UCU: End the educational apartheid facing asylum seekers

Motion

Motion text: This conference notes that the 1951 Refugee Convention guarantees everybody the right to apply for asylum, abhors the merciless right-wing media campaign in the UK and the increasingly unjust, discriminatory, scapegoating, and inhumane direction of government policy.
Most asylum seekers are legally prohibited from working and from most forms of volunteering.
Conference recognises that although asylum seekers are legally entitled to study within the UK, a combination of these financial conditions, the general classification of asylum seekers as international students‚Äù for fees purposes and the recent ESOL cuts, effectively excludes the vast majority from accessing Higher Education.

Conference instructs NEC to:
1. Do all it can to support asylum seekers, refugees and all migrants, including at the European and international levels in cooperation with Education International.
2. Whilst reaffirming the existing policy of UCU opposition to tuition fees for UK students, it calls on the all HEIs to waive tuition fees for asylum seekers.
3. Campaign for the right of immigrant (including asylum seekers) academics and education workers living in the UK to work and maintain academic and professional careers.
4. Campaign against arbitrary deportations of students.