Dominic Raab and Robert Jenrick have no idea how awful hotel accommodation is, yet want to ensure refugees in the UK suffer even more
Last week saw yet more cruel rhetoric from the government towards refugees. The focus was on accommodation, with ideas (which aren’t new) to house people in disused military bases and even moored cruise ships now being floated.
Presently, many refugees are housed in hotels whilst they wait months and years for decisions on their claims. Unable to work, they are entirely reliant on the state for support, yet the level of support provided already meets what can generously be described as the bare minimum. Those in hotels receive food, which is often of a shockingly poor standard, unsuitable for people’s health needs or dietary requirements, lacking nutritional content and culturally insensitive, but are provided just £9.10 per week. Some of the families we support record skipping meals and spending their meagre income on food. On such a small level of subsistence, doing the most basic things, such as travelling to appointments with a lawyer, is almost impossible. Despite this reality, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick stated this week that in the future refugees would be given the most basic accommodation possible; as the “Illegal Immigration Bill” will prevent asylum claims being heard in the UK, presumably too his vision is for people to live permanently in such squalor. In any case, either Jenrick does not know how substandard current asylum accommodation provision is, or he chose to deliberately misrepresent the truth. Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was next. He repeated the obviously false and entirely misleading claim that hotel accommodation somehow incentivises refugees to seek sanctuary in the UK – when in fact Home Office research confirms that so-called “pull factors” do not influence refugees’ decisions to favour the UK over other countries Raab and Jenrick, both millionaires, have a misplaced view of hotel accommodation and understand nothing of the realities of living in mouldy, vermin-infested temporary accommodation that share no similarities with the places they might stay on holiday. In truth, hotel accommodation is already awful, especially as with no income asylum seekers often spend the majority of their time effectively confined to their rooms. One family with 2 children we work with stay in a hotel with bars on the windows, resembling a prison more than somewhere you’d spend a vacation. Many RAMFEL clients stay in one particularly delapidated hotel, with damp, mould-encrusted walls and a mouse infestation. Photos we have viewed of this property are truly shocking, and if both Raab and Jenrick took the time to visit and see the living standards, we think that even they would be shocked. When complaints are made to hotel staff about living conditions, a hostile response is often received. This includes staff telling people they should not have come to the UK and even that voicing their concerns will harm their asylum claim. The UK’s asylum system is clearly not functioning as it should, with a backlog of 160,000 claims and more than 10,000 people waiting more than 3 years for a decision. Contrary to the government’s public posture, no one – not asylum seekers, migrants’ rights charities, the Home Office, or the public– wants people stuck in hotels for years on end. The answer though is not to move people to somewhere that may be even worse. The government’s focus should be on processing asylum claims and granting those recognised as refugees leave to remain. Only once their status is resolved can refugees begin working and actually contributing to society. Considering Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria, amongst others, have approval rates exceeding 98%, it serves no purpose to keep people from such countries stuck in limbo for extended periods when their claims will inevitably be allowed. The existing status quo is not only extremely costly, but also harms integration as it prevents refugees from fully settling into the communities that will become their home. Another step the government could take is to lift the ban on asylum seekers working. This again is often cited as a ‘pull factor’, but there is once more no evidence to support this. Refugees choose to come to the UK because of existing familial, linguistic and other ties. They often too, despite the government’s best efforts to disprove this, believe the UK to be a country where human rights are respected and a place where they will be able to rebuild their lives. Processing asylum claims should clearly be the government’s priority if it is serious about reducing the number of people in hotels. Instead, their focus is gimmicky, performative cruelty, which will do nothing to fix the UK’s asylum system, but will without question make vulnerable peoples’ worse. It has been suggested that the government may see the continued use of hotels as politically beneficial, a sinical ploy to maintain a “problem” they can then “fix” with ever crueller and more draconian measures. Nobody voted for this. This type of performative cruelty is increasingly out of touch with UK voters, whose attitudes towards migration are some of the most accepting in the world. The government should prioritise processing claims so that people can get on with their lives and meaningfully contribute to communities across the country. Briefing – Government’s “Illegal Migration Bill”
Background: The government’s “Illegal Migration Bill” effectively dismantles the asylum system in the UK and leaves nothing in its place, with the result that most people coming to the UK to seek asylum will simply be left in a permanent limbo. Under these plans the only people who will have access to refugee protection in the UK are the very few arriving on the government’s extremely limited resettlement programs.1 It will cause untold harm on an alarming scale. This Bill will not have its intended effect and is doomed to fail on its own terms. We can predict the impact of this Bill with reasonable accuracy because it follows a very similar model as the Nationality and Borders Act, through the attempt to exclude people arriving by boats from the asylum system. That piece of legislation has caused an increase in the asylum backlog to its largest level ever, a spike in waiting times for asylum decisions, and has had none of the impacts that the government promised it would. This Bill will have a similar impact. Fundamentally this Bill appears more designed as a piece of political theatre than serious workable legislation that the UK could come close to implementing. However, the limbo and bureaucratic inertia that it will cause will no doubt have very real consequences for the men, women and children that come here to seek protection. We ask that you oppose it at every opportunity. This was an opportunity to end chronic delays in processing claims and introduce safe routes that negate the need for refugees to take dangerous journeys – such as by fixing the systemic problems with the Refugee Family Reunion system identified by the Immigration Inspector last month. Instead, we are seeing more of the same so-called ‘deterrence’ policies that have already failed on every possible metric, while causing untold harm and bringing the asylum system grinding to a halt. Asylum ban: The Bill will ban people arriving through irregular means, after 7th March, from ever claiming asylum in the UK – if they meet four conditions:
This is a fundamental departure from our own treaty obligations and the system for international refugee protection as a whole, and it turns our back on the people who need our protection. According to the government’s own refugee determination process, the vast majority of those people coming to the UK on small boats are genuine refugees. Banning them from seeking asylum is entirely contrary to the principles set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped draft and has since been a proud signatory. It builds on and deepens the divisions introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act which created a two-tier system of refugee protection, according to the route that people came to the UK. Only the small number of people who arrive on the extremely limited refugee protection regimes can access the asylum system. The remainder will be left in a permanent limbo state where they will be acutely vulnerable to exploitation. Those individuals will be living in temporary forms of accommodation – probably in military barracks or hotels, permanently barred from working, renting or participating in society. Those individuals will need to be perpetually supported by the state, thereby massively increasing the cost of the asylum system. We have witnessed first-hand the unfolding mental health crisis among asylum seekers made to live in temporary accommodation for months or years, surviving on meagre subsistence payments without the legal right to work or participate in society. The Bill fundamentally misunderstands the nature of fleeing conflict and persecution and seeking protection in a foreign country. People fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan or indefinite military service in Eritrea are not able to apply for a visa to come to the UK. It is not illegal to cross a border without a visa for the purpose of seeking asylum and people are not required to claim asylum in the first country where their life and liberty is not threatened. The UK already accepts fewer refugees than many other countries, even our closest neighbours,2 and the great majority of refugees relocate internally or in neighbouring countries. The relatively small numbers of people who seek asylum in the UK do so because they may have family here, or connections to a diasporic community, or English language skills. Many come from countries that are connected to the UK because of war, invasion or colonisation. Internal Home Office documents confirm that these are the primary motivations for those seeking asylum in the UK. Detention: The Bill introduces sweeping new powers of detention (Clause 12), under which people who meet the four conditions can be detained. Those individuals will be detained indefinitely, without trial, in ‘any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate’. For the first 28 days of their detention, they will be unable to apply for bail to a court and will be denied the opportunity to challenge their detention through judicial review. It is commonly accepted that incommunicado detention exposes detainees to risks of serious human rights abuses. Clause 12 of the Bill also states that detention can be maintained for as long as the Secretary of State deems it to be “reasonably necessary”, and it can continue “regardless of whether there is anything that for the time being prevents the deportation order from being made or the removal from being carried out”. This severs the link between the use of detention and the requirement for removal to be imminent, and will allow the Home Secretary to keep people in detention even when removal is not imminent, or even possible. This appears to include all people in detention – not just recent arrivals - including long-term residents who grew up in the UK or have families here and are now facing deportation. Those people can be ‘of any age’ – seemingly indicating a return to detention of children, which was banned 13 years ago by the coalition government, in 2010. This goes against current legislation banning the detention of children except for very short periods. The Immigration Act 2014 banned the detention of unaccompanied children for more than a 24-hour period at any one time, while children can be detained with families for up to 72 hours, extendable to 7 days with ministerial approval. That detention can take place ‘in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate’. This means possibly as many as 60,000 men, women and even children fleeing persecution will be locked up indefinitely without trial. Detention destroys lives and particularly those who are already vulnerable, as people arriving in the UK fleeing conflict or persecution usually are. Policies that traumatise tens of thousands of people will harm ‘integration’ and create further strain on public services when people are eventually released – the government knows they cannot be locked up forever, but in a radical departure from existing detention laws, the government will remove the power of individuals to challenge their detention. The UK is also in no position to implement this type of mass-scale incarceration. The prison population is on average around 90,000 people. The government proposes to detain an additional 60,000 next year. This is pure fantasy. The UK is nowhere near having the resources to do this and any attempt to actually implement these plans will only divert vital funds away from dealing with the cost of living crisis. Removal duty: The Home Secretary has created a duty upon herself to remove people who meet the 4 conditions (clause 2). Not only is this in breach of the Refugee Convention, but it is precisely what the Home Office has already committed to doing for every individual arriving in a small boat under the Nationality and Borders Act. Home Office data shows that Between 1 January 2021 and 30 September 2022, 20,605 asylum claimants were identified for consideration on inadmissibility grounds, and 18,494 ‘notices of intent’ were issued to individuals informing them that the Home Office was considering removal on inadmissibility grounds. Of those, 83 people were served with inadmissibility decisions and 21 individuals were forcibly removed. 9,772 were simply admitted into the asylum system. Therefore just 0.1% of people issued with a ‘notice of intent’ for inadmissibility have been removed. This has contributed to the asylum backlog and had no impact on removal numbers. It is unclear how putting this duty into statute would change any of this. Instead it will simply cause further harm and delays. Deterrence policy: The entire Bill is based on a logic of deterrence, that people will stop coming to the UK to seek protection if you make it sufficiently difficult for those that do arrive. There is no evidence that this type of approach works. In fact, in its own Impact Assessment on the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Government admitted that the plan to “increase security and deterrence” could encourage people to “attempt riskier means of entering the UK”. It also states that “evidence supporting the effectiveness of this [security and deterrence] approach is limited”. Asylum seekers choose which country they go to as a result of a range of complex interacting factors, but there is no evidence that a change in asylum policy such as this would have any meaningful impact on the destination choice of refugees. Undermines parliamentary sovereignty: The Bill transfers power away from parliament and concentrates it in the hands of the Home Secretary. There are 17 instances where the Bill gives the Home Secretary the power to change the law by making regulations. This is fundamentally contrary to the principles of the UK’s parliamentary democracy. Human Rights: While the Home Secretary has stated that she is confident in the Bill’s lawfulness, it is striking that she states on the first page that “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.” The Bill also states that section 3 of the Human Rights Act does not apply to the provisions in the Bill, meaning that the Bill does not have to be interpreted as far as possible in a way that is compatible with the Human Rights Act. Trafficking: The provisions also exclude people from the protections afforded to trafficking victims under the Modern Slavery Act. That is not only in breach of the UK’s treaty obligations under the European Convention Against Trafficking (ECAT) but will make it more difficult for the government to pursue the trafficking gangs that the government claims to be targeting with this legislation. This removal of protections, alongside banning access to the asylum system, will produce a more exploitable class of people and create the conditions for human trafficking and modern slavery to flourish in the UK. Public opinion: We note that there was no consultation on this Bill – and we are disappointed that the government did not consider it necessary to gather the opinions of experts, including those with lived experience of the asylum system, stakeholders, or the general public. However there is compelling evidence from the consultation responses in the Nationality and Borders Act that this approach is not popular: “The consultation has shown that there is some support for these broad ambitions, more so from members of the public. However, the responses sent into the Government consultation also show that around three quarters of those who responded said they opposed many of the policies set out in the New Plan for Immigration.” More recent evidence published this week by UK in a Changing Europe, overwhelmingly finds that public opinion on immigration has shifted a long way since 2016. Culturally, the UK public now has a much more progressive stance on immigration questions. These plans do not have the support of the general public and we remain confident that there is widespread public support for a fairer, more humane immigration system that treats those seeking protection with dignity and justice. Sustainable, evidence-based solutions: The government could have introduced measures designed to increase the quality and efficiency of asylum decisions. That is what other European countries have done. It could also finally create safe routes for refugees to get to the UK, both by introducing a humanitarian visa and expanding the scope of family reunion. Tellingly, despite the country being at war, not a single Ukrainian national was detected entering the UK by boat. This is because the UK created safe and accessible visa routes for Ukrainian nationals, meaning they did not need to resort to dangerous journeys. As the Immigration Inspector found, “the lack of an effective family reunion route carries with it the risk that vulnerable people will resort to dangerous journeys to join their family members in the UK”. The government has shown no interest in doing so, despite leading figures such as Home Secretary Suella Braverman being unable to explain how a refugee should travel to the UK. The longer the government persists with deterrence-based policies, the more difficult it will be to eventually implement sensible and evidence-based solutions. Neither this piece of legislation, or its predecessor, or any that succeed it based on deterrence, will help to prevent further tragedies in the channel. About RAMFEL Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London (RAMFEL) is a legal charity providing advice to migrants in the community on issues related to immigration and asylum claims, welfare/benefits, access to housing and prevention of destitution, and integration support. As part of our Refugee and Asylum Casework Team, we have advised and represented many refugees and people with humanitarian protection applying for family reunion with family members overseas. We work on behalf of both adult and child refugees, with the family members applying usually being pre-flight spouses, children (under and over 18), parents or siblings. If you would like more information please contact Nick Beales on Nick.Beales@ramfel.org.uk.
Yesterday, the government introduced yet another piece of asylum legislation doomed to failure. This was an opportunity to end chronic delays in processing claims and introduce safe routes that negate the need for refugees to take dangerous journeys. Instead we are seeing more of the same so-called ‘deterrence’ policies that have already failed on every possible metric, while causing untold harm and bringing the asylum system grinding to a halt.
Last year the government introduced processes for making asylum claims ‘inadmissible’ – this policy, intended to have a ‘deterrent’ effect, has had the sole consequence of increasing waiting times and caused an alarming spike in the asylum backlog. This latest proposed legislation works in a similar way and there is not a shred of evidence that it will have different consequences. As journalist May Bulman recently reported, the pursuit of unworkable, headline-grabbing policies has diverted focus and resources from asylum decision-making and, as one civil servant put it, a “neglect of the fundamentals of how the asylum system functions”. We know these policies don’t work – the Home Office was even brazen enough to admit the lack of evidence in the course of last year’s Nationality and Borders Bill. We do know they cause distress, anguish and trauma on a massive scale. And this is just through announcing ever crueller measures with increasingly extreme rhetoric that make it clear to refugees: the UK government does not want you here. We have witnessed first-hand the unfolding mental health crisis among asylum seekers made to live in temporary accommodation for months or years, surviving on meagre subsistence payments without the legal right to work or participate in society. A key part of the latest legislation is the intention to detain tens of thousands of people each year – possibly as many as 60,000 men, women and even children fleeing persecution will be locked up indefinitely without trial. Detention destroys lives and particularly those who are already vulnerable, as people arriving in the UK fleeing conflict or persecution usually are. Policies that traumatise tens of thousands of people will harm ‘integration’ and create further strain on public services when people are eventually released – the government knows they cannot be locked up forever, but in a radical departure from existing detention laws, the government will remove the power of individuals to challenge their detention. The UK is in no position to implement this type of mass-scale performative cruelty. The prison population is on average around 90,000 people. Anyone who believes the government could lock up another 60,000 people next year is deluded, but that is the government’s proposal. The UK is nowhere near having the resources to do this state, and any attempt to actually implement these plans will only divert vital funds away from dealing with the cost of living crisis. When it comes to deterrent policy, there are no new ideas. These proposals are a re-working of the Nationality and Borders Bill, and many other short-lived ideas that have been trialled over the past 20 years. The Guardian traced 43 times we were promised flashy new plans to end the crisis, once and for all. The government could have introduced measures designed to increase the quality and efficiency of asylum decisions. That is what other European countries have done. It could also finally create safe routes for refugees to get to the UK, both by introducing a humanitarian visa and expanding the scope of family reunion. The government has shown no interest in doing so, despite leading figures such as Home Secretary Suella Braverman being unable to explain how a refugee should travel to the UK. The longer the government persists with deterrence-based policies, the more difficult it will be to eventually implement sensible and evidence-based solutions. The government cannot continue to take the public for fools, and these measures will do nothing to prevent further tragedies in the Channel. 2/3/2023 Press Release: Government again admits its ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) policy is unlawfulRead Now Breaking: Government again admits its 'no recourse to public funds' (NRPF) policy is unlawful
The individual applicants in this case needed public funds to supplement their income because of their or their family members’ disabilities, but the government imposed an NRPF condition and failed to adequately consider their disability-related needs. Romoke Kehinde Ali, who brought the claim is a 55-year-old woman was left unable to continue working as a care assistant after suffering a stroke. The other claimant is the parent of a disabled child who can only work limited hours. Sky Sadly their unjust treatment is far from unique. Take RAMFEL’s client Mercy – a mother of 4 with a 9-year-old son with cerebral palsy – who risked being plunged into poverty after the government suddenly removed all access to public funds, without explanation. Shortly before the hearing, the government conceded that its guidance, and the immigration rules themselves, are unlawful, as they do not comply with the Equality Act, and fail to make it clear that disabled people can be allowed access to public funds even if they are not destitute or imminently destitute. On 15th February 2023 a High Court order was approved, and the immigration rules and guidance must now be amended. Until that happens, if anyone with a disability requiring public funds is told that they cannot access public funds, that decision is likely to be unlawful. We don’t know how many people have been harmed by the government’s existing, unlawful policy. In 2021, 118,100 people were given leave to remain in the UK subject to having no recourse to public funds. However, despite admitting in 2020 that its NRPF policy risked discriminating against disabled people, the government maintained a cruel and inflexible approach towards those people for 3 more years. This is the latest in a long line of defeats for the NRPF scheme and the hostile environment policy more broadly. DPG solicitors, who acted in this case, last year recorded that the NRPF policy had been found to be unlawful four times in the last four years. In 2020, the government published an assessment of the NRPF policy’s compliance with their Public Sector Equality Duty, and acknowledged a risk that disabled people could be discriminated against, stating that they would monitor the impact. The government does not appear to have done that, failing to provide any information about this issue in response to RAMFEL’s Parliamentary Questions and Freedom of Information Requests. Having acknowledged and then ignored the risks, it is little surprise that the government is now forced to concede the unlawfulness of its approach. RAMFEL’s head of campaigns, Nick Beales, said: “The NRPF policy has caused untold harm for the past decade. Public funds are a vital safety net for everyone, even more so during the current cost of living crisis. The fact that the government has been consistently denying that to some of the most vulnerable people in our society, namely people with disabilities, is utterly shameful. We are pleased to have contributed to the case that will end this pernicious practice, and hope the government will now swiftly update its NRPF guidance to better protect disabled people.” 13/12/2022 Telling people that they can’t be refugees because they are from a particular country is not going to help at all.Read Now
Any hope that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would take a less aggressive and confrontational approach to refugees and immigration more generally was dispelled by his speech today. Cruel, combative, unpleasant, misrepresentative and especially vicious towards Albanians, Sunak set out steps his government would take to punish and criminalise refugees.
Sunak repeatedly referred to “fairness” in his speech, but the 5 steps he outlined amounted to little more than increased cruelty and increased criminalisation of the universal human right to seek asylum. They were far from fair, and many have already been tried and deemed unlawful. Sunak first promised that he would increase policing of the Channel, establishing a “new small boats operational command”, including the National Crime Agency. Whilst seeking international protection is not a crime, the link between asylum and criminality was obvious and intentional and clearly designed to appeal to a specific type of voter. Sadly, this vein continued with Sunak then announcing this would free up more resources for immigration raids. He falsely claimed undocumented migrants were able to get bank accounts, and suggested that those without status in the UK have it easy. This is far from reality, and even those with status but no visa document encounter problems on a daily basis due to his government’s hostile environment. Next Sunak said that housing asylum seekers in hotels would end. We hear daily from clients about how squalid these hotels are, but Sunak promised to make things worse for these people by moving them into disused military sites. It was as if Manston hadn’t happened, or as if Sunak actually wanted it to happen again. Sunak’s fourth announcement was that he would double the number of Home Office asylum caseworkers, abolishing the asylum backlog by the end of 2023. Although any improvement to application processing times is welcome, a more immediate way to reduce the backlog would be to approve long pending asylum claims from countries such as Eritrea, Iran and Sudan where well over 90% of claims are ultimately successful. Then came the moment Sunak, egged on by sections of the right-wing media, had been building to. He launched a scathing attack on the rights of Albanians to seek asylum in the UK, highlighting how the Prime Minister of Albania had said there was no reason Albanian asylum seekers cannot be returned to the country. It was scarcely believable to hear this, as if Sunak would rely on similar assurances given by, for example, the Iranian regime. Sunak proceeded to explain how he considers Albania safe and his government will declare asylum claims as clearly unfounded. He then promised to codify his changes to processes and procedure into statute should they be challenged in the courts. The message to lawyers was clear: don’t try and challenge this government. Finally, Sunak revealed perhaps the harshest part of his plans. New legislation will be introduced that will see those entering the UK to seek asylum detained indefinitely and swiftly deported, either to their home country or to unspecified other safe countries where their claims will be considered. Sunak despicably stated that refugees would no longer be able to frustrate removal attempts with spurious legal claims, as if somehow using the UK’s laws to hold the UK government to account is an abuse of the legal system. A large segment of the speech was devoted to repeating the mantra that Albania is a safe country, ignoring of course that over 50% of Albanian asylum claims are approved. Crucially though, distilling asylum claims to a geographic rather than human matter greatly increases the risk of returning someone to persecution. It was telling that mere hours before Sunak’s speech, our client, Tony, gave us the happy news that his asylum claim had finally been approved. 15 years after arriving in the UK, and a seemingly never ending legal battle, Tony had been recognised as a refugee. Tony is from Ghana, a country like Albania that the UK considers “safe” for men. Tony is also gay, a criminal offence in Ghana. Whilst he could be imprisoned for simply possessing an innate characteristic, Tony also fears for his safety if returned to Ghana due to the homophobia that exists in the country. Ghana may be safe for some people, but it wasn’t and isn’t for Tony. Categorising countries as safe or unsafe with no consideration of individual, human characteristics greatly increases the chances of people like Tony being returned to persecution, torture or even death. Asked for his thoughts on Sunak’s announcements today, Tony told us the following: I cannot go back to my country, as it is not safe there as an LGBT person. People are still being killed in Ghana for coming out as LBGT. The government has to know that nobody decides their sexuality, you are born with it. Telling people that they can’t be refugees because they are from a particular country is not going to help at all. Tony is right. The government cannot just decide on a country by country basis who needs protection and who doesn’t. That is not how persecution works. Tellingly as well, Sunak’s speech barely made reference to the lack of safe routes to the UK. Ignoring his Home Secretary’s, Suella Braverman, disastrous performance weeks ago when she was unable to explain how a refugee from west Africa could make it to the UK without entering clandestinely, Sunak failed entirely to acknowledge that safe routes do not exist and therefore refugees have no option but to enter by other means and claim asylum. Until the government recognizes this, and stops prioritizing headline-grabbing over effective and safe policy making, further tragedies in the Channel are inevitable. 12/10/2022 I am a social worker who is desperate to work in the UK. Why won’t the government let me?Read Now
In my job, I faced many problems from political parties regarding my opinion and for working with refugees, especially Palestinians. I tried to struggle and put a safety plan in place for me and my children, but it was impossible to ensure our safety in these conditions.
I initially came to the UK to visit my sister but due to continuing safety concerns in my country, I was advised to claim asylum. Due to the rapidly changing and developing threat to my safety, I left my husband and my children in Lebanon without pre-warning them that I would not return from the UK. Their situation remains precarious as they live in an area controlled by hostile political parties. Before coming to the UK, I heard about the history of the UK welcoming refugees. However, living as an asylum seeker here is very difficult. It takes a long time for your case to be decided and during that time, you live in a hotel with little chance to do anything to occupy your time. As an asylum seeker, I am provided just £8 a week support from the Government. I am grateful for this, and try to manage it as carefully as I can to meet my basic needs, but it is now impossible. The price of everything has increased recently and I cannot afford to buy food. It is why I often go hungry. What I really want is to work and contribute to UK society. The ban on asylum seekers working has had an immensely negative impact on my mental health. I now suffer from severe depression and anxiety. In addition to this, living in a hotel room without my family and no community support makes me feel very alone and isolated. Most of my days I have nothing to do but think, which is often negative thinking. For someone like me, who was an active member of society and had a job and a professional life, it is unbearable to be forced into unemployment and isolation. I feel I am losing touch with everything. I feel distressed, useless and cut off from society. It feels like I am in a massive cage. It is pure mental torture. After I claimed asylum, I tried to contact several organizations asking for different types of assistance but most of them were at full capacity and they did not always have enough funds to support asylum seekers. I was always referred from one organisation to another until I received assistance from one service. I am now taking counselling sessions to improve my mental health. I miss my husband. I miss spending time with my children. I have missed precious moments. I left a big part of me behind in Lebanon. I am no longer whole, as a person, as a human being. I dream of being reunited with them one day, but I know we are not safe in Lebanon. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I have forgotten that I am in England. I have adapted well to life in the UK, or as well as I can considering my circumstances. When I arrived, I did not know anyone and I was sad and lonely, but at least my life was safe. I have always tried to give something back to the community by volunteering and I will continue to do so here. What I really hope though is that I will one day soon be allowed to work again. I know that it takes time for asylum claims to be considered, but at the moment my skills as a social worker are being wasted. I know that if permitted I can and will make a valuable contribution to society.
I was putting my one-year-old triplets to bed. My two older children were asleep. The sound of the clock ticking caught my attention. My husband did not return home that day. He had been forced to leave the country to seek protection in Britain. It was a big shock as I now had to take care of five children alone. The government did not support me. I had to give up my job as a Mathematics teacher to be able to take care of my children. My family, especially my sister, helped me during this time and I was very grateful for her support.
We spent every night until morning hoping to see my husband again someday. When my husband informed us that he had been granted asylum in the United Kingdom and that we would be able to join him as his family, it was a big relief that we would be reunited soon. However the journey was not easy. When he called us and told us he was homeless in the UK, I cried at night worrying about him. After a few days, we heard that through RAMFEL’s assistance, he had managed to get into a hostel. Three years later after my husband had left, we finally managed to enter the UK with the help of RAMFEL and the Red Cross to join him. It was unbelievable. With the cooperation and kindness of our caseworker at RAMFEL, we were transferred from the airport to an independent house. It was difficult for us in the first few days, but we were happy to be together finally. My children have now enrolled in local schools. My husband and I have enrolled in our local college for English classes. We have received two laptop donations to assist us with academic work. We have also gotten some bicycle donations through The Bike Project to make our travel cheaper and easier. My husband and I were teaching Mathematics at university in my home country, Iran. Our goals were only half-complete. We will not give up as God is always with us. We thank God every day that we are all here together safely and that he has led us to good and kind organisations like RAMFEL. We intend to return to our previous work with love and continue to teach in England. We hope that we will be able to pass the equivalent course for Teaching here in the UK so that we are able to teach again. I will write my unwritten book with you earthly angels so that everyone will know that we came to the UK to love with liberation. I wish one day I could give all the love I received from you to all human beings and wish that there was no place in the world of discrimination and injustice, war and bloodshed, and that we had a world full of love and happiness.
Yesterday evening the government’s plans to exile 7 asylum seekers to Rwanda were thwarted at the last minute. This was after intervention from the European Court of Human Rights, which issued an injunction preventing the removal of at least 1 of the 7 men, an Iraqi national suspected of being a torture survivor. Following this, the remaining 6 men were removed from the flight in batches as their lawyers sought and obtained similar injunctions.
That it took intervention from the European Court is unfortunate, not least because the government will inevitably use this as a pretext to launch further attacks on the Court and the UK’s continued membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court’s intervention here though evidences just what was at stake for the men on that flight, with such interventions only taking place when there is a risk of serious human rights violations. Such risks were always obvious, and the reprehensible plan managed to unite forces as disparate as refugee rights NGOS, the monarchy and religious leaders of all faiths in opposition to it. What was even more disheartening was the government’s determination to press ahead with this flight, despite them knowing that substantive legal proceedings scheduled for July may in any case have seen them need to bring the deported men back to the UK. This was performative cruelty at its worse, and it is difficult to conclude that last night’s flight was anything other than an attempt to intimidate and punish those who came to the UK seeking sanctuary only to instead be threatened with a one-way ticket to a country many wouldn’t have heard of and where their safety clearly was not guaranteed. The cruelty of this policy was clear even before the government started indiscriminately handing out tickets to men detained at Gatwick and Heathrow detention centres. RAMFEL client, Taraki, was one of the first to speak out about his fears when news of the policy broke. For the men actually issued tickets, these fears must only have been heightened. Despite all the heartache caused, it was inspiring to witness the tireless efforts of everyone who worked to stop this tragedy unfolding. NGOs such as Detention Action, Asylum Aid and Care 4 Calais challenged this policy in the courts, ably assisted by lawyers who evidently were working non-stop to ensure their clients were taken off the flight with barely hours left before its scheduled departure. Beyond the legal challenges brought, the men faced with exile themselves showed incredible courage, many sharing their stories publicly. It is never easy for people to share such intimate information with the public, but putting human stories into the public domain undermined government efforts to present these men as scary boogey men or simply faceless numbers. Finally, the actions of protesters who attended the Home Office and the detention centres also clearly made a difference and let the government know there is sharp opposition to this policy. Tales of men held at Heathrow detention centre who weren’t on the flight protesting on behalf of those who were was also inspiring and showed human solidarity in the face of adversity and cruelty. The government has this morning announced plans to charter a new flight ahead of July’s court case, demonstrating that no lessons have been learned and that there is no genuine desire on their part to actually try and solve the problems that lead to people making the dangerous journey across the Channel. It will likely take another gargantuan effort to ensure no one boards this second plane, and yet more public money will surely be wasted on this performative cruelty. The human suffering for those given tickets – and those fearing they will – will be even more costly. We spoke with Taraki this morning, who thankfully was not given a ticket for this flight. He told us how happy and relieved he was that the flight was cancelled, but was understandably shocked and disappointed when we told him that the government are already pressing ahead with plans for the next flight. We hope that in a few weeks’ time, we won’t be battling to get Taraki off a plane bound for Rwanda. 20/4/2022 'Should we be exiled to an unsafe country where we have no ties, simply because we want to make a better life for us and our families in the UK, free from persecution?' RAMFEL and our clients’ response to the RWANDA SchemeRead Now
Many of us are feeling shocked and disgusted after the news emerged last week that the British government plans to send thousands of asylum seekers and refugees arriving in this country on a one-way journey to Rwanda. This scheme is the result of a $156m deal between Priti Patel and the Rwandan government. Patel claimed that critics of the scheme have no alternative solutions to propose that would stop the people-smuggling trade. This is patently untrue: charities, organisations and individuals have suggested humane ways to undermine exploitative trafficking, both before and in the wake of the Rwanda announcement. In this blog, however, we would simply like to discuss the reasons why the scheme has such huge potential to harm human beings like our clients, and to share some stories and responses from people we work with.
That the UK may adopt ‘offshore detention’ for migrants has been a sinister threat since even before the Nationality and Borders Bill started its journey through parliament. We know from Australia's experience with offshore detention that it leads to sexual abuse of women and children, harms people's mental health to the point of self-harm and suicide and leaves refugees in limbo for years. Like Australia's, the UK’s plan is not only deeply harmful on a human level but grossly expensive, with estimates putting the cost at £1.44bn a year. Keeping arrivals in the UK and simply reducing the worsening wait-times on asylum claims and allowing asylum seekers to work whilst awaiting a decision would lower costs and benefit the economy: instead, the aim seems to be both as inhumane and as expensive as possible. We know from the response to Ukraine that the British public are generous towards those fleeing war and torture, and we already have a network of charities experienced at supporting asylum seekers in the community. Rather than build on this, the government is pursuing a reckless strategy to grab headlines and distract from its own current bad PR over the lockdown parties. Offshoring is likely to prove highly ineffective even on its own terms. Between 2014 and 2017 Israel ran a similar scheme with Rwanda as well as Uganda, and the vast majority of those who were sent to these countries found themselves destitute and at the mercy of under-resourced provision. Most left Africa as soon as possible and many ended up escaping to Europe – often with the exploitative ‘help’ of people-smugglers. The choice of Rwanda specifically also sparks concern. The UK itself criticised Rwanda’s human rights record as recently as last year, particularly its restrictions on media freedom and civil society: migrants sent to Rwanda from the UK could find themselves cut off from specialist organisations who could support and advocate for them, and thanks to tightly controlled national media conditions this could go unreported and abuses unchallenged. At the UN last year, the UK also raised allegations of torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Rwanda. Yet in full knowledge of this the British government is planning to send this nation some of the world’s most vulnerable and oppressed individuals: not only a cruel action in itself, but one giving the green light to further cruelty out of sight and out of mind. The primary targets of the scheme will allegedly be ‘single men’ who have risked their lives to arrive in the UK via irregular methods such as small boats and lorries; the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding crucially though do not restrict this scheme to men only, suggesting a slippery slope towards women and children is very much on the minds of the drafters. Our government though continues to demonise in particular young male refugees, disregarding the fact that this group often face the worst danger in their home countries and have no option but to flee. Some men also go on ahead, hoping to find a safe place where they can be joined by their family. Worryingly, if a male refugee had travelled to the UK ahead of his family members, he would very possibly be classified as a ‘single male’ and flown to Rwanda. If permitted to remain there, his family would presumably be expected to join him there, or face permanent separation. The scheme would also not exclude victims of modern slavery, despite the UK having recently condemned Rwanda’s failure to protect survivors of trafficking. This omission suggests that the government’s talk on becoming a leading nation in the tackling and ending of slavery and trafficking is just that: talk, which can easily be disregarded when deemed politically convenient. Yet again, the government is predicating its hostility towards migrants on the claim that so-called ‘safe and legal routes’ for seeking asylum in the UK exist and are accessible. We know that this is not the case. Time and again men, women and children have to resort to the danger and trauma of small boat and lorry journeys because they simply cannot get non-existent visas. Ukrainians have been treated with more humanity than migrants from non-European countries, and we know from having lived in the time of Syria and Ukraine that if refugees have access to safe routes, they use them. If the government is serious about tackling people smuggling, they would create more safe routes to the UK, starting by expanding the scope of existing family reunion provisions so that it is not restricted solely to pre-flight spouses and minor children. We see daily how refugees, such as RAMFEL client Yasmin, are prevented from bringing their loved ones to join them and feel they have no option but to seek alternative passage. The government itself has also conceded that it has no idea whether this plan will be cost effective. They insist though that if refugees believe they will get sent to Rwanda, then the so-called ‘pull factor’ of coming to the UK will be removed. This is a favourite line of the government, but is not supported by any evidence, and in fact the available research shows that cultural, linguistic and familial ties are the reasons refugees seek to come to the UK. In fact, the head of the Home Office has even conceded there is insufficient evidence to show that this policy will deter UK arrivals, suggesting the government body charged with implementing the plan does not believe it will achieve its stated aim. One of our clients, Hassan*, a refugee who has been battling to bring his wife and children to the UK, shared his thoughts on the new developments: ‘You have to understand that people don’t risk the journey through the sea for pleasure, it’s because back home you are facing death from all sides so you have to risk your life to find safety. If the UK government will not give my wife and children or brothers and sisters a visa to join me in the UK, and I know they are suffering in the way I suffered back home, you have no choice but to find other ways to get here. The only thing you want is for your family to be safe – I think this is all anyone wants – and this makes you do impossible things. Should we be exiled to an unsafe country where we have no ties, simply because we want to make a better life for us and our families in the UK, free from persecution?’ He added: ‘Everyone has a right to live in peace and be secure. I know that not long ago Rwanda’s human rights record was criticised by the UK. Is it safe to send refugees there, or does the UK government not care and is just using us as part of a political game and to scare people?’ The plans are terrifying to those in the UK who fear they may become targets for the scheme. Yesterday another one of our clients – an 18-year-old who arrived here in January – told a RAMFEL caseworker that he has been driven by the Rwanda development to contemplate suicide. It was striking to hear him speak like this, as in the short time he has been in the UK, after a hugely traumatic journey to the country, we have been amazed at how quickly he has developed ties, forming a friendship group, enrolling in college and rapidly improving his English. If learning of the UK’s plan causes such damage, one shudders to think how much those actually removed to Rwanda will suffer. Patel’s and Johnson’s idea shows a callous disregard for human life and wellbeing. Despite its rhetoric on Ukraine, the government has now shown its true colours when it comes to welcoming refugees. This has to galvanise us to continue in the long and disheartening fight against the ‘anti-refugee bill’ and we must resist this plan and oppose the offshoring of refugees. *Names have been changed to protect identities. Waltham Forest Council is hosting an information event on 6th April for Ukrainian residents, those affected by the crisis, and those considering putting themselves forward as sponsors for the Homes for Ukraine Scheme. RAMFEL and other services will be present to provide advice and support. You can read more and register for the event here. |
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