THE Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, expressed dismay this week at the Government’s new plans for asylum-seekers, saying that the policy changes “appear to scapegoat refugees for the generally poor state of public finances 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: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy. This would be the biggest shake-up of policy on illegal migration “in modern times”, Ms Mahmood said.
The paper proposes that the qualifying period for refugees to apply for permanent residence or indefinite leave to remain rise from five years to 20, and that the status of people granted leave to remain be reviewed after 30 months instead of five years. This status would be renewable “only if protection is still needed”, the paper says.
In a statement to the Church Times on Tuesday, Dr Francis-Dehqani said: “The proposals place even greater challenges in the way of good integration, to the detriment both of refugees and host communities.”
She also warned that “all this is in danger of further deepening division in our communities and increasing suspicion of asylum-seekers and migrants at a time when what we need from our political leaders is to bring the country together.”
Also in 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 beginning study “at an appropriate level and pay[ing] a fee”. Only those on this route could “become eligible to sponsor family members to come to the UK”. “There will be no automatic right to family reunion,” the paper says.
Also removed would be the current legal obligation to provide support to asylum-seekers who would otherwise be destitute.
Since 2021, more than 400,000 people have claimed asylum in the UK, up from about 150,000 between 2011 and 2015, the paper says. Of the 111,800 people who have claimed asylum this year, 39 per cent (43,600) arrived “in a small boat”. A further 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 is the diocese of London’s lead for racial justice, posted on X: “The moment we surrender compassion in political discourse, we embrace a collective delusion. It becomes the permission slip to dehumanise and make the most vulnerable our societal scapegoats. We are better 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 of the practical outworkings of the Christian faith is to provide 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 other than dehumanising an already marginalised group of young people”.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is due to pass its final stage in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
