Today, I woke up feeling a profound sadness. Yesterday, the Nationality and Borders Bill became an Act of Parliament and passed into legislation.
I wanted to reach out to all the wonderful, warm, and courageous fellow human pans I have met over the years and give them a big hug. Fellow humans who also happen to be asylum seekers and refugees.
This legislation has been widely condemned nationally and internationally (Wales and Scotland and UNHCR). There is not a single organisation that works with asylum seekers and refugees that supported the Bill. This new Act undermines the fundamental human right (Article 14) to claim asylum; a right that was established after World War Two when international leaders recognised the need to ensure sanctuary and safety for those dehumanised, with lives at risk, through persecution. Now, the U.K. government seeks to persecute and criminalise those seeking that right to asylum, to sanctuary and safety, based on how they arrive at U.K. borders.
This new Act is now combined with a new policy of removal to Rwanda (a policy even criticised by the ex-Home Secretary, Theresa May, who introduced the policy of a ‘hostile environment’). People who loved in fear and came to the U.K. to escape that find themselves living in fear once more. According to the Refugee Council, using Home Office statistics, 71% of asylum claims in the U.K. were granted in 2021. The U.K. homes less than 1% of the worlds population of over 80million displaced people. Lebanon is about the same size as Wales and gave sanctuary to over a million people in 2021. The rhetoric of swarms of illegal immigrants or economic migrants pretending to be asylum seekers arriving at U.K. shores is just false.
The notion that harsh deterrents are needed to ensure refugees do not make their way to the U.K., to stop people claiming asylum in the U.K., has been proven over and over again to be false. The U.K. government talks about pull factors, supposedly illegal migrants risking their lives in dinghies for the golden opportunities of the U.K. benefits system or opportunities for work. Priti Patel (and her predecessors) paint a picture of impoverished people from impoverish nations lying to be allowed to live in the U.K. Yet, there is not one single piece of credible evidence to back those claims.
In fact, all the evidence shows how false those claims are. Research dating back to Bloch’s pivotal work in 2002 (1), has shown time and time again that asylum seekers who come to the U.K. are often skilled and well-educated. They had often had professional jobs or run successful business until forced to flee. They then find themselves living on £40 a week in the U.K., not allowed to work and use their skills and experience. Even once they are granted Refugee Status/Leave to Remain, and can work they can often only do so in low-paid jobs because their qualifications and experience are not recognised. The ex- teachers, ex-journalists, ex-doctors, ex-nurses, ex-politicians, etc who I know definitely aren’t living a “better” life in the U.K.
Evidence also shows that most asylum seekers do not know about the U.K. asylum system before they arrive. They may not have ever heard the phrase “asylum seeker” before. In much of the world, the assumption someone claiming to be a refugee is a liar and they must be forced to prove themselves by reliving their trauma multiple times does not happen. Asylum seekers do generally know that the U.K. is a multicultural nation. They may know there are communities from their home nation in the U.K. They may speak English (due to the U.K.‘S imperial past) or feel they can learn it. These are factors that help someone feel safe and secure. (However, when asylum seekers arrive that security often does not come as they are dispersed, often away from their diasporic communities and are isolated with few rights.) They also know that they are not safe in their home country and may not feel safe in areas to which traffickers prey or smugglers have brought them.
So, if a need for deterring the tiny proportion of refugees who come to the U.K. is not behind the latest legislation and the Rwanda plan, what is? The simple answer is ideological racism. Not only does the Act dehumanise asylum seekers it makes those with immediate heritage from outside the UK second-class citizens, with citizenship that can be stripped without notification. We have seen recently how differently white, European refugees are treated compared with black and brown people needing sanctuary. The BBC and other media outlets using the term refugee to describe those fleeing the Ukraine, where they had refused to do so to describe those fleeing Syria during that ‘crisis’ a few years before. Westminster politicians offer words (although not actions) of sympathy to Ukraine while trying to paint those crossing the channel as criminals. The U.K. has a long history of racist immigration policy, including exploitation of Commonwealth labour and the recent mistreatment of that Windrush generation. That history is probably a blog post for another day, however.
For now, I’d like to express my solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees and my hopes that the Welsh Government will continue to strive to make Wales. Nation of Sanctuary. I share the anger and upset of others in the racialised communities of which I am part. The U.K. government is willing to enact legislation that brings international condemnation and is willing to treat people like cattle. But the U.K. government is not the British people and it does not represent me at all.
- Bloch, A. (2002). The Migration and Settlement of Refugees in Britain. The Migration and Settlement of Refugees in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Research Stories 