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Blogs by Jan Brulc

International Women's Day - reasons to celebrate and worry
Jan Brulc March 8, 2012 2 Comment(s)
The International Women's Day, marked on 8 March, is among other things a day to celebrate women's economic, political and social achievements. When it comes to women migrants, MRCF will be doing this tonight at the first Migrant & Refugee Woman of the Year Award ceremony. Sadly this year's celebration will happen at a time when overseas domestic workers (mostly women) have lost the protection from exploitation in the UK in the form of a special visa.

It's time to say thank you

International Women's DayLet's first of all focus on the celebrations. MRCF in partnership with other organisations will be hosting a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall tonight from 6pm to celebrate migrant women activists.

The idea is simple and powerful. Migrating to a new country brings many challenges and it is often women who step forward and find solutions on behalf of a wider group and help more vulnerable members of the community. They fight for equality, challenge prejudice and come up with innovative, practical and strategic solutions for those in need and all while working, studying and raising families.
Why the Government should drop the net migration target
Jan Brulc February 23, 2012 6 Comment(s)
This morning’s migration quarterly figures from the Office for National Statistics indicate that the net migration has remained fairly steady at the 250,000 mark in the 12 months up to June 2011. The failure to bring about a significant downward shift in these numbers suggests that there is less and less scope for the Government to hit their target of reducing net migration to “tens of thousands”by 2015.

While the immigration minister might think that "reforms are starting to take effect” it is difficult to see this reflected in the net migration numbers. These figures are proving extremely resilient to any drop. The principal reason is that the emigration number – people leaving the country - is running low. In fact emigration has declined from a peak of 427,000 in 2008 to 336,000 in 2011, while the number of people coming into the country stayed roughly the same.
MRN concerned over the legal aid reform
Jan Brulc September 5, 2011 7 Comment(s)
MRN is concerned over the proposed cuts to legal aid as the majority of immigration cases that are not asylum related are due to be taken out of scope. This is why we are backing the Sound Off For Justice Campaign. We made some videos with them explaining what the proposed changes would mean for migrants in the UK.

The Ministry of Justice has laid out plans to substantially cut Legal aid, the public funding that aims to ensure that everybody can have access to legal advice and representation. Under these proposals, the vast majority immigration cases that are not asylum related will be ineligible for Legal Aid funding, as will be other areas of law such as employment, housing and family law.

Here is a briefing paper (opens PDF) MRN prepared on the topic explaingin in detail what this could mean for migrants' access to justice.

If you are concerned about the proposed changes you might want to join the Sound Off For Justice campaign and lend your voice to stop the Government's proposed cuts to legal aid.
Why we blog?
Jan Brulc August 15, 2011 2 Comment(s)
People who follow our work will know that MRN takes its blogging quite seriously. So when I was recently asked to run a workshop on online advocacy, I was given a great opportunity to sketch down some thoughts and reflect on the “why” element of our online work.

Here is the problem. When people ask us about our work in general, we tend to offer an answer focusing on what we are doing and how we are doing it. This is completely normal, because we think in terms of what and how most of the time when faced with a particular tasks. But it is understanding why you are doing it that is important when you want to communicate clearly what your intended impact is.

So more than anything else when preparing for the workshop, I was keen to pull together arguments for why engage in online advocacy in the first place, re-visiting the same question I had to answer over a year ago writing up the first version of the MRN communication strategy trying to make a case for an increase in our online work.
Happy Refugee Day
Jan Brulc June 20, 2011
It's here! 20th June marks the World Refugee Day and it is also the start of the Refugee Week. Kicking off yesterday with the Umbrella Parade in London there are a whole host of other events around the country. This year MRN is pitching in with a screening of the film “Son of Babylon”.

At the same time, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention. Normally, we can hardly escape all the negative reporting in the media, but Refugee Week was always a good time to do something different and focus on the positive stories that encourage a better understanding of why people come to Britain seeking protection.