1 day ago
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The Law Society, according to your report (Mahmood’s move to make asylum temporary ‘may undermine refugee convention’, 2 March), believes the home secretary’s changes to “refugee status” might not comply with the UK’s legal obligations. That is important, but our wider concern should be with our moral and humanitarian obligations.
The UN’s refugee convention was drawn up to give those driven from their homes by persecution not just sanctuary, but an opportunity to build new lives. It requires a response that is compassionate as well as legal, but the new rules will leave refugees in a cruel state of uncertainty.
Refugees will not be able to settle in any meaningful way if they know their right to live in the UK is to be reviewed every 30 months. Who will give them mortgages to buy homes if they can’t guarantee being here for more than a couple of years; how can they develop their careers when employers know that their employment may only be short-term; and how can young people plan their education when college courses may last longer than their right to stay?
Is this really how a Labour government should be treating those who have needed to flee from their homes and whose claims for asylum have already been accepted? What has happened to the “moral crusade” which Harold Wilson believed Labour must be?
I am sure that I am not the only person who remains a Labour member in hope that Labour will rediscover its soul, but is thankful that our electoral system will not let the party know how we cast our votes.
Dr Ken Ritchie
Blairgowrie, Perth and Kinross
The home secretary talks about her reforms to the asylum system, including reprocessing applications every two and a half years, as a means to end “pull factors” for refugees. This shows a disturbing lack of awareness about the current system.
The majority of those seeking asylum who we work with come to the UK because they have existing ties to this country. It is where they feel the safest in rebuilding their lives after fleeing war and persecution.
Despite the home secretary’s claims to the contrary, the Home Office has neither the ability nor the resources to implement this policy in a workable way. We already see initial applications taking more than a year. To increase the number that need to be reviewed is unfeasible and costly. Not only that, it would leave people seeking safety and security in limbo, at more risk of becoming undocumented and exploited.
This is a policy that is not supported by evidence, and instead has been designed to grab headlines with no thought to the harm it causes those individuals who hoped that they may find some safety here, and the economic and social costs to all of us.
Daniel Sohege
Director, Stand For All
The Home Office says: “We will always provide sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution”. If that is really true, why is it so impossible to get to the UK as a place of sanctuary?
Before I read your article, I was talking to a mother who, with five children, is fleeing from a country torn apart by war. Her only method of seeking sanctuary in the UK is to pay a smuggler to bring her and her five children across the Channel. On perhaps her sixth attempt she was stopped by French police.
She and her children will, I know, try again to seek the sanctuary which we should surely be offering and which the Home Office claims we will provide. In Calais, the Home Office’s claim rings rather shallow.
The Rt Rev Mark Bryant
Honorary assistant bishop, Diocese of Newcastle
The UK has a great history of welcoming refugees such as the Huguenots, Kindertransport children, Vietnamese, Ugandan Asians, Syrians and Ukrainians into the nation.
The home secretary’s new hardline migration policies reflect similar messages advocated by Reform UK. This will push more Labour supporters such as myself to resign from the party. I resigned because these policies didn’t reflect any Labour values I hold or aware of and familiar with.
I am a Ugandan refugee who come to the UK in 1972. When the war started in Ukraine, I decided to welcome a refugee into my home from the country as a way of paying back and thanking the UK family who hosted my family in 1972.
From the 17th century, the welcome to refugees by the state has narrowed, with more barriers to successful refugee status claims. The new migration policies implies that entry fences are now being heightened beyond reach and several levels of gated barriers are being placed to significantly reduce a successful asylum claim. No previous Labour government has stooped as low as this. A U-turn to be proud of is still possible.
Paresh Motla
Thame, Oxfordshire
