See a short video report (in French) here.

The migrants have claimed asylum but FEDASIL, the federal agency for the reception of asylum seekers, has said that they cannot help them because they are already at capacity, in contravention of Belgian law. According to the Coordination contres les Rafles, les Expulsions et pour le Regularisation (Coordination against Raids and Deportations and for Regularisation), this argument is complete hypocrisy, since in 2000 there were a much greater number of asylum seekers and they were all housed by FEDASIL. The real problem, according to CRER, is a massive reduction in FEDASIL’s budget which is a result of a political desire to discourage asylum seekers as much as possible.

Documents pertaining to the Sans Papiers movement, that proclaims that “no one is illegal” can be found here .

If you were one of these women, or any number of the immigrants who have protested against the treatment they receive from the police, then it is clear you would fall foul of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement that the French state will “revoke the citizenship of immigrants who engage in violent acts against police officials in the country.”

How does Mr.Sarkozy define violence? Like all men of power, all men of state, the violence of the immigrant is Violence while the violence of the policeman is Order. It separates those who belong to the world from those who do not and, as all matters of nationality eventually do, serves to cut humanity up into warring factions compounding and increasing the level of suffering endured by all. We are all part of the real but for Sarkozy the violent immigrant is less real or all too real. It disturbs order. If this isn’t the essence of fascism then what is?

www.derbund.ch

Ohne Aufenthaltsbewilligung, keine Arbeitsbewilligung

Ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt ist, dass die Personen selbständig einreisen, um sich eine Schwarzarbeit zu suchen. Von Schwarzarbeit wird dann gesprochen, wenn unter anderem keine Arbeitsbewilligung vorliegt. Eine Arbeitsbewilligung erhält jedoch nur, wer eine gültige Aufenthaltsbewilligung vorweisen kann. Die Nachfrage nach günstigen Arbeitskräfte in der Schweiz hat nach wie vor Bestand. Eine Schätzung aus dem Jahr 2004 vermutet, dass sich rund 50‘000- 300‘000 Personen illegal in der Schweiz aufhalten. Arbeitende Illegal-Anwesende, sind oftmals in der Baubranche, der Landwirtschaft, in Privathaushalten oder im Prostitutionsgewerbe tätig. Dieser Zustand ist für die betroffenen Personen sehr schwierig: als Gegenleistung zu ihrer wirtschaftlichen Tätigkeit erhalten sie zwar einen minimen Lohn, sie können auch in die AHV einbezahlen (jedoch haben sie kein Recht darauf das einbezahlte Geld zu beziehen, sofern der Aufenthalt in der Schweiz illegal ist), gleichzeitig leben sie in der ständigen Angst ertappt zu werden. Paradox ist zusätzlich auch die Situation der Kinder von Sans-papiers: sie dürfen zwar die obligatorische Schule besuchen, jedoch anschliessend (noch keine) Ausbildung beginnen.

Diese Ausführungen sind nur Teilfragen zur der Stellung der Sans-papiers in der Schweiz. Nach wie vor ist hier die Politik gefragt, welche mit den entsprechenden gesetzgeberischen Mitteln handeln muss. Eine erste Hürde hat der Nationalrat in der Frühlingsession genommen, indem er zustimmte, dass den jugendlichen Sans-papiers die Absolvierung einer Lehrausbildung ermöglicht werden soll. Doch was nach einem erfolgreichem Abschluss der Ausbildung geschieht, ist nach wie vor ungewiss.

Quellen:

Bericht zur illegalen Migration vom 23. Juni 2004, www.bfm.admin.ch

Cesla Amarelle, Les migrations économiques sans statut légal: l’environnement normatif des sans-papiers: Migrations et économie, L’accès des étrangers à la vie économique: les normes et leur application (avec Minh Son Nguyen), Pratiques en droit des migrations, Stämpfli Editions SA, Berne, pp. 125-174.

Zur Autorin: Stefanie Tamara Kurt hat an der Universität Bern Jus mit den Schwerpunkten internationales und europäisches Recht studiert. Zur Zeit ist sie Assistentin und Doktorandin am Zentrum für Migrationsrecht der Universität Neuchâtel.

I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon.

Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state.

Yes it is true. They finally figured out a to criminalize breathing.

Looks like Fallopia has a project on her hands. Send us your address, we’ll send you an i.d. button. Gratis!

It is, indeed, disappointing time to be in this country. Although the Governor of Arizona assures her state that “racial profiling will not be used” to enforce the new law making it a crime to be an undocumented body in her state, one wonders how exactly the police can be trained to enforce a law on paperwork by merely looking at people. I guess immigration profiling must be more ethically just in our system than plain old racial profiling.

I mean, we all know how to spot illegal aliens, don’t we? They run fast and speak in tongues. That is reasonable enough suspicion to demand the proper documentation for living on the Arizona land.

Let’s not forget all those vicious little kids getting an education under the protection of Plyler v Doe. Looks like we need to figure out some way to legislate those criminals-in-the-making as well. We better get on top of making an evacuation plan to get them over to New Mexico or California before they all end up in juvy detention.

So the state of AZ is protecting her innocent, law-abiding citizens from becoming tainted by those criminally-minded, sans papiers that threaten to take over and transform their state into a formidable Gotham City of vice and destitution. Call in the League of Shadows for this one. The question is, who will our Batman be? Perhaps he’ll emerge in the form of the trickster Coyote. Obama?

So what to do in the meantime? Button campaigns and boycotting the state of Arizona?

There’s got to more that we can do.

An Iraqi detainee at the police station of Veroia set desparately two matresses on fire; he was saved by the police when they took notice of it.

Another Iraqi at Naousa police station tried to hang himself with his bed sheets.

The third detainee was also an Iraqi, 32 years old, at the border guard station of Georgianoi.   He also tried to hang himself and was saved when his fellow detaineed heard his cries.

source: athens indymedia repost of a Tuesday, March 30,  Rhizospastis newspaper article.

Many thanks to Olga for her help with this.

The transformations of Petrou Ralli Street, or the search for asylum in Greece

26/03/2010 by filoxenoi

The “department of foreigners” at Petrou Ralli is a reference point of the “glorious” policies of the Greek state in terms of asylum granting, as all those that follow the developments in the field know.  It consists of humiliating bureaucracy, indecent treatment, endless waiting hours in queues, no sense of rationality, poor or non-existent medical care, assaults, torture and even murders.

This situation has caused some reactions and resistance. When three refugees were murdered while waiting outside the directorate, refugees and sympathizers gathered and blocked the streets, demonstrated and made the events public. After all this, the ever- efficient people in charge there came up with the solution: to transfer the entrance from Petrou Ralli street to Salamina street - “to better serve” the thousands of people that were gathering to make their applications .  With regard to the process and the realities that these people were facing, absolutely nothing changed, apart from the crucial fact that they were now less visible. The Greek police – which, due to another Greek peculiarity, was responsible for the asylum granting – would be able to experiment as much as it wanted on the bodies and souls of the hundreds of refugees that had already started making the now infamous “queue of Salaminias”, hidden from the indiscreet eyes of various “curious” and “unwanted” passers-by.

In any case, one should not forget that those who managed to get to the end of the Salaminias queue all they were granted was a small paper, by which they could claim having an appointment, usually after several months, occasion at which they could file the application and then have their cases examined and decided upon. One  should also not forget that “out of 15.928 asylum applications presented to Greece in 2009, only 0,04% were accepted and the refugee status was only granted to 0,06% of the cases”.

Over the last months, the immigration policy of the Greek state including the policies on asylum have being going through a process of restructuring and remodeling. One part of the restructuring, at least at an institutional level, seems to be the the law regarding the granting of Greek citizenship to second generation immigrants and the further sealing of the country’s borders.

Regarding the asylum policies, there have been up to now –always socialist- proclamations for the improvement of the process of asylum granting by assigning it to an independent commission, staffed with experts on immigration and asylum issues, interpreters etc., and with the role of the police regulated to be less important.

In the meantime, the queue has disappeared. Not because there are no people in Greece that need protection from their own countries’ regimes, but because the responsible body refuses to take more applications. In other words, whoever goes to the directorate of foreigners at Petrou Ralli, will leave empty handed, in an absurd story of Kafkaesque inspiration. As easily as that, the modern “hospitable” Greek democracy, the one springing directly out of the basic principles of the ancient Greek civilisation of Xenios Zeus, refuses to accept and register the applications for asylum (the access to which, according to the 1951 Geneva Convention on the legal status of refugees, should be undisturbed and the mere expression of seeking asylum by the refugee should be enough for its registration).

As easily as that, the hospitable Greek democracy condemns hundreds of people to live in fear and to be helpless in the hands of the cops that they will encounter. They even face torture and death with their obligatory return to their countries, from which they fought so hard to escape, since the controls and the expulsions from the country are still going on -despite the fact that the asylum procedures have stopped…

photo from athens indymedia

photo from athens indymedia

This followed a similar incident where police harassed two men seeking assistance at a local health centre. The men were tormented and pushed around by the policemen who informed them that they could not use the services at the health centre and that it was “not a health centre for them”. 

The small town of Igoumenitsa has been known in the past for its racially motivated attacks on immigrants. One such attack occurred on an immigrant with severe health problems who was unable to defend himself when police set their dogs on the man (Police brutality once more in Igoumenitsa: Cops let loose their dog against immigrant).

The attacks continue, and as recently as last Wednesday, when an immigrant disembarked a ferry from Italy and was met by waiting port policemen.  

It is alleged the man had been beaten by both the Italian police and security thugs aboard the ferry, before being handed over to the Greek police for further punishment. His injuries were so severe that his internal organs had been seriously damaged by the repeated beatings. 

The situation in Igoumenitsa is out of control with local police using racially motivated violence in a display of abuse against these people’s basic human rights. The Igoumenitsa police continue to raid the immigrant settlement near Ladochori and on March 4 violently attacked six immigrants and left them with serious injuries.  

Igoumenitsa may be an isolated provincial town and the local police may believe their crimes will remain unknown, but they are wrong. Those people in solidarity with immigrants from Western Greece now monitor the situation and speak out against the abuse of innocent people. As the protests on March 2 have shown, nothing will remain in darkness.  

The building is to be an autonomous space for migrants and activists struggling for the right to freedom of movement. It will be host to information-sharing, debate and practical solidarity. The Kronstadt building is located in the town that has become the symbol of Fortress Europe, a place where police arrests and beatings of migrants are a daily occurrence, and where night-time pursuits are relentless.

By this act, they stand in solidarity with those for whom border and immigration control is a discriminatory, oppressive and unjust reality.

The space is not, as the conserative press has dubbed it, a “new Sangatte”. It is a self-organised space. ( see Brighton NoBorders response to the article in the Daily Mail from yesterday: [1] ) Of course, help is needed. If you want to support the space by either travelling to Calais or otherwise, please contact:

noborderslondon@riseup.net

for more information and updates, see

http://london.noborders.org.uk

about the situation in calais, see http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

[1]
press release : http://london.noborders.org.uk/node/282
[2]

http://nobordersbrighton.blogspot.com/2010/01/not-that-old-sangatte-ii-things-again.html