The morning started with news of people I campaigned for having been removed. Their asylum claim was rejected in spite of horrendous persecution suffered in their country of origin. The problem is that they are women, and the Refugee Convention simply doesn't have a category for women. It doesn't actually mention women at all, referring to a refugee as "he" exclusively. Clare Tudor from Immigration Advisory Services here in Glasgow gave yet another fascinating introduction to the ever changing UK asylum for our new volunteers. I've taken note of some of the main problems facing refugees.

Let's start at the beginning.
The UK government is extremely happy. It's reduced the number of people claiming asylum by 70%-85% in the last 4 years, while 85% of initial claims are refused (on appeal, 25% of these are overturned). The UK borders are really tough to break one should think. Well, think again. Immigration professionals will tell you that the rate of immigration hasn't changed at all, what has changed is that the asylum process is so harsh, and so impenetrable, that people rather don't bother with it and go underground. This means a sharp increase in illegal immigration, not a good thing whatever your political agenda. Whatever you do, don't make people illegal.

So what has made the asylum process so harsh that refugees rather go underground than apply for asylum?
So far, it's been due to ongoing changes of legislation. The problem here is that amendments to asylum legislation are not actually discussed in parliament but simply introduced by ministers. There is no debate on most changes made. Increasingly, the asylum process has been changed to make it hard to obtain asylum, and easier to remove people whose claim has failed.  In the past decade, there have been eight different legislations with regard to asylum, and this makes it a nightmare both for lawyers and obviously the people affected by it. The main hurdles of an asylum claim is compliance with very tight deadlines (if you appeal isn't in 10 working days after your first refusal, well tough etc), general lack of belief in the evidence and account presented by an asylum seeker, and poor decision making quality at the Home Office in general, which is done by underpaid junior staff without in depth knowledge of countries, culture and political situation in the countries of origin. Next come all the consequences created by a flawed asylum system: bad lawyers due to low legal aid, rejection of medial reports within the legal aid context (i.e. torture survivers are not able to present evidence), detention and resulting difficulty of accessing any legal representation at all - and the list goes on.

The New Asylum Model
As if it wasn't bad enough, things will get worse. The government have cunningly thought up a "New Asylum Model", which interestingly, isn't quite written up yet, but will come into effect in September. So we can't even criticise it properly because it has quite a few blanks at the moment. Literally. I've seen the document - there are blank boxes which are yet to be written. So much for consultation and public debate. I disgress.
The main worry for this model is the very fast track nature of an asylum claim. While I support the need for a transparent and speedy decision, so that people know where they are and aren't left in limbo for six years as is the case at present, dealing with a case in 13 weeks with pre-booked return flights looming simply seems to be an abolition of the right to asylum. It will effectively make it hardest to claim asylum for those who are most vulnerable, who cannot yet tell their tale of horror to immigration officers. Who need time and support to come to terms with what they went through. The human has been disregarded in this model.

Next, detention has to be considered for each case under the New Asylum Model. This bluntly disregards the fact that it is not a crime to claim asylum, but a right. Nobody should be detained for claiming asylum. It screams injustice at you.

As it stands, the New Asylum Model proposes something labeled "segmentation". This seems to mean that at initial screening interview , Immigration Officers will classify the claim into one of nine or ten segments, which will then determine the speed and conditions of the subsequent asylum process (including housing, access to legal advice etc). Of the nine/ten suggested segments, only four are defined yet, and they all make the assumption that we're dealing with bogus people. Third country, late and opportunitstic, nun-suspensive appeal, all make for terrible reading. The undermining attitude is clearly that of "there is no real refugee".

At the same time, the Home Office clearly hasn't got its act together. The current backlog of asylum cases would take 5 years to clear if no new cases came in. Home Office and the NASS (National Asylum Support Services) are characterised by a severe absence of communication (considering they are both government bodies, next door to one another and crucially depend on working together to deliver an effective asylum system in the first case, this is a scandal), criminals are able to stay in the country untracked while law abiding asylum seeking families are removed in dawn raids (the statistics look better if you remove a 5 head strong family at once, rather than just the one criminal). How about sorting the present system to make it just before embarking on a badly thought through new system?

We are under a Labour government, yet gaining refugee status in the UK has never been more difficult and it's going to get even worse. Frightening times are ahead of us.