It’s sometimes hard to believe how quickly the deplorable use of the word ‘illegals’ has become common place within our media and government, as if people fleeing war and persecution are a face-less sub-class of humanity. No one is illegal. The vast majority of us know this, and want a compassionate, fair and effective asylum system, which is why it was good to see in a recent BBC Question Time episode, that not a single person raised their hand when asked if they support the Illegal Migration Bill.
However – despite the Court of Appeals ruling that the Government’s Rwanda policy is illegal itself (quite right too!) - the government continue to push through wider aspects of the Bill, which if passed as currently drafted, will effectively remove the rights of people seeking asylum and refugees in the UK. And let’s be clear, the purpose of the Bill is to extinguish the right to seek safety. It’s painful to imagine what the implications will be here on the ground, for our centre members, and everyone across the UK looking for a place of safety:
Because this Bill will turn away anyone who comes to the UK seeking protection, whether they are a female protester from Iran or a Sudanese child escaping civil war, because of a dangerous journey they had no choice over taking. It’s a law that would punish survivors of trafficking while empowering those who try to exploit them. And it destroys our international credibility at time when it’s more important than ever that we play our part on the world stage.
This Bill injects a poison into the heart of our society. It is a blueprint for the mass detention of people, including children and pregnant women, who have done nothing more than ask for our help. In doing so, it wastes billions of taxpayers’ money on unnecessary cruelty.
There is another choice. This government could create safe routes for refugees, rather than shutting them down. It could speed up the time it takes to hear asylum claims, so people get a quick decision rather than languishing in limbo for years. It could allow people seeking safety to work.
It’s been gratifying to watch the likes of the indomitable Lord Alf Dubs contest the Bill at every turn in the House of Lords and the Archbishop of Canterbury decry it as morally unacceptable.
So when Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick orders the removal of a cartoon mural at an asylum reception centre for unaccompanied children seeking asylum because it’s too welcoming… or a 16 year old from Sudan is imprisoned for navigating a boat part of the way to Dover, we double our resolve to do it differently here in Calderdale. We present more awareness raising sessions to bust myths, we encourage people to join the brilliant Valley of Sanctuary, we collaborate with Sand In Your Eye and over a thousand local people to create giant land art about compassion, and most importantly we continue to directly support people in Calderdale who are fleeing war and persecution. We show them that this ‘Anti-Asylum Bill’ is not who we are.
In other recent, national immigration news, nearly two years since the Taliban takeover, the government finally considers a ‘Homes for Afghans’ Scheme, many of whom served with the British military and are still living in UK hotels. The backlog of people waiting for an asylum claim to be processed is now over 170,000 as the majority of decision making processes remain unnecessarily static, and the Home Office look for increasingly bizarre ‘quasi-detention’ forms of accommodation including barges. Tragically, again we see hundreds seeking safety lose their lives on boats, one off the coast of Greece and another off the coast of Senegal.
It can be tricky to find the good news in the current hostile environment, but end on a positive we will! The Home Office’s recent streamlined asylum processes and questionnaires are at last starting to make faster decisions for some people from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. Though the forms are tough for people to navigate within the short time required (and for many, without legal help), so far, eight people in our community have been granted positive decisions via these schemes. It’s been wonderful to watch people’s reactions to their good news, knowing they can now start to properly rebuild their lives after years of trauma and uncertainty.
We are not a campaigning organisation ourselves, but if you want to find out more and fight the Illegal Migration Bill we recommend Refugee Action, Refugee Council and Asylum Matters.