How Clause 11 of the Nationality and Borders Bill will push refugees into danger and destitution
As the Nationality and Borders Bill continues its passage through Parliament, the many ways in which its provisions will put people in danger and violate their rights – from asylum seekers to refugees, survivors of modern slavery to British citizens – are rightly receiving more and more attention.
For refugees, one of the ways this Bill undermines their rights and puts them at risk of serious harm is through the idea of differential treatment: refugees will be divided into two classes based on how they arrived in the UK. Those who have made their own way to this country will be given an inferior form of protection with more limited rights, compared to those who’ve arrived through government-sanctioned routes. In reality, almost all refugees in the UK will end up with second class status because of the tiny number of people who can qualify for government resettlement programs.
While the legal implications of this provision are now clear (according to a series of legal opinions from UNHCR and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, this is one of many ways in which the Bill violates the UK’s binding legal commitments under the 1951 Refugee Convention), less attention has been paid to what these measures will mean for refugees once they get here.
For anyone who has travelled to the UK by their own means and had their asylum claim recognized this Bill could:
Limit the amount of time they are given permission to stay to just 30 months, after which they will have to reapply for permission and could be removed from the country;
Require a person to wait for a decade before being able to apply for permission to stay in the UK permanently;
Deny them access to any form of public safety net for the duration of this period;
Prevent them from reuniting with family members
Potentially make them liable to pay administrative fees for each and every application they are required to make (fees which currently cost £1,600 every 2.5 years).
We know what impacts these measures will have, because they have been applied to other people making their homes in the UK for almost ten years. Every day, Praxis works with people who have been put in desperate situations by these exact same policies.
No stability, no security
We have seen first-hand how having to reapply for permission to stay every 30 months for 10 years destabilizes lives and takes its toll on mental health. It pushes people into insecure and often low-paying jobs. Combined with the need to pay high visa fees every 2.5 years, this puts people at an increased risk of poverty.
No access to a safety net
We also have ample experience of supporting people who’ve been denied access to a safety net, as this already affects up to 2 million people. What this means in practice is that most types of state support – such as child benefit, homelessness assistance and job-seekers allowance – are simply not available, regardless of what hardships or crises a person may be facing. Even though only a small number of people might need support at any one time, there are thousands of people across the UK in dire situations as a result. There’s already lots of research documenting the effects of having no access to a safety net: 1 in 5 are unable to feed themselves or their families, while many have fallen behind on bills and utilities as a direct result of this policy. It pushes people into deep poverty, and leaves many homeless. Women, children and people of colour are amongst the groups hit hardest.
What does this mean for refugees?
Given our experience, we see a strong risk that the provisions of the Nationality and Borders Bill will hurt refugees in the UK. They will create significant uncertainty and instability in the lives of refugees, just as they do for the thousands of other people currently subject to them. Holding the threat of removal and return over the heads of people who have fled in fear of their lives seems particularly inhuman. The proposals seem particularly punitive when such a high proportion (65%) of asylum seekers are already destitute by the time their claims are recognized because they’re not allowed to work. Beyond the immediate negative impacts of this policy, there is clear evidence that the combination of lack of secure immigration status and the threat of impoverishment puts people at high risk of exploitation as well as destitution. There is no reason to think that this would not be the case for refugees.
What needs to happen now?
A number of key details about clause 11 and how it will be applied are vague, and neither the government’s New Plan for Immigration nor the accompanying documents shed more light on them. When pushed on this point in a committee hearing last week, Tom Pursglove MP declined to comment, noting that work is still ongoing on this point.
But the government’s intentions are clear.
After nearly 40 years of working with people pushed into crisis by the UK’s immigration system, we know that having no secure immigration status, no access to a safety net, no stability for a decade and potentially paying extortionate visa fees is a recipe for precarity, poverty and destitution. No-one should be subjected to these measures: every refugee deserves access to secure immigration status and a safety net.
As peers debate the Bill during committee stage this week, we’re calling for them to:
Support amendments tabled by Baroness Lister of Burtersett, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Stroud, to amend the list of examples of ways in which refugees, or their family members, can be treated differently depending on whether they are in Group 1 or Group 2, in order to probe when this requirement would be attached;
Support the amendment tabled by Lord Paddick and Lord Rosser, which opposes the Question that Clause 11 stand part of the Bill;
Support the amendment to clause 37 on resettlement tabled by Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, to establish an annual target of 10,000 resettlement places per year.