Submitted by crinadmin on
An estimated 100,000 vulnerable children are condemned to a childhood of poverty, uncertainty and fear after being caught up in a UK asylum backlog that may not be cleared until 2011.
These vulnerable children frequently live in intolerably poor accommodation from which they are moved over and over again. Although their parents are often desperate to work and pay their way in the UK, the system does not allow this.
These are some of the findings of Like Any Other Child? a new report published today by Barnardo’s, as part of its campaign to end child poverty in the UK. The major children’s charity is calling for asylum seekers to be given the right to work, so they can lift their children out of poverty.
Barnardo’s welcomes new procedures introduced by the Home Office which will mean that from now on many more families arriving in the UK will, if their claim fails, be swiftly returned to their country of origin. But the asylum backlog needs to be dealt with urgently and, specifically, parents here for longer than six months should be allowed to work and support their children.
The Barnardo’s report cites the appalling conditions experienced by asylum seeking families in the UK who are awaiting decisions on their claims – in some cases for up to ten years. It highlights the shocking disadvantages asylum seeking children are forced to endure, living in families with incomes significantly below, already modest, normal benefit levels; living in damp and unsafe housing; often suffering aggressive racial abuse and frequently having to change schools. On top of all that, asylum seekers also live with terrible uncertainty for years on end, which can create an unbearable environment for children. Some children face deportation to countries they can’t remember or might never have lived in.
Case study
One asylum seeker, Kirsi, 29, fled to the UK from Kenya in 2004 after being tortured by rebels, who wanted information on her husband, as he was involved in land rights disputes. Kirsi and her three year-old son, Daniel currently live on the 12th floor of a tower block in Glasgow in a damp, overcrowded flat. In Africa, Kirsi was a trained accounts clerk and since being in Scotland has passed her SQA* in computing:
“The longer my application takes, the more chances I miss. I want to be contributing to society and providing a better life for Danny, but I am forced to rely on benefits. All my life I have worked, where I come from we’re not used to getting handouts. I feel wasted and frustrated, it’s so depressing, our lives are on hold.”
Barnardo’s Chief Executive, Martin Narey, said: “The Government’s New Asylum Model (NAM) recognises the need for a speedier process for asylum seekers, which is humane and fair, and we welcome its introduction. We do not oppose asylum policy and recognise that under the new procedures many families will be removed from the UK speedily. But for those whose cases have been languishing in the old system, often for years, there is a desperate need for a new approach and in particular a moral and economic case for allowing parents trapped in the backlog to work and support their children. Often they have skills the UK needs and they have no wish to live on government handouts. They seek only the right to give their children a better life and to recover some dignity for themselves.”
Recommendations
Like Any Other Child? is calling for the Home Office to re-address the current UK asylum process, focussing on the needs of the children. Recommendations include:
-
giving asylum seekers who have been in the UK more than six months the right to work
-
giving the responsibility for processing the cases of asylum-seeking families with children to specialised case owners, who are trained to address the needs of children throughout the asylum process
-
not housing asylum-seeking families in areas where there is a history of harassment or reason to believe their presence will aggravate community tensions
-
ensuring that asylum-seeking families with children are allocated to accommodation which they can occupy for the duration of their asylum applications
-
not requiring asylum-seeking families to move distances which entail children changing schools
-
to house asylum seeking families with children only in conditions which would be acceptable for UK families living in temporary accommodation.
Further information
-
Plans to X-ray child asylum seekers attacked (14 November 2007)
-
Children bear 'deliberate' and 'inhumane' asylum hardships (30 March 2007)
pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/like_any_other_child_asylum_report08_summary.pdf