Displaying items by tag: residence permits

The Belgian government is under pressure to offer residence permits to hundreds of undocumented migrants who have been on hunger strike in Brussel’s Béguinage church and university buildings for sixty days and are in a life and death situation. Alarm grows because some are now refusing water. Four men stitched their lips together last month to press their case for legal access to the jobs market and social services. Two UN officials urged the government to offer temporary residence permits to the 476 hunger strikers. 150,000 sans papiers live in Belgium, according to the campaign group ‘We Are Belgium Too’, which is calling for the regularisation of undocumented migrants. Many have been in Belgium for five or ten years. Belgium’s minister for asylum and migration refused a blanket amnesty to undocumented workers. The deputy prime minister and other Socialist ministers threatened to quit the government if any hunger strikers died. It is becoming a political snowball.