We are deeply concerned about the government’s recent proposed changes to the asylum system, in particular plans to make refugee status temporary and precarious. These policies will impact people who have already lived through war, persecution and profound loss. Many reach the UK with virtually nothing, simply hoping to find protection. These new proposals will not stop people from seeking safety – they will just cause further suffering and misery.
The majority of people we have worked with over the past 26 years were forced to arrive in the UK through irregular routes. Most have been granted asylum and become valuable, settled members of our communities. They tell us how important permanent settlement (and citizenship) is to them, providing a vital sense of safety and stability after years of displacement and the psychological stress of insecurity.
People like Francois, whose family were killed in the Rwandan genocide and who told us:
“As a survivor and a refugee, you are always faced with the trauma of not feeling that you have a safe place to call home. I might be settled in the UK, I might know that it is safe here, I might have a beautiful family around me. However, fear, flashbacks and nightmares never go away; I just learned to manage them.”
Reducing refugee status to 30 months, with the threat of removal forever hanging over people and a 20-year wait for permanent settlement, would be cruel and counterproductive. It would take away people’s stake in society and harm their integration and wellbeing. Families will live in fear of being uprooted or evicted once again because their status is up for review. Refugees with valuable skills to offer could be prevented from finding rewarding, sustainable employment. The businesses all around us that have been established by refugees over the last two decades would not be there.
For people granted refugee status, the UK is their new home. We firmly believe it is better for those people to feel part of society from the start and have the chance to exercise their rights and responsibilities, rather than be second class, non-citizens who cannot participate fully in public life. And those who do choose to return to their country of origin as circumstances allow should be supported in doing so – but as we have seen with Syrian clients recently this is a complex decision, and ensuring families have the agency to make it for themselves is paramount.
In discussion around these proposals, a lot has been made of the ‘Danish model’. We would warn strongly against viewing this model as a success. As the respected think tank ‘UK in a Changing Europe’ documented recently, these policies have led to “rising poverty, impaired political belonging and democratic dissatisfaction”. They also point out the anti-immigration move was “a zero-sum game for the Danish Social Democrats”, and that better framing of a pro-immigration platform based on fairness and decency could have won policy support.
In our 26 years of working with refugees and asylum seekers, we have seen successive governments enact one asylum policy after another, each more punitive than the last. None has deterred people desperate to find a place of safety, or tackled the situations that forced them to flee in the first place.
Forced displacement globally has doubled over the last decade. People fleeing atrocities in the world’s worst displacement crisis in Sudan have no legal way to access safety in the UK. In opposition, Labour promised new safe and legal routes, but there has been no progress on this. It is vital these new routes are established at scale so people can access protection in a safe and orderly way.
We agree with the Home Secretary that ‘dark forces are stirring up anger over migration’, as a result of which we have seen increasing threats to our clients and to ourselves as an organisation. However, given the UK ranks only 17th in Europe in asylum applications per capita, we would caution against the government framing this issue as one that is ‘tearing the country apart’. We fear this rhetoric will only embolden those dark forces and create further division and hatred.
We are proud that refugee integration in Suffolk is a story of success and mutual enrichment. We work with refugees and asylum seekers across the county, many of whom have been through horrendous experiences and come to us desperate to rebuild their shattered lives. We will continue to support people to settle, overcome past trauma and find long term safety, and to help create a narrative that better reflects the positive benefits of fair and decent treatment of refugees.
