I hope this email finds you all well! Please find below the LCRI bulletin for May.
Best regards from the LCRI!
May 2008
May is the birthday month of the LCRI and this year we celebrated our fifth anniversary with a party! Clinic members came from a wide swath of past experience, some from the very first days of the clinic all the way through to this year's class, including Valeria Ilareva and Dinko Dinev, founding members. While the LCRI began in 2001, it was May 22, 2003 that the official statute of the LCRI was signed, and a number of those signatories made it to the party! Also in attendance were clients and supporters, all sharing experiences, stories, and a good time.
It was also a celebratory month in terms of the release after more than two years in detention of an Afghani asylum seeker who has worked vocally and very hard to express the migrant perspective, to document his experience, and to call for change and the respect of basic rights for migrants in Bulgaria. While we are pleased to see him, there remain many others in dire need of help, and we continue to focus on substantive change and look forward to enlisting greater numbers of students in the provision of assistance through the LCRI.
We are also concerned for the situation facing immigrants detained at the Lyubimets Detention Centre, which has recently facilitated the deportation of a number of Iranian asylum seekers, and we are working to establish lasting contact there.
On May 12th the LCRI was proud to be represented at the concluding event of a project the LCRI has been involved in with the Economic Policy Institute in partnership with the German Marshall Fund. The event celebrated the release of the book "The Implication of EU Membership on Immigration Trends and Immigrant Integration Policies for the Bulgarian Labor Market" towards which Themba Lewis and Diana Daskalova contributed a chapter analyzing legal obstacles in migrant access to effective livelihood through the labor market.
Themba and Diana also represented the LCRI at the "Integrating (New) Migrants: European Experiences" International Conference hosted by the Manfred Worner Foundation and the Center for European Refugee, Migration, and Ethnic Studies (CERMES) at New Bulgarian University. This conference brought together presenters from all over Europe and was supported by the 2004 PHARE Civil Society Development Program.
Number of New Clients: 8
Clinic Cases Developments:
- Two decisions of the Administrative Supreme Court revoking denials of the State Agency of refugee status to clients from Cuba, and one decision confirming a denial of the State Agency at first instance of appeal.
- We have one very good decision of the Sofia Administrative Court reversing a detention order after 2 years of detention and one reversing a denial of the administrative authority to change effective detention into a lighter measure (daily signing at a police department) after more than two years detention. Both cases will probably be appealed by the Direction of Migration at the Supreme Administrative Court.
- The disturbing decision of the Administrative Supreme Court (ASC), stating a claim against a detention order not admissible in a separate court review at all, continues to be confirmed by the Supreme Court in three more following decisions!!
- We are happy to share that as a result of the help of the clinic a separated family (a Bulgarian wife and a Lebanese husband) were happily brought together with successful application for visa "D" of the husband, after his forcible detention in Busmantsi center and subsequent deportation to Lebanon. The family had their first baby born while the husband was still in Lebanon. Now the three of them are together in Bulgaria!
Total Number of Court Hearings: 13
Court Hearings by Location:
Supreme Administrative Court - 7
Administrative Court – Sofia City - 5
Administrative Court – Plovdiv - 1
Notable Developments:
3 of our clients released from Busmantsi detention center – 1 from Russia, 2 from Afghanistan (one of them through BHC, BRC, DM agreement)
2 of our new clients were released from the Liubimets detention center and registered with the State Agency in Sofia
