The destitution of failed asylum seekers: a story from the days of Gladstone and Disraeli, not Brown and Cameron
4 12 2007Cutting off support to failed asylum seekers is tantamount to starving them out of country argues former Labour deputy leadership candidate Jon Cruddas MP.
A new film is being shown to MPs today by Amnesty International that aims to shame us into action. It’s about a group of people forced into abject poverty: sleeping rough, eating food out of bins, depending on churches and charities for clothes. Not only that, many live in fear of being forced to leave this situation for somewhere that may be much worse. This is all happening in the UK, under our very noses. And few politicians will go near the issue because these people are refused asylum seekers.
When someone reaches the end of the asylum process - often after poor legal representation from start to finish - their support is cut off and they are denied the right to work, access to benefits and the right to NHS hospital treatment except in an emergency. They are forced into destitution. Some get “hard case support” but many believe this is a ploy to make them sign up to return to their home country - and many asylum-seekers are simply too scared to go home, or are unable to return.
And many people can’t be removed. For people from much of Somalia and Iraq or Zimbabwe, their home country may simply be too unsafe to go back to; in some countries there is no safe airport to fly to. And many people don’t have valid travel documents as they were confiscated in their home country or they have been told to destroy them by the agent that brought them here.
I’m not saying that no one should be returned. If someone’s asylum claim has been dealt with fairly, with a proper interpreter and legal representation, then if their claim fails they should return, provided it’s safe to do so. But that just isn’t always the case. And in these cases a humane solution must be found that allows refused asylum seekers to live with some sense of dignity and purpose.
As a member of the Still Human Still Here campaign, Amnesty is one of a number of organisations highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country.
One of those people featured in the film is Afshin, a 38-year-old man who arrived in the UK from Iran 12 years ago, after fleeing to escape the threat of persecution. He had a long history of opposition to the Iranian regime and had been imprisoned and beaten before leaving the country. After waiting for five years for a decision on his asylum claim, it was refused and his appeal was rejected.
Since then his life has been in tatters. He is terrified of returning to Iran but once his asylum claim was refused and his appeal dismissed, he was denied the right to work or receive government support. With no money for food, clothes or shelter, Afshin lived on the streets, sleeping rough or occasionally in a launderette, sometimes eating from rubbish bins. He has had many health problems, but destitute refused asylum-seekers are only able to access hospital medical care for emergency treatment or any treatment they were receiving during their asylum claim. Afshin has twice attempted suicide.
I met Afshin at a screening of the film at the Labour party conference. He’s got somewhere to stay now: after converting to Christianity, he lives with a religious order in London. And he’s got a better lawyer now that UK NGOs have heard about his case. But should someone really be relying on churches and charities to keep them alive in modern Britain? This sounds like a story from the days of Gladstone and Disraeli, not Brown and Cameron.
This is a policy that doesn’t work: it drives people underground, away from the authorities towards illegal labour, crime and prostitution. And once the authorities have lost contact with someone, there’s little chance of returning them should the situation improve in their home country.
But more importantly, it’s a policy that fills me with shame. Cutting off people’s support, denying them the right to support themselves and driving them into destitution is little more than an attempt to starve them out of the country. It’s not something that we should tolerate in our modern and affluent society. And if British people were found to be in this situation, I have little doubt that there would be a righteous outcry. It’s allowed to go on because it only affects a group of people that have been so thoroughly stigmatised that they are beyond sympathy for many people.
So I hope that plenty of my colleagues get to see the film, Still Human Still Here: The destitution of refused asylum seekers this evening and I hope it has a powerful effect on them. I hope that in a couple of years’ time, the film will be outdated as it will depict a situation that no longer happens. But until then Amnesty is asking anyone who cares about the issue to contact them to request a copy of the DVD and show it to their MP, to confront them with the stark fact that Afshin and many others are living in a Victorian Britain that the rest of us have left long behind.
Jon Cruddas is the Labour MP for Dagenham. You can watch Nick Broomfield’s short film for Amnesty International which highlights the issue of destitute refused asylum seekers in the UK here.
I too am one of the unfortunate ones who have fallen into the catergory of the ‘undesirables’ in this country and have been destitute for over 3 years now. I am now being looked after by the church i belong to and they have been kind to me after this government treated me less than a human being.
I have one story to tell this government: When i left my country (Zimbabwe) in 2002 in the middle of a major political incident which forced me out of the country, I observed the way the minority white people in my country were being treated by the government. They had literally all their rights taken away from them. One could assault a white person in broad day light and no one would lift a fingure against you. One could go to a white man’s house anytime (in the name of being a war veteran) and you could do just about anything to them or their property and they would have nothing to their defense.
At the time, economic hardships were begining to set in. There was shortage of cash, basic commodities, fuel etc and to obtain these things the order of the time was to queue for them. The vulnerable white community could not dare go out to queue for these commodities for fear of victimisation. I watched these things and it sickened me. Though i am a member of the opposition, i am not a high profile one, i was an activist and therefore could not influence events in a meaningful way to help these helpless souls. But one thing i had access to was bread! I got bread through my own sources and used my own resources to deliver them to these vulnerable people. I did that not because i was a member of the opposition, nor because they were white people but simply because THEY ARE PEOPLE too! You can not kick someone of his property, take away their livelihoods, deny them food or any form of living and tell them to just leave your country (all of which was happening to the white community in my country). I have no degree in law or human rights issues but one does not need one to see that something is seriously wrong with a system which condoned that kind of behaviour.
A couple of months later it was my turn, i was forced to leave the country and came to this country in the hope of finding a civilised treatment compared to what i had seen in my country, little did i know. I can not believe that the same oppresion and illtreatment i witnessed in my country against the vulnerable is now levied against me a now vulnerable member of the community in this country. It is beyond belief to realise that save for physical violence, this government has treated me in much the same way that the government of Zimbabwe has treated the vulnerable white community back in my country. It is even more ironic in that in both the cases it the government that persecutes the vulnerable and it is always the ordinary members of the public who come to the rescue of these defenseless people. Without the kindness of the ordinary British public who have looked after me i wouldn’t be here today to tell this story, what a sad parallel of events.
In closing i can only say one thing to those who are in government in this county; I pray that your future generations will never live to need other people’s help.
I thought I had stumbled into an arcane discussion group which argued the merits of Pravda versus the ramblings of Ceaucescu and posted comparisons with paeans to Hu Jintao and Kim Jong-il here. Judging by some of the contributors and contributions that might weel be the case
However, the excellent Jon Cruddas MP was by far the most impressive candidate for the deputy leadership of the Labour party and appears unique amongst so-called ‘progressives’ in not attributing support for far right groups to purely racist motives, buit recognising that a policy of unlimited immigration has some quite serious consequences that political parties of any stripe seem unable or unwilling to address.
The issue of refused asylum seekers and destitution is a thorny one. It would take a heart of stone not to be impacted by the story either of Ashfin or of the Zimbabwean contributor above.
However, by the same token, surely you are conscious of the extreme hardship being faced by people working at or near minimum wage who are having to pay a third of their income to the exchequer and who are seeing their wages effectively reduced by competition from immigrant labour which is comparatively overqualified and able to work at sub market rates? Are these people merely to accept that Britain has an apparently limitless capacity to absorb economic migrants and asylum seekers? Whether the author likes it or not, this is a small island with countless problems. Given that under the Human Rights Act, the ‘dispersal’policy was ruled illegal, Asylum seekers tend to congregate in the South East, an area already facing severe pressure on infrastructure and services. Does the UK, however affluent Jon Cruddas seems to think it is , have a bottomless well of either space or resource to act as a safe haven for the entire Third World?
Whilst I agree that to condemn people to destitution is extremely harsh, I think there needs to be a balance to the debate which I’m sorry to say this article does not quite reflect.
Let me start by thanking the honourable MP for Dagenham, Jon Cruddas for his piece above which is so very inspiring and assuring even in the thick of travails, having forced smiles out of my forlorn face. Now I know that I’m not alone.
I am a failed asylum seeker who has been denied by the asylum procedure (Asylum Rights Exhausted) but has not signed up to return home due to genuine fear for my life which unfortunately the system does not appreciate or simply ignore due to a culture of denial in the Home Office as rightly indicated in the Commissioners’ Report of Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust Inquiry into Destitution among refused asylum seekers. I have been in the system for over three years now and only had support for about four months after which I was ‘cut off’. However, I still manage to survive and show up every month at my local immigration centre as required.
What happens to me next?. I do not know but remembering that day after day I keep wasting my potent youth makes me mourn deeply. Yet the last thing I want to do alive is return home. With no right to work and no support from any quarter, I however choose to eschew criminal, illegal ways to earn a living in exchange for the sanctuary which the UK provides for me. It was a very tight battle between will and reason in which the former has edged so far, but for how long can this will prevail in the face of real test, when extreme circumstances might put me to test, forcing the contrary on me?. Will I jettison my will and determination?.
Lest I digress too far from the main issue, I follow the effort of the government in respect of the issue of immigration with keen interest. This is a big issue with seemingly no solution in sight, and it is a shame that people like me are the problem, leaving our culpable governments back home to put an innocent government at such crossroads.
Unfortunately in my view, the government is approaching the issue more from one side- the side of the one million or so of us here with so little regard for the many more millions of those out there who are teeming with aspiration to get here against all odds. It indeed has two sharp edges which should attract equal attention.
E-border?. Yes, but still I want to say that even if the government of the island of UK stopped the issuance of visas worldwide, people will still manage to get here somehow. That is to show that much as I applaud the idea of e-border and all its attendant aims and vision, it can not in isolation be the solution. Much more needs to be done. I would here refer to the saying of our people that when you guard or fortify your house so well, you are inadvertently telling the burglar that it contains treasure, thereby inviting him.
For real achievements to be made in the present immigration jumble, the orientation of people coming here in the hope that the land is an eldorado has to change. I have used my inter-personal skills to have one-on-ones with very many immigrants, legal and illegal and one of the things they say in common is that they never knew this is how life is in the UK. ‘I could have stayed back and invested the several thousands of pounds wisely in my country where of course the money has more value. Life is sweet back home you know’, is the typical response. Yet for various reasons ranging from genuine fear of persecution to reap back, they dont want to return home, at least not soon. ‘How can you struggle so hard to climb to the very top of a thorny tree without getting the best fruits for yourself?’ is the illusory belief of people back home. So going back with nothing amounts to becoming a laughing stock and who wants to be seen as a failure. In order to make up for leeway, people turn to all manner and kinds of heinous things. How can you remotely blame them when the societal expectation is taking its toll on them?. Ironically too, people back home are busy raking the thousands of pounds together to make the dream journey to the UK for their own fortune and no matter what you tell them about the reality here is disregarded, saying ‘only a leper wants others to be like himself’. They believe we here have ‘made it’ and want to discourage others from making it like us. They get here before realising that we here are truly the only lepers who dont want other people to be like us.
Their coming affects us in the sense that as our number swells, the harder the government’s stance.
What likely real solutions?. Without being pretentious, some of us have potent ideas but can we ever contribute?.