How the UK immigration system hurts people: July 2021
This month’s recap features EU citizens losing their jobs while their EUSS applications are stuck in a backlog, and 51 asylum seekers dying in Home Office accommodation over the last 5 years.
10 min readJul 31, 2021
About my monthly recaps
I’m spending 2021 doing a monthly running challenge to fundraise for the Join Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI).
Read my blog post about why I’m fundraising for JCWI
As part of the fundraiser, I will be writing a monthly blog post on:
- how the monthly running challenge went (on my running blog)
- what happened in the world of UK immigration and asylum in the past month (here on Medium)
Past recaps
Now let’s get to July 2021.
Tweeting 32 minutes before the EU Settlement Scheme deadline that people should stay in the queue even past midnight
Why force people to stay up when you could just extend the deadline?
Making 33,016 asylum seekers wait over a year for a decision on their application
No longer showing proof of someone’s pre-settled status after they lodged an application for settled status
I am worried because I’m buying a house so I need to show that I have the right to stay here to get a mortgage and saying I have an application pending won’t be proof.
Claiming to have ‘secured the rights’ of EU citizens when people were forced to apply to secure them
Threatening a family with deportation due to an administrative error
Wrongly rejecting 78% of modern slavery victims
Leaving asylum seekers without cash cards for over a month
Making it a crime to seek asylum in the UK
Proposing offshore centres for asylum seekers
Planning to block visas from countries who don’t take back asylum seekers
Planning to forcibly turn around small boats carrying migrants
Unlawfully removing an asylum seeker after not properly hearing his trafficking and torture claims
Not recording Windrush compensation review outcomes
Trying to deport someone who has been in the UK for nearly 20 years
Telling an EU citizen who lived in the UK for 4 years but was unable to return for over a year because of the pandemic that she is liable to be detained
Trying to prosecute migrants who steer boats across the Channel (before being told they can’t be)
Posing a ‘profound threat’ to international refugee protection system
Making an immigrant feel like he wants to give up
Paying out £9.3m in taxpayer money for compensation in unlawful detention cases last year
Immediately detaining asylum seekers without properly hearing their asylum claims
Classing asylum seekers who are minors as adults
Locking up immigration detainees for up to 24 hours a day
Making staff at military barracks fear that asylum seekers placed there would die from Covid
Not advising foreign soldiers in the British army on how to apply for leave to remain
Sentencing a gay asylum seeker to 12 months in prison for using false ID because he was scared of being persecuted if returned to his home country
Getting an EUSS applicant fired because a decision hadn’t been made on their application yet
Changing the legal status of someone’s right to be in the UK from 3 years to 6 months when they went to upgrade to settled status
Refusing asylum claims for sick and cruel reasons
Read the whole thread.
Blocking undocumented immigrants from getting Covid vaccines because GPs refuse to register them
Deporting immigrants to Zimbabwe where they face imminent danger…
…including someone who has lived in the UK since age 7
Dismissing the deportation appeal of a man who has been living in the UK since age 9
Prioritising skills over safety with new refugee resettlement programme aimed at ‘skilled’ workers
Trying to deport a cancer patient back to a country where he can’t afford medical care
Making a woman keep paying for leave to remain because she was born in Germany where her Windrush father was deployed while serving in RAF
Creating the conditions leading to the death of an asylum seeker in accommodation…
…and teenage asylum seekers taking their own lives
Firing a Spanish woman who had been in the UK for 44 years because her EUSS application is in the backlog
Spending £412m in taxpayer money to imprison asylum seekers
Charging EU citizens 69p/minute for a helpline to prove their legal status
Trying (but failing) to deport a gay rugby player to Kenya
Still housing asylum seekers in unsuitable military barracks
Not letting a Windrush victim back in the UK 3 months after the Home Office said they would
Making a Holocaust survivor fear she is going to get deported because she doesn’t know if she has the right to stay in the UK
Placing thousands of over-65s in legal limbo because they didn’t know how or were not able to apply for EU settled status
Having 51 people die in asylum seeker accommodation in the last 5 years
Disproportionately targeting Jamaicans for deportation
Refusing a passport to a child because the Passport Office needed the abusive father’s consent
Making 170,000 people wait a decade to get indefinite leave to remain
Setting up a Windrush compensation scheme that is too complex
Making undocumented immigrants scared to get the Covid vaccine
Giving digital-only status to EU citizens and border control officers not knowing what to do when their digital systems are down and they can’t check it
Failing to protect detainees with HIV
Housing 56 migrants in a cramped room together
Setting up a fake website with misleading claims to deter asylum seekers
Angry? Disgusted? Ashamed? Then donate
If you are in any way appalled at what you just read happens in a single month in the world of UK immigration, please consider donating to my fundraiser for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
They’re doing the important work to both help those affected by the system, and help end the abuses of the system.
