An Emergency Fund?
During the coverage of the Roma families moving out of their homes near the Village, attention was focussed on the legal anomaly concerning migrants from the so called A2 states, Romania and Bulgaria. Since their home countries joined the European Union, people from the A2 states can travel and live here, but they are meant to register to work and cannot claim welfare benefits. That's why the Housing Executive didn't step in to provide accommodation for the families, beyond temporary emergency shelter.
Today the Human Rights Commission called on the government to revisit this policy in a report entitled "No Home from Home". The key conclusion of the Commission is that "the Government's approach in this area should mirror international human rights standards. Therefore, the Commission recommends
that, regardless of nationality or immigration status, everyone within the territory of the
UK should have access to an adequate standard of living sufficient for that person
and their dependents. It further recommends that public authorities should take all appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to the maximum of their available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of this right. In particular, no one should be allowed to fall into destitution. For the purpose of ensuring these recommendations, the Government should ensure that everyone has access to
appropriate emergency accommodation."
Sinn Fein's Jennifer McCann has welcomed the report calling for the creation of an emergency fund to "help people who have come to live in Ireland and through a bad turn of circumstance face being homeless, take sick or are left vulnerable and who cannot access those services through normal channels due to their immigration status."
So far none of the other parties have dropped their thoughts into my in box, but perhaps, notwithstanding the arguments of an NIHRC spokeswoman on Good Morning Ulster this morning, they fear that the financial implications of opening the welfare system to people "regardless of nationality or immigration status" may be too onerous to contemplate.
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Mark:
I would have thought that the Authorities would have an emergency fund available for things like this....Come up unexpectedly...
=Dennis Junior=
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Mark,
I think that there should only be an emergency fund for the people who live in Northern Ireland and not those who come here seeking either work or benefits. If people who do come here who are from a foreign land then their consulate should help them not the local tax payer. I feel in the case of the Roma's they have made a laughing stock out of the Minister for Social Development. There was Ms Ritchie lapping up the media attention for helping those people who were evicted and sending them home as they had no money. 4 weeks later they were back. Where did they get the money? Did they approach DSD offering to pay money back? I very much doubt it.
Mark as you know the media is a powerful tool which can bias people's opinion. In this case when the Roma's were stealing the local's cars and breaking into their houses this was never reported on by the media. On one evening a terrified resident emailed the Belfast Telegraph to say that he lived in the Donegal Road. The person was awakened at 4.25pm by a man smashing bricks through his front door glass to gain access to his house. He made straight for the car keys and started to drive the poor man's car away. As he give chase while getting his feet cut to shreds in the process, the man's accomplice brandished a knife and shouted at him in a foreign language. What was the Police response to this? The usual reports, and finger printing. CID never turned up.
What kind of way is that to treat the local people? I am sure if it was the other way round the local would be a villain and it would be all over the biased media.
Stormontspy
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How typical of a body like the Human Rights Commission to come up with a report that recommends committing countless millions of Pounds of other people's money in an effort to house everyone in the UK - why stop there? Why not house the whole world? Provide a World Health Service (now that even failed asylum seekers are entitled to free treatment, we almost do)
Do these people not know that the UK is almost bankrupt and borrowing money for our grandchildren to repay?
No other country does this. Basically, if non-EU residents (or A2 residents such as these who do not have full EU rights) do not like it here or cannot pay their way they are free to go home to where they came from.
It is no wonder the UK is such a magnet for illegal immigration, no wonder asylum seekers queue up in France to get over here rather than claim asylum in France or wherever else they first landed, as they are supposed to do - they know there is a better life here courtsey of people like the Human Rights Commission.
Result - we erect ever higher barriers to enter the UK, all legal entrants to the UK are put through ever more inconvenience at queues at ports and airports just trying to go about their daily business,in a vain effort to keep out those who are trying to get here illegally.
This is of course especially relevant to Northern Ireland. If the UK Government has its way (it has thankfully been thwarted by the House of lords for now) it will check passports between NI and Britain, so illegals will obviously find it best to go to the Republic, then cross the open land border,and claim asylum in NI...rather than try to cross the Irish Sea again.
The solution is not to close borders - and certainly not the Irish land border - but to open them, but at the same time make it much less attractive in terms of health care, housing and benefits once they get here, and to stop employers employing them. The message would soon get around that the UK is not a soft touch anymore and the flood slow to a trickle.
My message may sound heartlees, but in reality it is not all. If we in the UK wish to help people in poorer countries get better education, housing and healthcare, I am all in favour - but by providing that help in their own countries, where money can be spent more fairly and will go alot further in helping a larger number of people.
I realise of course Mark that, as Romanians, the people you refer to were legally here, so my comments on illegal entrants will not apply to them, and their own particular need was not forseeable by them.
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