Author Archives: James Harper

James Harper

Opinion: Thinking about “foreign criminals”

By James Harper | Wed 1st May 2013 - 11:57 am

Watching the recent episode of ‘Dispatches’ on Channel 4 entitled ‘Inside Immigration’, got me thinking a bit about attitudes towards ‘foreign criminals’ in the UK. The idea of the programme was that undercover reporters worked as temps in the UK Border Agency’s processing offices and gave the inside story on the chaos and disorganisation there.

Halfway through, during a ‘pause for thought’ about the real consequences of maladministration, the narrator piped up: ‘Gabriella’s story as a shocking example of what the human cost can be when things go wrong’ at the UKBA’. But the story was somehow not what I was expecting- …

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Posted in News | 9 Comments
James Harper

Opinion: We must prevent another immigration “legacy”

By James Harper | Wed 9th January 2013 - 11:53 am

Is there an amnesty for illegal immigrants? Keith Vaz seems determined to prove that there is, although so far without success. But the reality behind the bluster is rather more serious.

In 2007 the Home Office ‘found’ (or so the apocryphal tale goes) 500,000 asylum cases which had not been dealt with, ‘lying around’ in a room in the depths of Lunar House, Croydon.  This backlog was termed the ‘legacy’ of unresolved asylum cases.

A new department was set up and given the grisly task of looking at and resolving these cases, some of which had been untouched for over 10 years. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 11 Comments
James Harper

Opinion: Immigration service must do more to protect human dignity

By James Harper | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 2:25 pm

The UK Border Agency’s recent decision to hire G4S and Serco to deliver the housing scheme for asylum seekers is not only a bad one in its own right. It is symptomatic of the deep inadequacy of an organisation that exists purely to deal with people, but which lacks the same standards and people-focused ethos we expect of other organisations responsible for looking after human beings.

Last week we discovered that asylum seekers in the Midlands have had their doors painted red by the company responsible for housing and accommodating them, G4S. G4S did not think this would be a problem. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 5 Comments



Recent Comments

  • User AvatarEddie Sammon 19th May - 10:56pm
    Same goes towards investigating phone hacking.
  • User AvatarEddie Sammon 19th May - 10:52pm
    It's not all that bad if the Sun don't do a full page apology in this pretty much none story. I'm not an anarcho capitalist...
  • User AvatarCllr Mark Wright 19th May - 10:44pm
    If only we could have some l kind of judge-led inquiry into media lies that could come up with some kind of solution to this...
  • User AvatarEddie Sammon 19th May - 10:33pm
    I think we can and should become a more equal world, my point was to say I don't think there is anything wrong with making...
  • User AvatarDavid Evans 19th May - 9:56pm
    "... judging by the lack of internal criticism of Clegg and co by their grassroots activists." Well that seems to sum up perfectly how much...