by Pat Ashworth
GOVERNMENT POLICY on refused asylum-seekers is forcing thousands into abject poverty, say two reports from Amnesty International UK and Refugee Action.
Both want the Government to maintain contact with, and financial support for, refused asylum-seekers until their cases can be resolved. “Refused asylum-seekers in our towns and cities are being reduced to penniless poverty — forced to sleep in parks, public toilets, and phone boxes, to go without vital medicines even after suffering torture, and to relying on the charity of friends or drop-in centres to survive,” said the director of Amnesty UK, Kate Allen.
Scores of destitute people were interviewed for the survey, which covered London and nine other cities. The reports, published on Tuesday, say that financial support and accommodation for asylum-seekers is cut off 21 days after a final claim is refused. So-called “hard-case” support makes food vouchers and hostels available only to those who satisfy certain criteria. It can be months late, say the reports, which note the support given by churches.
Church leaders, including 25 Church of England bishops, described the Government’s policies as “inhuman and unacceptable” in a statement in December 2005 supporting a campaign by Church Action on Poverty. A survey in June this year, conducted by Gill Jackson, director of social responsibility for Leicester diocese, found that, between 6 February and 13 March, 308 asylum-seekers in the city had reported that they were destitute. “Their survival depends solely on the support of over-stretched voluntary and faith-based groups and that of their own communities.”
Ms Jackson said on Wednesday that the two new reports reflected her experience in Leicester. “Faith and volunteer groups are the single source of source of support for destitute asylum-seekers on the whole. Where once we used to supplement their food, now we are the only means of surviving.”
Day-to-day encounters in Leicester are highlighting serious health issues. “We had a mother, eight months pregnant, walking the streets with no ante-natal care, and who has just given birth to a baby under two pounds in weight.”
Another much reported case is of a family returned to Dar-es-Salaam with no money, no clothes but those they were wearing, and no contacts on arrival. A distressed phone call to the churches from the youngest child has drawn further attention to the family’s plight.
www.amnesty.org.uk
www.refugee-action.org.uk
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