Once again, a report on the asylum system in Britain has revealed the cruel and
unusual punishment of applying for help from Great Britain.
Some applicants are waiting up to 16 years for a decision. A
backlog of 32,600 cases from 2011 is yet to be resolved. The number of
applicants waiting over six months rose by 63% last year. Some 3,500 people who
applied for asylum in 2012 have yet to receive an initial decision.
The cruelty of the asylum system is not in the decisions it
reaches. It is in the legal and financial limbo it puts asylum seekers in while
they get lost in the machine.
Those having their asylum status decided are not allowed to work
and they are not allowed to claim benefits. They are given £36.62 a week, to be collected from the Post
Office, for sustenance.
They can apply to the UK Border Agency for help with accommodation
if they are destitute. The housing, provided by private contractors like
Serco and G4S, was attacked as "sub-standard" by MPs today. The
anecdotal evidence is of grey, despairing places in a state of disrepair, full
of lost people.
The asylum system turns Britain into a vast open-air prison. One
asylum seeker who arrived in the UK after being held in a jail in Iran told me
that his prison had merely been expanded. Without the right to work, or claim
benefits, or volunteer, he was trapped in a state of inaction, of
half-presence. The system would not respond to questions. For years on end, you
would hear nothing. It is a legally mandated half-state, a state-imposed
lethargy.
It really doesn't matter which side of the immigration or asylum
debate you're on. You can be as anti-asylum as you like. Whichever way you look
at it, this system is intolerable. It doesn't just condemn the vulnerable to an
excuse of a life. It also, as home affairs committee chair Keith Vaz pointed
out today; potentially allow war criminals and terrorists into Britain, hiding
in the grey areas of a convoluted and malfunctioning bureaucratic system.
The system must be fixed and made to function, not just to provide
help for those who most need it, but also to get rid of those who don't. But
for that to happen there must be public pressure. Today is a rare day when
asylum won a place in the news headlines. Unless that happens more often, the
system will remain a forgotten mechanism, letting down the country and the
needy at once.
by: Ian Dunt
source: politics.co.uk