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One to think about while it is so quiet here, I can't reply till later sorry going out, But this struck me as it is so often only too easy to forget the 'individual' and lump everyone together under a specific banner..in this case 'migrants' or 'asylum seekers' xx
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8555763.stm
'I fear every knock on my door'
By Joanne Macaulay
BBC Scotland news website
Ledia Tewelde jumped out of her flat window last year
Ledia Tewelde sobs as she arrives at the spot where three people apparently jumped from the 15th floor of a block of flats in Glasgow.
She understands how they may have felt, because last year she jumped out of a flat window as the pressure of being an asylum seeker became too much for her.
Ledia is 22 and from Eritrea - the country she fled because of fear of religious persecution.
She has been in Glasgow for four years, but she still does not know whether or not she can stay, and she fears any knock at the door.
"We're coming to this country for safety but there's no safety here - I'm scared all the time."
Ledia jumped out of the window when she heard a knock at the door one night.
She feared it was perhaps the Home Office coming to deport her, or just someone else with a grudge against asylum seekers.
So she jumped, breaking both legs and fracturing her back.
Scotland has not turned out to be the safe haven she had hoped for, but she said she does not want to go back to Eritrea.
"It's a very bad situation in my country.
I am protestant and the government would put me in jail," she said.
For many of the asylum seekers living in the Red Road flats it is the uncertainty which is stressful.
They do not know whether or not they will have to return to the country they left, and as they await decisions they are unable to work, often living on food vouchers.
A Liberian woman cuddles her two-year-old son as she pauses to look at the candles and signs which have been placed where the three people died.
"I'm scared they might come to get me," she said in reference to the Home Office.
Tina has been here for two-and-a-half years, having fled Liberia because her family wanted to perform a circumcision on her.
Her application for asylum has been refused, and she says life is very difficult.
She said: "The Home Office don't even look at people's cases any more, they just refuse."
She dreads having to return to Liberia: "Since I've disobeyed my parents there's no home for me.
"The police told me 'your father is right, this is our culture'."
Tina is now living on food vouchers, which leaves no money for clothes or other extras.
"I will face what I have to," she said.
But she added: "If I have to go home I will have my son adopted here."
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Hello Rose,
It is a terribly distressing event. I appreciate that there are genuine asylum seekers in the UK who are still waiting for their cases to be heard and some who have had their application rejected and are either waiting for the knock on the door or have tried to disappear.
With so many resources being applied to finding illegal immigrants (and let's be honest, there are tens of thousands at least) money is not available to investigate every case thoroughly.
Those illegals who are deported return and the UK immigration service seem unable to detect those people on re-entry. Once again resources are spent on 'finding' them again albeit by accident.
If, and this may not be a popular opinion, when illegals are discovered they are immediately deported this will save funds and these funds can be applied to a thorough investigation of genuine asylum seekers and afford them justice. Weekly reporting whilst waiting for deportation does not work!
I am in favour of all personal information being held on a central data base, including fingerprints and iris recognition. Yes, I know the set up costs would be HUGE and probably unworkable but I really don't have the answer.
I do know that the UK' system is in a damn mess and is unfair to genuine immigrants.
Sue xx
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As said previously, it is sad, However, Why do they always come here? how many other Countries have they passed through to get here where they are legally allowed to claim Asylum? and why don,t they, **M**.
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No idea Merlin and don't much care - I'm just very grateful I haven't had to walk in their shoes.
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I think that were it me ( grammatically should that be 'I' ?) I would not go to the first country I came to, but the one furthest away on the grounds that sending me back would be more difficult...also I would go to the country with the better reputation for tolerance and compassion...........
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How true this is I don't know but I read that the three poor people (Mother, Father and son) who jumped had originally been granted asylum in Canada but had fallen out with somebody or fallen foul of the law or something and fled to UK. It is very sad that they should be so frightened that they would jump from such a great height.
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I have heard the thing that the family had been granted asylum in Canada originally but had problems with the authorities and I'm not sure of the relevance - doesn't make it any less sad in my eyes.
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No relevance really Uggers except if they could have stayed in Canada they would probably still be alive.
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I'm not seeing the thread on General so maybe I can just add this here about the family of three who had previously been in Canada.
Asylum/refugee status systems unfortunately attract various kinds of people other than refugees / people in need of protection. I practised this law for a long time and I saw many.
The simple exploiters are one category. They don't want to go home -- in many cases, none of us could blame them for that -- so they claim to be refugees, knowing that the systems are so underfunded/overloaded that they will have two or three years or more before they finally lose their claim. The more of them who do that, the more bogged down the system gets ...
The mentally ill are another. I had a client from the US who had been through the refugee system over and over and over for more than a decade. She was nuts, but she was harmless and quite pleasant, and even a contributor -- she was constantly getting embroiled in battles with the public transit people and such, over barriers to people with disabilities.
But not all are as harmless as her. I had a client, an Iranian woman married to an Ethiopian man. They had met in Germany where he had been granted asylum, and had two children there. He decided to move the family to Canada, much as the Russian family in Glasgow had moved from Canada - purely for his own irrational reasons. My client's husband was dangerously nuts; he physically abused her, and abused their son and daughter physically and sexually. He threatened me when I had the court deny him access to them; the police in the neighbouring town where he lived told me to call *them* if he appeared at my home, as I was having nightmares that he would do. He was eventually deported to Germany (since he had come from there), but not before trying to molest a child in the airport washroom.
So the family in Glasgow - the father had a delusional mental illness.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/glasgow-fall-asylum-canada-russian
Three people who fell to their deaths from a Glasgow tower block on Sunday are believed to have been Russian nationals who had been trying to claim asylum in the UK from Canada.
A source close to the case said the three were a father, aged 43 and named Serykh, believed to be a former member of the Russian security services, a mother, and a son in his early 20s. The source said it was a highly unusual case.
The family are said to have been trying to claim asylum in the UK from Canada, which had reportedly given them leave to stay but had denied them citizenship. They are said to have first arrived in the UK in November 2007 and came to Glasgow in autumn last year.
The Daily Mail may have a bit more up to date info - it seems reliable:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256136/Three-asylum-seekers-die-Glasgow-high-rise-flat-leap.html
The mother, father and son had been granted asylum in Canada but left after a dispute with the authorities there.
The father, who was today named locally as 43-year-old Serge Serykh, was believed to be suffering from severe mental health problems.
He had claimed to be a member of the Russian secret service who had uncovered a plot by the Canadian government to kill the Queen.
... A source told the Daily Record: 'The father became ill and he was convinced the Canadian PM and Vladimir Putin were exchanging intelligence and that the Canadians were after him.'
The family left Canada in 2007 and in ten days travelled to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bremen, Barcelona and Dublin before arriving in London. Here they contacted an MP, claiming Canada's prime minister was plotting against the Queen.
The father also claimed the family would be killed if they returned to Canada - and that mind-altering 'psychotronic weapons' had been used on them.
When I was in practice, we all knew of something called "Eastern European syndrome". People who believed they were being persecuted by Stasi or the KGB ... undoubtedly some people were, but these people were in fact suffering from a delusional mental illness and fixated on this particular social phenomenon in authoritarian states.
Obviously, the UK does not grant asylum *from Canada*, any more than we in Canada grant asylum from the UK. (As far as not granting him citizenship, hm, I'd need quite a bit more detail on that.)
The story is extremely unfortunate. But really the problem in this particular case is how a society's various systems and institutions deal with the severely mentally ill (which is not an easy problem), rather than how the UK's asylum system fails people. Housing them in tall buildings in the sky may be one unwise idea ...
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regarding the flats that the family jumped from , apparently they are being used as temporary housing until their scheduled demolition:
"Several of the blocks in this area are let out to the YMCA who house asylum seekers and refugees seeking leave to remain. "
"All eight tower blocks in the Red Road complex, which are up to 30 storeys high, are due to be demolished in a phased programme which will start in the spring.
They were the tallest tower blocks in Europe at the time they were built in the 1960s. "
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It does seem strange that, if he was known to be mentally disturbed, they were put in a high rise flat where, I believe there have been previous suicides by jumping.
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