THE Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, expressed dismay this week on the Government’s latest plans for asylum-seekers, saying that the policy changes “appear to scapegoat refugees for the commonly poor state of public funds and public services”.
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who has been MP for Birmingham Ladywood since 2010, announced the proposals on Monday, when the Government published its policy paper, Restoring Order and Control: An announcement on the federal government’s asylum and returns policy. This can be the most important shake-up of policy on illegal migration “in modern times”, Ms Mahmood said.
The paper proposes that the qualifying period for refugees to use for everlasting residence or indefinite leave to stay rise from five years to twenty, and that the status of individuals granted leave to stay be reviewed after 30 months as an alternative of 5 years. This status can be renewable “provided that protection continues to be needed”, the paper says.
In an announcement to the Church Times on Tuesday, Dr Francis-Dehqani said: “The proposals place even greater challenges in the way in which of fine integration, to the detriment each of refugees and host communities.”
She also warned that “all that is in peril of further deepening division in our communities and increasing suspicion of asylum-seekers and migrants at a time when what we’d like from our political leaders is to bring the country together.”
Also within the Government’s strategy is the creation of a “work and study” visa route, to “encourage refugees to integrate more fully into the communities providing them sanctuary” through finding employment or starting study “at an appropriate level and pay[ing] a fee”. Only those on this route could “turn out to be eligible to sponsor relations to return to the UK”. “There might be no automatic right to family reunion,” the paper says.
Also removed can be the present legal obligation to supply support to asylum-seekers who would otherwise be destitute.
Since 2021, greater than 400,000 people have claimed asylum within the UK, up from about 150,000 between 2011 and 2015, the paper says. Of the 111,800 individuals who have claimed asylum this yr, 39 per cent (43,600) arrived “in a small boat”. An extra 37 per cent (41,100) arrived “first by legal means, on a visa, before claiming asylum”. About 15,000 arrived by other means.
Responding to the proposals on Monday, the Bishop of Edmonton, Dr Anderson Jeremiah, who’s the diocese of London’s lead for racial justice, posted on X: “The moment we give up compassion in political discourse, we embrace a collective delusion. It becomes the permission slip to dehumanise and make essentially the most vulnerable our societal scapegoats. We are higher than this. We must rise above it.”
The UK Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, David Ryall, said that the policies “will inflict profound harm”. The government paper “curtails welcome, undermines protection, and blocks integration. In so doing, it diminishes our common humanity and makes our society poorer.”
Refugee Education UK, a charity that advocates that “one in every of the sensible outworkings of the Christian faith is to supply care, support and welcome to the displaced”, questioned, in a social-media post on Tuesday, how making refugees renew their status every couple of years “achieves anything aside from dehumanising an already marginalised group of young people”.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is on account of pass its final stage within the House of Commons on Wednesday.
