Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

90 Open Borders
only after they have ‘overstayed’ their students’ or visitors’ visas. Those who
apply for asylum on entry are usually interviewed by an immigration officer
based at the port of entry (a term that includes airports), who will have
received minimal training in asylum matters, and who carries out an initial
examination, usually without the presence of a lawyer but with interpreters
who may or may not be accurate, and passes a transcript of this interview to
the Asylum Division for determination. The immigration officials at the ports
and airports also have the right to decide, on their own authority, whether
asylum applicants should be detained or, alternatively, granted ‘temporary
admission’; in the latter case they may be required to sign on at police
stations at regular intervals. If the Home Office’s Asylum Division turns down
an application, or decides that the applicant has travelled through a ‘safe’
country to which he or she should be returned without the application being
considered, the asylum seeker has a right to appeal to the Immigration
Appeals Authority (IAA). Appeals are heard by a single adjudicator,
appointed by the Home Office, who is not always legally trained and may be,
for example, a retired colonial officer. Adjudicators accept on average about
10 per cent of the appeals. Legal aid is available for the preparation of appeals
but, before January 2000, was not available for representation at appeal
hearings. If the appeal is turned down, asylum seekers can ask for leave to
appeal, on a point of law only, to a three-member Immigration Appeals
Tribunal (IAT), appointed by the Lord Chancellor’s office. In 1994 the IAT
overturned just over 11 per cent of the adjudicators’ decisions. Under
Labour’s Act, vouchers and accommodation will no longer be provided
during this second appeal stage. Sometimes, if the right to appeal is refused,
asylum seekers can apply for judicial review in the High Court. There are
time limits on putting in appeals at each stage, but the Home Office may delay
for months or years before responding to an application or setting an appeal
hearing date.
Good legal representation cannot prevent the majority of applications,
many of them fully justified, being turned down. But asylum seekers who
find themselves with incompetent and perhaps dishonest solicitors, who do
no work for the legal aid payments they get and then leave them alone at
their appeal hearings, almost invariably lose their appeals. If asylum seekers
are themselves extremely articulate and skilled they may possibly succeed
in defeating the Home Office and winning their appeal. This was the case for
an Ivoirien activist and socialist who, having rapidly learnt English, singlehandedly
convinced an adjudicator that he was the one in a hundred
political fugitives from repression in the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) who
should have refugee status. Whether or not an asylum seeker has a good
lawyer is itself a lottery. Some have the luck to be befriended by determined
supporters or visitors to detention centres who succeed in getting better legal
representation for them. Their lawyer may then, for example, take the
trouble of going to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture
and obtaining evidence that they have been tortured, and sometimes appear