ON DEMAND: Roundtable on Resisting the Digital Hostile Environment

Roundtable on resisting the Digital Hostile Environment: 30 July 11 AM-1 PM

The government has ambitious plans to digitalise the entire immigration system; starting with EU citizens, whose settled or pre-settled status will be verifiable only through digital means, exposing them immediately to data protection and discrimination risks.

This is the beginning of introducing a central database containing all migrants’ sensitive information, which will be accessible by multiple government departments, including HMRC and DWP, as well as healthcare providers and private individual employers, landlords and potentially others.

This process aims to digitise the Hostile Environment checks, and more efficiently exclude anybody the Home Office deems, rightly or wrongly, not to have the right to be in the country from essential services and support.

We believe this represents huge risks on multiple levels to all migrants’ rights and must be resisted.

On 30th July 2021 we hosted a roundtable event with Liberty and Foxglove Legal, with participants from the migrants’ rights and civil liberties sectors to discuss:

• Resisting the digitisation of the Hostile Environment: How to advocate for a system that protects everybody’s rights?
• Impact on individuals: How can practitioners best assist clients who have a digital-only status?
• The bigger picture: How does the digitalisation of immigration enforcement fit within the wider data rights agenda and where next?

Unfortunately this event was not recorded, however you can read the briefing to accompany the event here.