I recently signed up to become a volunteer mentor for refugees.
Mainly so I can look smug and falsely self-effacing when people ask me what I do in my spare time, and tell them I’ve devoted my life to “helping those less fortunate, a bit like Mother Teresa and Princess Diana”. But also because I thought it would be interesting – I wanted to know a bit more about how refugees and asylum seekers are treated here.
You’re paired up with someone and meet up as often as you both want (for a minimum of five hours a month), helping with things like finding a job, learning English or finding somewhere to live.
I learned that the situation for people who come here needing help can be pretty unpleasant, whatever the Daily Mail says. Through my training (and a bit of internet bed-time reading) I learnt…
- The difference between refugees and asylum seekers is that refugees have been accepted, and can stay here for five years before their case and the situation in their country is reviewed. Asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on whether they can remain.
- There are hundreds of asylum seekers in prison-style detention centres in the UK waiting for a decision on whether they can stay here. Some have been waiting up to three years. Some – including women and children – are just kept in these centres.
- Anyone who came here claiming asylum before 2008 is now known as a legacy case. In 2008, the system changed. Under the new government targets, any asylum seeker has to have an answer quickly. So officials were suddenly under pressure to get quick answers for all the new arrivals, and anyone who came here under the old system was automatically a lower priority.
The result is that there’s a backlog of legacy cases – people who have been waiting for years and years for an answer, their life hanging in the balance. They’re unable to put down any roots here because they might suddenly get sent back. The government says it will deal with these cases by 2011, so potentially that’s three more years of waiting, without being able to work, or claim any of those generous British benefits people keep talking about.
- Some refugees can be here for a year or more and they never speak to a British person, except people that serve them in shops. There’s no initiative or institution where they can start talking to people socially. Considering a lack of integration, and consequently a lack of understanding, lead to people voting for the BNP through sheer mistrust and ignorance of people they don’t know, I think this needs addressing.
- Some of them are highly educated – doctors, professors, lawyers. There are lots of cases where doctors have got cleaning jobs at hospitals, just so they can be in that environment. It’s difficult getting them work in their field, because their qualifications don’t fit with the UK career path.
- Asylum seekers aren’t allowed to work, and they can’t claim benefits
- In 2002 the government issued a White Paper calling for better integration between refugees and people already living here. Projects like the one at Time Bank (the one I’m doing) expanded.
- Every refugee can stay here for five years. After that the Home Office reviews the situation in their country to decide if they can be sent back. The refugee can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, but can only do a month before the five years is up, so they won’t know what’s happening until the last minute.
- Some asylum seekers run away when they’re due to be deported because it’s better to be homeless here than being tortured or murdered in their home country. A lot of the time embassies refuse to give the correct paperwork to allow them to be deported because they don’t want these people back. This leaves them stuck either in detention centres or living in very bad conditions.
- The biggest challenge refugees face here is loneliness and isolation. Many of them come from very family-oriented cultures, and they come here and have no-one to talk to. It can be so bad it can lead to mental health problems – especially because many of them came here escaping torture and other awful experiences, and have been forcibly cut off from their families. It’s essential they have someone to talk to.
The government, despite wanting better integration, has cut the funding for English classes. Which doesn’t make it any easier to talk to people.
Most people in the UK would not want these people to suffer because of the way our government treats them. But they do suffer, and it’s because of the system here, and attitudes that lead to them being treated like they’re half human. There are some small community initiatives that help refugees and asylum seekers in individual areas, and you can find other ways of helping at the Refugee Council and Time Bank.