伦敦华语

Exclusive interview with Mr Lam from the London Chinatown Chinese Association

To listen to the radio programme please click the link: English

要听节目请点击连接： 廣東話 普通话

Following the incident in Chinatown, where over 30 Chinese were arrested by police on suspicion of working without permits, London Huayu volunteer Peter interviews Mt Lam, a lawyer from the London Chinatown Chinese Association about the effects of the incident and whether the methods and policy currently being used by the BIA are appropriate and effective. Is the policy of “not being a soft touch” dissuading people from coming over here? Is preventing people from working in the catering trade likely to force people to find other ways of making ends meet, including possible crime?

To listen to the programme, please click the link at the top of this paragraph. (programme in English, Cantonese and Mandarin).

Interview: Peter & Jabez Lam
Cantonese Translation: Ou Qi 欧奇
Mandarin Translation: Meng Dejian 孟德健
Wine and dumplings: 王雷

EXCLUSIVE: Immigration Officials Raid Chinatown - 30+ migrant workers arrested

To listen click here - 要听请点击这儿

Chinatown, London, Thursday 11th October 2007.
A bright and sunny day in Chinatown, and business is as usual. Restaurants are busy and people are going about doing their shopping. But this is no ordinary day for Chinatown. At 12:30 police and immigration staff mount a raid on some of the restaurants in the area.

London Huayu volunteers Cong Qian and Peter first became aware of this when trying to go to a restaurant. An extremely worried-looking staff member told us that the restaurant was closed for the moment, as there was a “problem in the kitchen”.

Meanwhile, a large crowd of onlookers had gathered about the Royal Dragon. Police were standing at the entrance, and vans were parked outside waiting to take people away.

Tony Smith, Regional Director of Border and Immigration Agency was present, so we decided to interview him to find out exactly what was happening. He confirmed that there had been 30 arrests of people from Singapore, Malaysia and China. It was confirmed that some of these would be deported today.

He stressed that they were targeting in particular the businesses that seek to take advantage of illegal workers in order to offer them low wages and poor working conditions. Such businesses can be fined up to £5000 per illegal worker found working on the premises.

Restaurants targeted in today’s raid were the Royal Dragon, the Golden Dragon and the Luxuriance Peking (all on Gerrard Street); the Hong Kong on Lisle Street, and the Special Zone on Wardour Street.

Following today’s swoop, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said that among measures to prevent people coming to the UK illegally, a biometric visa programme will be implemented for China. Every visa applicant will have their fingerprints taken.

Employers needing to know which steps to take to avoid taking on illegal workers can visit www.employingmigrantworkers.org.uk for information.

Photos: Cong Qian and London Huayu. © All rights reserved. Audio: © 2007 London Huayu all rights reserved.