Hadrian's Wall Walk for Movement Against Xenophobia

I will be walking from Carlisle to Newcastle over Easter following what could be described as Britain's first attempt at immigration control, Hadrian's Wall

I will be doing it to support Movement Against Xenophobia (MAX) which is a campaign to fight the right-wing anti-immigration agenda. The money will go to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) who are financially responsible for MAX.

Please also support my wife Eka who is walking with me in support of Britcits, which has been set up to support families broken by the UK's unfair immigration rules: everyclick.com/hadrianswallbritcits

The UK's immigration policies are barbaric and are leading to families being destroyed and serious human rights abuses. The UK's official policy on immigration is to create a 'hostile environment' for migrants.

Here are some of the highlights of the government's 'tough' stance on immigration:

• You now need £18,600 to be allowed to live in the UK with a foreign spouse. If you're a UK citizen, you can only love someone from outside the EU if you happen to earn more than this. This figure rises even further if there are children involved. A UK citizen wanting to live with their foreign spouse and two children has to demonstrate an income of £24,800. There have been countless examples of families being torn apart by government bureaucrats just to help politicians get favourable headlines in the Daily Mail.

• Immigrants are increasingly being put in detention centres indefinitely where they don't get decent healthcare and are sometimes even used as cheap £1 an hour labour by the private companies who run them.

• It is now effectively impossible for a UK citizen to care for an elderly dependent relative from outside the EU. If you have elderly relatives living abroad, you are basically expected to leave them to die alone in a faraway land as the visa rules are so tight that it is impossible to arrange for them to come to the UK.

• Students have been kicked out of university courses they (or their sponsors) have paid tens of thousands of pounds to study on without recourse or compensation.

• Asylum seekers make up only a small proportion of migrants to the UK (most are students, families or people who have been offered jobs here). But they are often treated in a barbaric fashion and told to return to countries where they face persecution or death. For example, far from being 'swamped', the UK has only accepted 143 refugees from Syria.