AD HOC GROUP IMMIGRATION: EXISTENCE OF SECRET SUB GROUP REVEALED
The Guardian newspaper has revealed the existence of a previously unknown group of European officials, known as the "expulsion sub group of the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration". The fact of the Ad Hoc group itself is well documented (not least within this publication), but the expulsion sub group is new. According to the newspaper, which has obtained confidential papers of the sub-group, it has agreed a plan to introduce rigorous checks to identify and expel foreign students and residents who take jobs without authorisation. There will also be stricter monitoring of short stay visitors and people allowed to be reunited with their families or to marry a community resident.
After pressure from the new right wing french government, the group agreed at the end of may to toughen the wording of the policy to impose an obligation on states to mount a vigorous programme to detect and expel anyone in breach of the rules. The guardian quotes the document: "It is fundamental to expulsion practices that there should be effective means of identifying and apprehending those to be expelled".
It recommends that people who are not nationals of the EC or of EFTA or members of their families should normally be expelled if they are found to have entered or to have remained unlawfully in a member state; to be liable to expulsion on grounds of public policy or national security; to have failed definitively in an application for asylum; or to have worked in breach of immigration rules. Ministers should also consider taking powers to expel foreigners caught helping or employing illegal immigrants.
To make the policy effective, it says, member states should consider checks on people without residence permits; people with authority to reside but not work; people with limited rights to work; people who work without authorisation after being admitted as short term visitors or tourists; others who have been "authorised to be reunited with their family with a view to living together"; and people who have received a residence or work permit on the basis of marriage to an EC resident.
Glyn Ford, the leader of the British Labour Party MEPs, said: "All this is going to create a climate of fear and encourage the racists and xenophobes who are already damaging the lives of millions".
Source: The Guardian, 26.5.93