North of the Stupid Line

This?

Or this?

This morning I had the pleasure of visiting the Asylum Unit at the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon. I attended with a client who was making an asylum application.

It was a real eye-opener. The attitudes of the staff there was appalling; their lack of communication skills and common courtesy was disappointing. Although I wasn’t an asylum seeker or an immigrant seeking support from the Home Office, I felt like a third class citizen. That’s right, a British citizen felt like a third-class citizen. If I felt like that, how do you think asylum seekers and immigrants feel when they attend the IND?

There are permanent queue lanes set at the entrance to the IND, while under cover, exposed to the elements. Today saw gale force winds, and they were hurling through the queue lanes, where we were waiting for about 30 minutes. At least we didn’t get wet. Surely it wouldn’t be too much trouble to have queue lanes inside a building? At least it would be warmer. What if it had been a typical winter’s day, with temperatures close to freezing?

Once inside, my client, the interpreter and myself had to undergo no less than three security checks. Yes, THREE. Although understandable given the volatile nature of the work of the IND and the current political climate, three does seem a little excessive.

Once through to the Asylum Unit, my client had to wait about 45 minutes before being seen by an officer. That was fair enough given that there were quite a few asylum seekers in the waiting area. When we got to the counter, which was glass screened and communication through a microphone and speakers, the officer didn’t introduce herself, and didn’t have a welcoming or polite manner. It was straight to the questions, of which there were several, and long pauses in between as she 1) typed very slowly the information onto her terminal, 2) talked to colleagues, and 3) answered her mobile phone. She was fully aware that the interpreter was only booked until 12.30pm, but this didn’t seem to faze her in the least, even though the Home Office were unable to provide a BSL/English Interpreter for the rest of the session with the client.

Typically, an initial interview for an asylum seeker lasts four to five hours. I’m not surprised, given the speed at which the officer worked. There are minimal facilities, with one vending machine. At least there were toilets. The seats are made of plastic and very uncomfortable. Coupled with staff’s rudeness and bluntness, it was hardly a good advert for living in the UK.

What really gets my goat about all this is the fact that the general British public think that the Government is soft on immigration. Rubbish. My perception of the immigration system in the UK, given that I’m a Level 1 OISC registered immigration adviser, is that it’s bloody tough and unforgiving. One case I recall basically showed that, if your adviser is shit at their job, and your initial application fails for that reason, you haven’t got much chance of succeeding later on, even though it’s not your fault. The Home Office is like a huge elephant, it remembers EVERYTHING. Therefore, the initial application will prejudice later applications. The system is a myriad of complicated rules and regulations, and is bloody difficult for advisers to get to grips with, let alone those subject to the system.

Let’s all wake up and smell the coffee; immigration in the UK is bloody tough. Don’t let the media and television tell you otherwise. Better still, go look at the Immigration Rules on the IND website. Now tell me that it’s easy to come and live in the UK.

I have to say that I’m really pissed off with MM who keeps deleting and creating new blogs all the time. The latest incarnation is this one: HIVIEW. What’s particularly annoying is the fact that he will not allow comments, so his posts end up being totally one-sided and not discursive. That totally goes against the grain of blogging, and why we set up deaf-blogs.com in the first place. So, I’m having to respond to MM’s latest post via my blog.

There are a few things I would like to clarify:

deaf.blog posters

There are no ‘deaf.blog posters’ at all. What MM has forgotten is that no one actually posts to deaf-blogs.com. Deaf-blogs.com is an aggregator. It brings together large amounts of feeds into one so that it is easier to find blogs written by d/Deaf people. The aim is that a visitor will look at deaf-blogs.com and read the posts listed. If they enjoy reading a particular post, they can then read it in full on the original blog and then add that blog to their personal feed aggregator, e.g. Bloglines, which is what I use. What deaf-blogs.com is not is a forum. A forum is where people post their comments and views in one centralised spot. It is totally different from blogs, and MM has yet to realise this.

went to the RNID site because web sites and forums the ‘Deaf’ set up are bloody useless and biased, so unusable

*coughs* Erm, I’ve seen the RNId forum myself, and I could see for myself that it was a forum for certain individuals to attack individuals without merit and more alarmingly, without hesitatation. Whatever happened to respect for fellow human beings? HIVIEW carries on MM’s old tradition: attack, attack, attack. It worries me that someone is capable of being so bitter and rude about others, and not allowing the people he attacks to defend themselves.

I’ll say one thing though. I agree with MM when he raised his disillusionment with the RNId by closing down the RNId forums:

we preferred the RNID forum, and we wanted (Some of us), to raise issues of exclusion at the RNID itself. This rattled the RNID they wanted a fawning forum, they didn’t get it.

I totally respect that. However, what the RNId have done doesn’t surprise me in the least. They’ve never had any respect for the Deaf community, and still don’t.

Anyway, the point of this post is to ask MM:”Why? Why do you insist on trying to rile the so-called “deaf activists”? What do you hope to achieve? Why can’t you just let it be?”. Deaf activists are entitled to their opinion as much as you are yours, but we don’t launch personal attacks on individuals that we don’t agree with.

Knowing you, you’ll probably consider this post as a personal attack on you; that’s not my intention. Think of it as a wake-up call; I’m a fellow Newportonian, and I’d be interested in your views on a wide range of topics, but your attacks just put me off. Some food for thought … ?

I’m cracking up with laughter as we speak because I am having an MSN conversation with my mum.

Why do the older generations have such difficulty in dealing with the complexities (!) that is MSN? Actually, let’s extend that a bit further: why do the older generations have such difficulties using PCs?!?

Many of them use the fact that they didn’t have computers when they were our age, they’re too old to learn, blah blah blah, but I reckon they’re just lazy or too scared of looking stupid.

I’ll give some examples. My mum knows how to use a computer, but only at work. I have tried to teach her how to use the computer at home, but because it works differently to the one at work, she doesn’t have the confidence to use the computer at home without my dad or sister around. Weird! I’ve recently persuaded her to speak to me via MSN on a Sunday, as she normally rings me on the minicom. We all know how ancient minicoms are, and I hate using mine, so I was quite pleased when mum agreed to use MSN instead.

However, today, she’s had me in stitches, because she specifically said to me (after having a few conversations on MSN) that I’m not allowed to type too much (I’m rather prone to typing more than one particular related or unrelated topics in any given minute, which renders my mum utterly confused!), and that from now I can only type one-liners and I have to type GA when I’ve finished i.e. like a minicom conversation!! For example:

After a bit, mum’s computer disconnected, so she was befuddled once again, and then she tried to ring me on the old minicom (argh!), but that didn’t work either, so eventually we agreed (via sms) to give up!

There’s Rachel’s parents too – they’re both deaf and they don’t know how to use a PC, which is a shame as this would mean they’d be able to contact people via email and MSN, which will be especially important when Rachel moves out to live with me!

Why do older generations find it so difficult to cope with? It’s so perplexing!