We remain deeply concerned by the government’s new immigration rules, in particular plans to make refugees wait up to 30 years for permanent settlement. These policies will harm integration and 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 uncertainty.
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 he did not feel safe until he had permanent settlement in the UK:
“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.”
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.
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 not one person has arrived under a new safe route. It is vital these new schemes are established at scale so people can access protection in a safe and orderly way.
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.
