News

The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

13 December 2007

During the late nineties, when illegal immigration matters dominated my agenda and asylum was the main talking topic in Dover I regularly had large volumes of people visiting my advice surgeries and calling at my street stalls seeking help with their asylum claims or asking me to oppose their removal orders.

Some MPs support every asylum claim and oppose every removal but in the ten years I’ve been in Parliament I’ve been careful to limit my Ministerial representations to those cases which I judged to be compelling or which cried out for a little compassion and one such case is that of Joao and Hannah Ambriz.

Joao is a 35 year old man who came to the UK in 2003 seeking political asylum after the authorities in his native Angola pursued him for campaigning against his government. Shortly after arriving in Kent he met and married a Dover woman called Hannah and for nearly four years he has been a model husband and doting father to their two little boys and you only have to be in their company for five minutes to see that they are a very close and loving family.

Joao studies at South Kent College, the family have been befriended by the local community and they all attend Dover’s St Mary’s Church.

Last summer Joao was told that he had failed his asylum claim and exhausted all the appeal processes and that consequently the Border & Immigration Agency would be arranging his removal from the UK in compliance with the law.

Faced with the news that he was to be deported back to Angola and the likelihood of imprisonment or worse, Joao could easily have absconded but he’s not that kind of guy. He’s far too attached to his family to run away, he’s always been law abiding and he’s never failed to meet the Immigration Agency’s requirements to check into Folkestone’s Asylum Reporting Centre every week. And it was during last week’s check-in that he was seized and transported to the Detention Centre in Dover’s Eastern Docks in preparation for removal.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been soft on law and order and I’ve always appreciated that it’s impossible to maintain a fair immigration policy and properly police our borders without enforcing a firm removal regime – but the Agency needs to take a much more measured approach to individual cases like Joao’s.

In my view there are sufficient humanitarian and compassionate reasons why Joao shouldn’t be torn away from his family a couple of weeks before Christmas but the only reason I was able postpone his removal and secure his release was to send an urgent message to the Minister insisting on a face to face meeting about the outstanding issues in Joao’s case.

At this time of the year more than ever there is a need for a little more Christian compassion and a bit more Christmas spirit .