Amnesty for illegal immigrants’ call by council leader

Mike Brooke

A LOCAL authority leader in London’s deprived East End is backing calls for an earned amnesty’ for illegal immigrants.

Labour’s Luftur Rahman pledged support as leader of Tower Hamlets Council for the strangers into citizens’ movement when he addressed a packed public meeting last night (Wednesday).

He was speaking at the 12th annual assembly of Telco, the East London Communities Organisation which represents activist groups and trade unions.

The 1,200 delegates at Bethnal Green’s York Hall heard him commit to the amnesty for “undocumented” immigrants.

Cllr Rahman also pledged to secure the London living wage’—currently at £7.45-an-hour—for low-pay council contract workers and to fight the East End’s growing drugs crisis.

The Rev Angus Ritchie of Telco said: “The commitments made by Cllr Rahman were fantastic.

“The council is taking a lead in London on making safer and more cohesive communities.”

The commitments including the strangers into citizens’ campaign also extend to targeting the East End’s “50 worst drug dealers” and developing a drugs awareness campaign focused on schools.

A fourth issue at the assembly was affordable housing’ in the overcrowded East End in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

The Olympic Authority’s chief David Higgins signed up to Telco’s call for affordable, family-sized housing as part of the 2012 Legacy, he told the assembly.

The meeting of delegates from 50 organisations was opened with a reflection’ by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Muhammad Bari, followed by a roll-call of all the groups present—trade unions, schools, colleges, churches, mosques and charities.