In December 2013 SYMAAG organised a protest in Sheffield against the 2014 Immigration Act which put into law many of the measures designed to create a “Hostile Environment” for what then Home Secretary Theresa May called “illegal immigrants”

One of SYMAAG’s founding members David Price has this letter published in The Guardian 17 April 2018

Amelia Gentleman’s article (Rudd’s U Turn: At last an end to the staggering heartlessness, 17 April) rightly welcomes the belated government U-turn over the Home Office’s appalling treatment of the Windrush generation. But I doubt if this will mark an end to the Home Office’s “staggering heartlessness”.

In 2012 David Cameron set up the “Hostile Environment Working Group”. Sarah Teather, then a Liberal Democrat minister, was outraged by this title and it was changed. But ministers have continued to use of this kind of language and I fear it has moulded Home Office attitudes. Out of this working group came the Immigration Act 2014, which Labour supported at second reading. This act required all sorts of public and private bodies to bear down on people without appropriate immigration documentation. Those of us who warned that it would have a pernicious effect were ignored.

David Price
Sheffield

Originally published in The Guardian 17/4/18 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/17/amber-rudds-windrush-apology-fails-to-impress