Southall Black Sisters jointly with Southall Community Alliance invite you to a public meeting on Wednesday 8th April 2015 at Southall Town Hall at 6pm to debate and discuss the legacy and impact of the controversial anti-immigrant campaigns, including the ‘Go Home’ vans campaign run by the Home Office in 2013.
In 2013, the Home Office sent out vans with placards telling immigrants to ‘go home or face arrest’. This was coupled with a number of other hard-line government immigration campaigns including checks at train stations and bus stops, introduction of Landlord checks and raids on ‘bed’s in shed’s.
Other operations created by the Home Office targeting immigrants included the ‘Nexus’ project in 2012 that focused on the Nexus team enforcement officers who ran checks on establishing foreign nationals who were illegally in the UK.
In 2014 ‘Operation Centurion’ was a programme run by the Home Office with immigration enforcement officers working alongside the police, food safety officers, trading standards officers and so on aimed at workplaces targeting people of specific nationalities.
In 2014 the Home Office launched another programme called ‘Operation Skybreaker’ which was a pilot scheme across some of London’s most diverse boroughs such as Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Brent and Ealing. This malicious legislation was forged to create a ‘hostile environment’ for what the Home Officer considered irregular migrants.
This public meeting will discuss the impacts of these campaigns on local people and on local community relations. We will be encouraging a discussion on how these moves can be effectively opposed or resisted.
We urge you to attend this important meeting especially if you are affected directly or are working with individuals and communities targeted by these racist and draconian rules
Join us on Wednesday 8th April 2015 at 6pm to 8.30pm at Southall Town Hall 1 High Street, Southall, Middx, UB1 3DA.
Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters on “The impact on marginalised women”
Rita Chadha, Chief Executive Officer, Refugee & Migrant Forum Essex & London on “faith groups as the new border agents”
Charlotte Peel, Legal & Policy Assistant at Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) on the “The right to rent checks”
Sukhwant Dhaliwal, Research Fellow, University of Bedfordshire, will feedback on the key findings from research undertaken by the Mapping Immigration Controversy Project.
Chair: Harsev Bains, Chairperson of Southall Community Alliance
You can call us for more at Southall Black Sisters on 0208 571 9595 or email us for more information.
Please spread the word
Pass on this information to your colleagues, community groups and organisations who would benefit from this vital discussion.
Download the poster “Two Years on: impact of the ‘The Go Home Vans’ and other Anti-Immigrant Campaigns”
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