How the UK immigration system hurts people: March 2021
This month’s recap features the Home Office planning a disastrous overhaul of the asylum system and taking 5 years to decide on a residency application.
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 March 2021.
Continuing to screw over Windrush victims
Let’s break down the story of Anthony Williams:
- Anthony assumed he would be getting a level 4 pay-out from the Windrush compensation scheme, worth £70,000.
- But following reforms to the scheme, the Home Office has placed him at level 3, worth £40,000.
- Level 4 requires claimants to “show that their ‘ability to live a relatively normal life was seriously compromised’ for a ‘prolonged period’”.
- Anthony “was refused access to work, NHS services and welfare” for over 5 years.
5 years not long enough to be denied access to work and public services?
Also, the Home Office just really aren’t paying anyone it seems:
Continuing to screw over EU citizens
This article covers things that have been in my recap the past two months, but I will keep repeating them:
- EU citizens with pre-settled status who left the UK during the pandemic to stay with family may end up losing their right to live in the UK. This is because the Home Office won’t amend the residency conditions they created pre-pandemic.
- Not everyone will apply to the EU Settlement Scheme, leading to tens of thousands of people being criminalised overnight.
- EU citizens are already being denied access to services if they can’t prove their status, even though the deadline for applying to the Settlement Scheme is 30 June.
Not deciding on someone’s residency application for nearly 5 years
The decision time is meant to take up to 6 months.
I’ll also add that you cannot leave the country while your application is being decided on.
When pressed, the Home Office still was not able to provide a timescale:
Stopping transfers of asylum seekers out of Napier Barracks, leading to a hunger strike
Continuing to deny immigrants access to public funds during a pandemic, even though it’s a public health risk and causes destitution…
…and denies babies food
Planning life imprisonment for asylum seekers who steer boats across the English Channel
This is one of those things where the Home Secretary claims she’s punishing people smugglers, but it’s actually all a guise to get rid of asylum seekers.
This quote from Bridget Chapman of the Kent Refugees Action Network gets to the heart of the issue:
I think something that people don’t understand is there is no way to apply for asylum in the UK from outside of the UK, you have to physically be present in the country to apply for asylum…
If there was a way of people making that application from outside the UK, that would stop the people smugglers business overnight and would essentially solve the problem of people trafficking and I think that’s something that we all want to do.
Refusing to grant status for 2/3 of EU Settlement Scheme applications from Zambrano carers
Creating the conditions that led to an asylum seeker losing her newborn baby
This is what happens the Home Office doesn’t create safe and legal routes for people to reach the UK.
Housing asylum seekers in barracks that led to Covid outbreaks, even after NHS warned social distancing would be impossible there…
…and yet still planning to move more people into the barracks…
…and keep 28 people to a dorm
Holding asylum seekers at high-risk of self-harm in deplorable conditions
The same inspection that said that also found that:
- the Home Office showed ‘fundamental failures of leadership and planning’ in using barracks to house asylum seekers
- a large-scale Covid-19 outbreak was inevitable
- the accommodation was run-down and unfit to be long-term accommodation
Now MPs are demanding an explanation:
Denying a visit visa to a terminal cancer patient’s son
Denying a Windrush victim UK citizenship, despite the Home Office wrongly barring him from re-entering the UK for 9 years
One to break down:
- Trevor Donald lived in the UK for 43 years before returning to Jamaica for his mother’s funeral in 2010.
- The Home Office wrongly barred him for returning to the UK for 9 years.
- After the Windrush scandal broke, he was allowed back into the UK in 2019.
- He tried to apply for UK citizenship but was refused because he doesn’t meet the residency requirement of 5 years. Even though it was the Home Office’s fault for wrongly not letting him back into the UK.
Leaving an immigrant homeless after Home Office delays
An immigrant won an appeal to stay in the UK in 2006, but the Home Office recorded that he lost his appeal on his file.
15 years later, this situation has still not been fully rectified.
Unlawfully not allowing fee waivers for overseas visa applicants
The Home Office has conceded that it has been unlawfully charging overseas visa applicants fees in cases where in-country applicants could apply to have their fees waived.
For overseas applicants, the Home Office has basically only been allowing fee waivers for circumstances like civil war or disaster.
In-country applicants can apply for fee waivers if they, for instance, are destitute and can’t afford the ridiculous £3,000 in fees.
As the article below sums up:
Many applicants have been struggling in a Catch-22 situation for years: unable to enter the UK because of not being able to pay the visa application fee, and unable to get a waiver for the application fee because of being outside the UK.
Oh, and they’re not looking to fix this policy until August:
Denying help to immigrant victims of domestic abuse
I mentioned this last month, but worth repeating as there’s another article about it this month.
The UK Government refuses to financially help immigrant domestic violence victims not on spousal visas.
This Government enables abusers.
Failing to catch human traffickers
Between April 2018 and March 2020, according to the Home Office’s internal numbers, ten people were arrested under the modern slavery legislation off the back of investigations by the Immigration Enforcement Criminal and Financial Investigations team. Five were charged with an offence.
To put those five prosecutions in context, the inspector points to the over 5,000 modern slavery offences recorded by police in 2018/19 alone.
Potentially creating issues for EU women accessing services by issuing EU Settlement Scheme documentation with maiden names
Denying asylum to someone who witnessed their friend be murdered by their government
He now has another opportunity to argue for asylum, but was initially refused “on [the] basis that he would not put himself at risk by reporting the matter to the authorities, for fear of harm to his family.”
Refusing to reinstate a visa route that would help prevent the exploitation of immigrant domestic workers
Forcing immigrants to return to their home country in the middle of a pandemic if they want to switch into a different visa category
In certain cases, the Home Office makes immigrants leave the UK if they switch to a different visa category.
When the pandemic started, they made a concession to allow immigrants to stay in the UK to apply for their new visa route.
On 4 March, mid-lockdown with the highest of travel restrictions, the Home Office removed this concession from their Covid-19 visa guidance.
The content changed from…
You’ll be able to submit an application form from within the UK, whereas you would usually need to apply for a visa from your home country.
…to:
Where eligible, you’ll be able to submit a permission to stay application form from within the UK.
Jeopardising the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme by not ending the hostile environment
Unauthorised immigrants are understandably warry of getting a vaccine, for fear of data-sharing with the Home Office.
The hostile environment is a public health issue.
Putting those with EU Settled Status at risk of being exploited through digital-only status
Normally the headline around the EU Settlement Scheme is that digital-only status poses a challenge for people being able to access it.
In this case, an employer was able to abuse the system by putting in their contact details instead of the applicant — and somehow this goes unchecked by the Home Office.
Putting children in care at risk of losing their legal status after the EU Settlement Scheme deadline
Removing homeless EU nationals who have a right to remain in the UK
Refusing to extend the EU Settlement Scheme deadline despite the fact that not everyone will apply in time
Denying immigrants the ability to look after their adult dependants in the UK
This has been the case since 2012, but it’s making headlines now because key workers are forced to choose between continuing their life in the UK, or returning to home countries to look after their parents.
Not returning passports back to visa applicants
There are some visa applicants who have not had their passports returned to them for YEARS.
Making seasonal workers feel trapped by their employer
Here’s a condensed version of the article in a Twitter thread:
Illegally stripping Brits of their citizenship and leaving them stateless
In this case, three people won the appeal against the removal, but point being it still happened.
Here’s a summary which quote tweets a thread explaining what this is all about:
Planning to send asylum seekers abroad while processing their claims
Here are two very useful threads from Colin Yeo on the topic:
Creating misleading headlines about the modern slavery system
Denying parents the ability to come visit their children who live in the UK
This was also the subject of the 16 March episode of the Borderline podcast:
Trying to make asylum lawyers pay for deportation appeals
Threatening to deport an NHS worker in the middle of a pandemic
Wrongly deeming child asylum seekers as adults
Deporting people at a cost of £13,354 per person
Planning to create a second class of asylum seekers if they arrive by unauthorised routes
Under new plans, if you arrive by crossing the Channel, you will be indefinitely liable to have your refugee status removed after it’s been granted.
Part of this plan includes deporting refugees to other countries who have not yet agreed to this.
It will also make it harder to modern slavery victims to be released from detention:
And harm women asylum seekers:
For all those who come by informal routes now, Patel is proposing to strip away the possibility of permanent leave to remain. So even if she is recognised as a refugee, Gloria [the asylum seeker referenced in the Guardian article] will not now be safe from potential deportation. Every two and a half years, she will have to present evidence about why she cannot return to the country she fled. Try to imagine what that could cost her — financially, in terms of legal advice, but also emotionally, when she goes again and again to the authorities to relive her experiences and beg them not to send her back to her torturers.
Free Movement have a good explainer post of the details of the full plan:
Harming the mental and physical health of child asylum seekers because of delays
Not deciding on someone’s EU Settlement Scheme application after 13 months
Reviving a plan to deport non-British rough sleepers
Refusing to disclose how many women have been stripped of their British citizenship
Not recording asylum seeker suicides
Data is vital to us because it tells a story about the lives of people who live among us but are marginalised and voiceless. This absence of information tells us that even in death, they are not counted.
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.
