From: Alan MacSimoin <amcsmoin at tcd.ie> Date: Wednesday, 19 May 1999 9:10 Subject: Tony Blair's Britain deports 4 per hour
A total of 34,775 persons were kicked out of the UK in 1998 - 668 persons per week - 4 persons per hour.
A 25 year old Kosovan student arrived at Heathrow en route for Canada in February. She was pregnant with her first child and still traumatised by seeing the Serbs destroy her home.Although she was with her husband, she had been forced to leave the rest of her family behind and had no idea whether they were alive .However, the couple had made the mistake of becoming Kosovan refugees before the war with Serbia had made them politically fashionable.
When they were caught at Heathrow using false Greek passports, they said they wished to claim asylum, but instead were arrested for using false documents in transit, separated and sent to prison. She has just been released from Holloway, where the insanitary conditions made her ill and the isolation made her depressed. Her husband was sent to Wormwood Scrubs where he remains, although he may be released with an electronic tag this month.
* 'Crimes of arrival: immigrants and asylum-seekers in the new Europe'
by Frances Webber Essential reading on the European wide
criminalisation of asylum seekers. Available from Statewatch, PO Box
1516, London N16 OEW Tel 0181 802 1882 http://www.statewatch.org/