Racist laws claim fresh victim

Scan page 4

Most brazen example of licence to kill: Bloody Sunday, 1972 A Pakistani worker who has been living and working in Britain for more than six years was seized by immigration police last week and bundled from the hospital where he worked Heathrow.

The plan by the immigration authorities was to get him on a plane to Pakistan before any protest could be raised.

Farooq Chaudry, a porter at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford for the past four years, had just come off duty and was returning to his room when the immigration police arrived.

They told him he was being deported immediately as an illegal immigrant.

The arrest was seen by a fellow porter who raised the alarm.

Harrassed

Chaudry is just one of thousands of Asians each year who are harrassed by immigration officials.

He arrived in Britain in 1972 in the boot of a car, smuggled through immigration by a man who dumped him in Bradford to fend for himself.

For years he has lived in the twilight of legality in Britain backing down from demanding any rights for fear be discovered.

Meanwhile in Pakistan his father died and his family were growing up and he could not leave the country to visit them.

Last year, before the Labour Government brought: the amnesty to a halt, he decided to apply under it for permission to stay.

For months the Home Office told him that his appeal was being processed.

Lawyers acting on his behalf said that evidence he had presented showing that he was living in Bradford in 1972 was Whitelaw SPECI FOR RE SPG being examined.

In fact immigration officials made one visit to the home of the builder he had been working for in Bradford, and finding him out refused to discuss the matter with his wife and spoke to the builder only on the phone.

Without telling Chaudry or his lawyers that his application was unsuccessful they moved in to arrest him.

The case has been protested against by NUPE and Oxford Trades Council.

Even the Tory MP for Oxford John Patten, has protested that he should have been allowed time to pack.

Now the Home Office has suspended deportation for a week while they 'reexamine' the evidence.

Meanwhile Chaudry is being held in Pentonville Prison.

Under the racist immigration laws of Britain Chaudry has to prove he was in Britain in 1972 -the latest date for which the amnesty applies.

The immigration officiais do not have to provide any evidence that he was not here then, and there is no court appeal against a purely administrative decision.

In taking up the case and in defending what is in fact a legal right to be in Britain, NUPE must be pushed to make the connection between this one individual case and the racist immigration laws which have been supported by Tory and Labour governments.

There is only one way to prevent workers finding some illegal way to travel to a country which offers them a chance to improve their standard of living.

That is to end the racist immigration laws and defend the right of workers to travel where they will in the world.

End all immigration laws! Disband the immigration department!

Last week the Guardian revealed that special marks are being put on passports by immigration officers to indicate secretly, and unknown to the passport holders, that they consider they might be a threat to national security or an illegal immigrant.

FOR MOR REMEMBER BLOODY SUNDAY DERRY IRELA REMEMBER PLOODY SUNDAY DERRY 1972 PHOTO: Vernon St. Hilaire, IFL

----- pull-quotes -----

woman worker Now paper gives a lead to women's fight against Tory attacks

ASSAMAT PARA HOR BACK