The Future of Immigration Legal Help
posted: 05/08/2010
Face the Facts on Radio 4 explores the tough problems effective community immigration and asylum advice organisations are facing from the government. Free immigration and asylum legal help is under threat from government policy and practice. The programme includes Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who do so much to help many people living with HIV.
Immigration advice in crisis
An asylum seeker takes his own life after his lawyers go into administration; a man and his family are thrown into detention because they've unwittingly been given false papers by an unscrupulous immigration adviser; a woman who's fled torture but hasn't been able to see her children for years because of bungling lawyers.
Their experiences cost them money and heartache. But poor legal advice can cost all of us in the long run if wrongly advised clients end up appealing their decision, or people, who've been told incorrectly that they can stay, then have to be removed from the country at the taxpayers' expense.
Government cuts and changes imperil lives
Changes to the way legal aid is paid have made the system "unsustainable". Asylum lawyers can now wait years for legal aid payments to be settled.
John Waite talks to some of the hundreds of committed advisers who have been forced out of their jobs because they either can't make it pay - or can't do the job properly any more. And he asks the Legal Services Commission to justify a false economy and a failure of justice.
Listen Again
This Face the Facts programe (half an hour long) was broadcast this lunchtime (Thu 5 August) but it is repeated on Sunday 8 Aug at 9pm in the evening on BBC Radio 4
You can also Listen Now online
This article in the Guardian discusses the need for better decisions by the UK Borders Agency on asylum claims because poor intial decisions add to legal aid bills for appeals.
Permalink