argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Albert Owen (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman—my fellow bilingual island MP—on bringing forward the Bill. He used the powerful word "motivation" in his opening remarks. When we see refugees without their families, either in camps or processing centres, we can see the loneliness etched on their faces. When we see them together as a family unit, we see why they are motivated and why they contribute so positively to our communities.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Joanna Meriel Stevens (Labour, Centre-left): I am here to support the hon. Gentleman’s Bill wholeheartedly, on behalf of many of my constituents—of all political persuasions—in Cardiff Central, a city of sanctuary, who have written to me about it. I do not have any concerns about the Bill, but if any Members do, I hope they will leave them until Committee and support the Bill today.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this Bill. Does he agree that as one of the wealthiest countries, we have the capacity to support these people, who are in desperate need, and that what we lack is the political will? That will was demonstrated so well by my predecessor Lord Alf Dubs, who secured the amendment that forced the Government to allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees in.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this Bill. I absolutely support it, as I represent a community that has many, many refugees. Many of us have listened over the years to the holocaust memorial events and heard the stories of the elderly people, as they are now, who came over on the Kindertransport and so on. We have heard the stories of those who survived without their families and how traumatic that was. I am sure the hon. Gentleman has heard, as I have, the stories of those who were able to be connected with their families or some family members after the war and how much of a difference that made. How can one not link those two sets of stories?
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): UNICEF reports that a majority of unaccompanied child migrants have been subjected to sexual abuse on their journey to the UK. We have an obligation as a country to support young people who are going through the most appalling times.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his important speech. Is he aware that this issue is cited in some areas as the reason why Italy and Greece are not placing children and child refugees in the UK as part of the Dubs amendment? Those countries are concerned that while the children would be able to be reunited with their family in any other country in Europe, that would not be possible in the United Kingdom. Some 240 places offered by local authorities are empty as a result, and we are not filling those Dubs places because there is such a gap between the UK’s position and that of the rest of Europe.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Victoria Jane Foxcroft (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on introducing the Second Reading of his Bill. Many of us in the House feel very strongly about this subject, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make my own contribution to the debate Like many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are here today, I suspect, my interest in this Bill comes from personal experiences gained at my advice surgery. Lewisham, Deptford has more than its fair share of immigration casework, and many of the cases that my staff and I deal with are very troubling. However, it is those that fall within the scope of the Bill which are often the most traumatic In December last year, I met a Somali woman who is caring for her four nieces and nephews in Lewisham, after their father was murdered in front of them and their mother back home in Somalia. The mother disappeared for several years, until it was discovered that she had sought asylum in Cyprus. She is experiencing deteriorating physical health, as well as suffering mentally from the trauma of seeing her husband murdered. My constituent is in the process of trying to reunite her sister with her children, but under current rules, the sister has to undergo the lengthy, stressful and costly process of applying for a visa to settle here The Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network is an excellent but overstretched and under-resourced service in my constituency.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Eleanor Claire Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): I know of the great work that the Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network has done in our borough. Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising the work of Action for Refugees in Lewisham, which I am sure will be assisted by the provisions of the Bill in helping some of the most vulnerable to be resettled in south London?
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Victoria Jane Foxcroft (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend and absolutely agree. We have so many wonderful organisations in Lewisham that do so much great work The Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network recently told me about a woman from Gambia who fled and claimed asylum in the UK with her youngest child in 2011, after finding out that Government forces were looking for her husband and family. Although she has now been reunited with her husband and one other child, her eldest daughter turned 18 in the intervening years and has not been allowed to join her family in the UK. A further child also remains in Gambia. These are vulnerable people. As my hon. Friends will know, it is stressful enough to negotiate the Home Office system without adding the extra difficulties associated with having suffered significant trauma. The cost of making a visa application and instructing an immigration solicitor is also a significant barrier for many If Members will allow me, I will lighten the mood slightly and say that I am proud of the great work that my local council, the London Borough of Lewisham, has been doing to support refugees. After formally agreeing to join the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement programme in September 2016, Lewisham Council has housed 15 families from Syria, which, last time I checked, was the second highest number of any London borough. Lewisham Council also informs me that it has offered 24 care places for unaccompanied refugee children, but the Home Office has only used one of them. That is completely unacceptable.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Victoria Jane Foxcroft (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, that is completely unacceptable. We have a council that is willing to help, and no doubt hundreds of vulnerable children need that help I will conclude, because I want us to get on and vote on the Bill. Like many or perhaps all of us here today, I firmly believe that if a child refugee has been granted the right to be in the UK, his or her parents or carers should also be granted that right. Equally, children who grew up in this country with a parent who has a right to live here should be allowed that right, even after they reach the age of 18. The Bill would enable both those things to happen, while also providing vital financial support in the form of legal aid. Families are being torn apart by the current rules, and that simply has to change.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Other
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): Since the hon. Gentleman is giving us a history lesson, does he not agree that the best example in history of a mother sending off her child on a perilous journey is that of Jochebed placing Moses in a basket because she feared what would happen to him? Should the hon. Gentleman not be drawing on such examples, rather than telling us about his fears for push or pull factors?
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Other
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with most of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. There is another problem: people are led to believe that the process takes 13 weeks, but we know it takes months. That often causes unnecessary hardship, delay and anxiety.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Mohammed Afzal Khan (Labour, Centre-left): Let me begin by thanking the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) for introducing the Bill and thanking all the other Members who support it I want to put on record my thanks to Oxfam, the Red Cross, the Refugee Council, UNHCR, Amnesty International and many other charities for their campaigning on this issue. This coalition of charities shows the breadth and strength of support for refugee family reunion. This morning, many Members have put forward clear and convincing arguments in support of today’s Bill. I will use my time, which will be brief because I want to ensure that we have a vote, to outline why the Bill appeals to Labour values of fairness, respecting human rights and protecting the vulnerable in our society, and why we will therefore be supporting it The Labour party believes in respect for human rights, which are at the centre of our approach to foreign policy, development and the treatment of migrants and refugees on our soil. That includes the right to family life. At the moment, the definition of who is considered "close family" for the purposes of family reunion is narrow. It includes the spouse or partner of an adult refugee, and their dependent children under the age of 18. It does not include young siblings, elderly parents or older dependent children.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that allowing families to sponsor their immediate family would be an easy change to implement? It would affect a small number of child refugees, but it would have a transformational impact on how we treat them in this country.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I have a very similar case. A young architect called Samira escaped from Syria. She was separated from her husband Samir, but he finally, with help from my office, managed to get to this country. They are both practising architects, now contributing to the country, but they escaped war-torn Syria and were separated. This Bill will enable other such families and couples to thrive and contribute to our country.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Gillian Furniss (Labour, Centre-left): I stand proudly today in support of the Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on his determination in bringing the Bill forward, despite some efforts from people in this Chamber to show little empathy and to frustrate this process. I support this Bill for my refugee and migrant constituents, and for their loved ones unable to join them. This Bill will give a lifeline to families torn apart, first, by conflict, and, then again, by our unfair and nonsensical immigration rules. Currently, refugees can be joined only by parents or by children under the age of 18. Unaccompanied minors in the UK cannot currently sponsor anyone to join them. This Bill will expand who qualifies as "family" so that vulnerable people, such as the elderly and children over the age of 18, may be able to reunite with their families in the UK, and it will allow unaccompanied children, who have to adjust to life in the UK without a single family member there to support them, to sponsor relatives to join them I support this Bill because some of my constituents do not know when they will see their families again. Abdul Charif, a young man from Syria, came to study in the UK in 2006, but when he attempted to return to his home town after his studies he was forced to flee again and make the perilous journey back to the UK. He settled in Sheffield and applied for a visa to visit his family, who had made it past the Syrian border to Turkey, but he was rejected. He sought help from every agency and organisation available to try to be reunited with his family, but to no avail. In 2016, the Government brought in the vulnerable persons relocation scheme. Abdul applied, and later that year he was finally informed that his family had been registered and that his case has been passed to the Home Office. Two years on, and six years after attempting to see his loved ones, he has yet to receive a single piece of correspondence telling him when exactly his family can join him It is hard to believe, but Abdul and his family are considered some of the lucky ones. When I asked why his family eventually qualified for the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, he told me that his elderly parents had developed serious health problems, in part because his older brother was tragically killed by a handmade bomb. They are considered the lucky ones, and they are still waiting. I cannot imagine what Abdul and his family have gone through. I also cannot imagine the grief and worry that he could have been saved had he been aided by a process which from the start had regarded his parents and sister as "family" in the way that we would for any citizen, as they might very well be with him today I support this Bill because children are missing their grandparents, their uncles and aunts, and their siblings. In November, 21 pupils from Byron Wood Academy in Sheffield wrote to me about the injustice of our immigration rules, and many of them are refugees or have parents who arrived in this country as refugees and then settled.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Gillian Furniss (Labour, Centre-left): That is a fair point, and it is an aspiration of mine to see that everyone has the right to be reunited with their family. As I was saying, many of these children are growing up never knowing their relatives. They are just children, but even they could point out that the British Government are not adhering to article 10 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, which says that if you live in a different country from your parents, you have the right to be together in the same place. These pupils urged me to challenge the Government’s double standard on who qualifies as "family" when someone is a refugee. So please, answer me: why should UK citizens be able to call their grandmothers and grandfathers, and their siblings and cousins "family", given that this right is not afforded to refugees? Why should unaccompanied child refugees not be allowed to sponsor anyone to come over and live with them Members should imagine fleeing their war-torn home, risking their life to get to the UK, and trying to start their life over again in a foreign country, and the trauma that they would experience. They should imagine growing up and experiencing the difficulties and turbulence of adolescence while also having to learn to cook, clean, read and write, all without having their parent there to guide them; and then imagine being told that their family cannot join them. I cannot imagine that—in my opinion, that is too much for anyone to bear We do not have any Government statistics on specific refugee family reunion applications, although we know that they now make up the majority of refugee applications. That in itself is telling. We are not paying enough attention to the issues that matter to refugees in this country. We are not giving them the support that they need to help them to rebuild their lives I am so proud of Sheffield and our legacy of welcoming refugees. Sheffield has so far provided a home to more than 1,500 refugees since 2014 and it is one of the areas in which the vulnerable persons resettlement programme is operating. But we can do more, so let us rectify this. Let us vote with the spirit of Sheffield and pass the Bill, so that our families can start to rebuild their lives.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend agree that taking the refugee element out of scope through LASPO has had an adverse impact? The Bill is merely trying to reintroduce something that was there before LASPO took it away and would be greatly beneficial to people applying for a family reunion.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is exactly right. To be honest, it is hard for anybody to navigate our immigration system or asylum system, but for someone who is trying to pull together their family and has been through very difficult circumstances, not being able to get any kind of legal aid makes it so much harder The next argument that people use is to say that this is going to create a pull factor, and that it will somehow make things much worse. There are three strong responses to that. First, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) argued, this is only about those who have already demonstrated that they meet all the criteria for being refugees. There are tests in the system already. They have shown that they have been fleeing persecution or conflict, and it is now simply about their ability to reunite with their family. Many of them have come through the legal resettlement process that the Government have rightly brought in and extended, and that we all support.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. I pay huge tribute to the work he has been doing Secondly, the current system encourages trafficking. It encourages illegal routes and dangerous routes because there is not a safe and legal route for people to travel on. The concern of the family I spoke to whose daughter is in Lebanon—this was some time ago—was that they were going to face a choice about whether to try and find a route through with smugglers or with traffickers to get her reunited with them because they did not have a legal route. The problem is that we are already driving people into the arms of traffickers and exploitation, and we should not do that.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Lady is exactly right. When people have been through such difficult experiences, and lost the home that they all shared, to be separated across the globe is so much harder—and at a time when they need their family the most My third response to the pull factor argument is that we are, in effect, saying to people, "You have to suffer more in order to deter others." We are saying to those who have suffered the most already that they have to suffer more by not being reunited with their families because we are convinced that that might deter some fictional people who we think are going to respond in a particular way, when there is no evidence to show that. When there is real hardship and real hurt for families who are not being reunited, let us not make them suffer more for the sake of deterring others when there is no evidence that that will happen.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): If the hon. Gentleman was going to make that argument convincingly, he would be making the same argument about the 19-year-old, the 20-year-old, the 30-year-old and the 50-year-old. The problem is the evidence. We must remember that other countries across Europe have these rules about family reunion in place, and we do not see it becoming a pull factor to Hungary, Poland or all sorts of other countries.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): We have to remember that what happened in Germany was at a time when we had huge migration out of Syria by people desperately fleeing at the height of the conflict and a lack of proper support in Turkey, so a huge number of people were crossing the Mediterranean at that time. It was very unusual circumstances and an unusual period I think all of us would want to ensure that migration, in particular for those who are fleeing, should be provided through legal, safe and settled routes. That is why I support the Government’s Syrian resettlement scheme. It is far better to have legal, safe routes than unmanaged or illegal routes through trafficking and so on. All of that must be right. However, we can ensure that we have a legal, managed scheme to help refugees, and that is exactly what the Bill is all about. It is about having a legal settlement route, not unmanaged migration routes. We know that if we do not have legal family reunion resettlement routes, that is when we get people falling into the hands of traffickers, and that is what increases the number of illegal and dangerous journeys For example, on all the visits that I took to Calais, which was an awful and bleak place with so many young people, pretty much every young person I spoke to had family in Britain. They were trying to get to Britain through these awful, dangerous routes because they were trying to be reunited with family and with people to keep them safe. They were not trying to make the journey to bring other people; they were trying to be reunited. The current system, without that legal family route, is what is causing so many problems.
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I want to conclude, because I know that many Members want to speak In the end, this is about our humanity. We all believe that the close relationships of love, family, commitment and a sense of obligation are at the heart of what makes us human beings and at the heart of who we are. That is at the heart of the values that brought all of us, from both sides of the House, into this place, to have debates like this and argue about issues like this. We should keep those values of commitment, obligation to one another, love, respect and support for our families at the heart of our refugee programme. That is all the Bill is trying to do. If Members want to amend it or add some safeguards, they by all means should do so in Committee, when we get to that stage, but let us support the values of family now.
Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Other
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this Bill. Time is short, and we know how Friday shenanigans can sometimes work. Given the high level of public and cross-party support, it is incumbent on the Government and, in particular, Conservative Back Benchers, to make sure that this Bill passes its Second Reading before we adjourn.
Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): Obviously, £2 billion has been lost since I last looked. That underlines the big picture. Unite the Union says that there has been a sixfold increase in complaints about the practice in the past three years. Indeed, the personal stories of exploitation collected by the hon. Gentleman chime with many of us, as we have heard today, through the experiences of our constituents, our own children and our local communities.