you get the idea. Patel. Bad. Plan. Bad. Brexit. Bad. Etc.)

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More from @ZoeJardiniere

Zoe Gardner Profile picture
18 May
Today @jameskirkup has a piece in the Times explaining where he thinks people who campaign for a less brutal immigration system go wrong
He's far from alone in taking this view from a generally liberal perspective, so without any personal antagonism to him, I'm going to respond👇
The first charge - that we want open borders.

Well, we might well see that as the end goal, yes, but it's not a fair charge. When people stand up against deportations it
1. doesn't follow that anyone should be able to come in, just that these people shouldn't be forced out Image
2. Is not necessarily the appropriate time for advocates to start discussing who they *would* kick out. Not talking about who it is legitimate to deport, when talking about not deporting one or other individual, does not = calling for open borders.
This is a strange straw man.
Read 14 tweets
Zoe Gardner Profile picture
17 May
Someone asked me, and I think they have a point perhaps, whether the attempted deportation of 2 Indian men from Kenmure Street is linked to the new pact with India on migration.

It's possible. Having this deal in place will make undocumented Indians more of a target, but...
Given the feedback loop that exists in immigration enforcement "intelligence" (which is largely based on evidence collected from previous raids, and denunciations from members of the public, which they dont monitor ethnicity data for, nor publish how they control for quality...)
Due to this Indian communities are already one of the most targeted demographics.
However, this new deal may mean they are specifically seeking to pursue Indian people who they have on radar as deportation flights ought to be smoothly facilitated to India because of the deal.
Read 5 tweets
Zoe Gardner Profile picture
15 May
Landlord threatening to evict the two migrants defended by their Glasgow neighbours on Thursday.

This is the Hostile Environment. Landlords turned into border enforcement agents & migrants with only slumlords to turn to in the end.

This is how they try to break our communities.
They don't even have right to rent checks in Scotland (thanks to @JCWI_UK's legal challenge) but the politics of it are insidious.
The divisions and hostility creep way beyond the supposed intended reach of these policies and these are the results.
Our case against Right to Rent, that criminalises renting a home to a migrant without checking their status showed how the policy is poorly understood & results in many landlords simply refusing to rent to any migrant.
That's the racist impact we see here jcwi.org.uk/right-to-rent
Read 5 tweets
Zoe Gardner Profile picture
24 Mar
Priti Patel announcing her new headless plan for immigration on #r4today...

Hold tight, friends, I know it's awful. I'm going to try to take these proposals point by point.
Most immigrants in our system are forced into a "temporary" status for years or even a decade before they can get a permanent status. Patel loves this despite the pointless misery it causes.

Now they want to do the same for people recognised as fleeing persecution. #r4today
People who are recognised as fulfilling the extremely stringent requirements of the refugee process are by definition victims of trauma and persecution.

Making their lives unstable for years, denying them support, is obviously cruel, unnecessary & counter-productive. #r4today
Read 23 tweets
Zoe Gardner Profile picture
4 Mar
I was born in France & grew up in the UK in a multilingual household. I still have close family living in France & Greece. My mother is Greek & I have dual Greek-British nationality. My grandma is German.

Of course I'm putting European on the census. What else would I be?
My kind of mixed multilingual family is completely normal all over the world. In the EU, free movement has allowed more people to mix in these wonderful ways more easily.

It's been said before, but Brits & Anglos as a whole worldwide miss out on so much by cutting themselves off
My ability to take pride in my heritage throughout my life, to never endure more than some dumb teasing from Anglo kids at school about it, the fact that it was universally considered good & important that I spoke my mother tongue fluently, are all thanks to being European...
Read 5 tweets
Zoe Gardner Profile picture
2 Mar
Today I'm bringing out new research on migrant experiences during the pandemic, focusing on the impact of having No Recourse to Public Funds, which applies to all migrants by default until they get indefinite leave to remain, which takes 5 or 10 years depending on their visa...
If you have No Recourse to Public Funds, you cannot access most benefits. This forces migrants into poverty, and in the pandemic has made it harder for them to keep themselves and our communities safe.

This has impacted migrants at work & in their homes, it affects everything.
Migrants with NRPF cant get housing benefit.
Among those surveyed in my research, they were 52% more likely than migrants who were allowed to claim benefits to say they would not be able self isolate safely in their home if they, or a member of their household needed to.
Read 11 tweets

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