It Isn't The Fault of Asylum Seekers That You Can't Get A Doctor's Appointment
Little heavier here today, but life isn’t sunshine and lollipops so let’s do this.
If you listen to the radio, watch the TV, or read the news on your phone or in a newspaper, you’ll quickly learn that immigration is a boiling-hot topic in the UK right now. The current Conservative government has come up with solutions that aren’t working and all political parties are fed up with their money-wasting shenanigans.
Big questions are being asked about how to fix a ‘broken’ asylum system. After all, a cursory glance will quickly tell you things seem to be tearing apart at the seams.
Only last week, six people died crossing the English Channel, adding to hundreds who have lost their lives making the same journey. Nearly 17,000 others are expected to attempt the crossing in 2023. Once they arrive, they will be met with an asylum system that is overstretched, with many waiting in no man’s land for often over a year to receive their asylum decision, the majority of which will go on to be approved given their reasons for fleeing their home countries. Unaccompanied children are being placed in hotels, left to sort out their traumatised lives on their own, with many of them going missing, some being trafficked. Others are living in overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe rooms, or not housed at all and living on the streets. They aren’t allowed to work, even though many of them are more than capable and willing to fill positions Brits would rather not take. Children and adults are suffering from malnutrition, some rummaging through bins to find food.
And to top it all off, far-right groups (and our government) are actively, sometimes aggressively, trying to make sure asylum seekers know they are not welcome here.
It’s shambles.
My opinion, as someone who works with asylum seekers who have been trafficked and reports on their plights in the media, is very clear. Refugees should be welcomed here.
Yes, yes, yes. I can hear the dissent at the huge undertaking this could entail. I’m sure there is lots to figure out in terms of practicalities with this opinion, after all, there were over 75,000 asylum applications made in the year ending March 2023. It’s a big number, and will probably get bigger due to the continued global increase in the number of people displaced due to war, conflict, and climate.
But what’s the option? Leave them or find a way to accept them.
The work to figure it out is worth it for two overarching reasons.
First. If Britain had a famine and we couldn’t feed our children. Or if we were being persecuted for our sexuality or faith. Or conflict was raging outside our front door. Or poverty was sucking away any chance of a meaningful life. We’d want someone to accept us with open arms, especially to accept our children.
Second. Asylum seekers are human beings. They aren’t problems to be shipped to Rwanda, squashed onto a barge, or left to languish in mouse-infested hotels. They are traumatised and vulnerable people. They are people who deserve to be treated as such.
Although it seems clear to me that we should sort our own shit so we can support them, I’m increasingly realising this isn’t everyone’s conclusion.
My neighbour brings me his tabloid newspaper most days and on it, I find fear-mongering rhetoric that gets into the hands of readers, doing exactly what it set out to do: breed fear of migrants.
They are taking our homes. They are taking our medical treatment. They are taking our taxes.
They are the problem.
Recently, we attended a social event and heard about a family struggling to rent a house because there is a lack of housing stock. Their understanding was that it was the fault of asylum seekers.
At another gathering, I was told we don’t have space in this country for asylum seekers. We are at max capacity and can’t even take care of our own so how are we meant to care for anyone else.
And another, that a GP appointment couldn’t be obtained because the influx of asylum seekers meant services were far too stretched.
My skin tingles as I listen, sympathetic toward their frustration, but equally infuriated that their implied solution is to turn refugees seeking safety away.
I take a breath and remember that many people I speak to haven’t met asylum seekers. They haven’t had a coffee with them. They haven’t listened to their journey to get here. They don’t know about their reasons for coming. Refugees are an idea, an imposition with no name or face.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I assume this is why the blame is shifted onto them for their frustrating inconveniences, which genuinely are very frustrating inconveniences.
But ‘the problem’ is not asylum seekers, as they have been led to believe. The problem has been a string of successive governments. They haven’t built enough housing even though urged. They haven’t invested enough in the NHS. They haven’t taken advice on how to tackle the asylum backlog.
The government can’t claim ignorance like perhaps people in my community can. They know exactly what the problems are that need to be addressed to fix the asylum system. They’ve been told endlessly that life would be better for everyone, including asylum seekers, if the asylum backlog was decreased, if more houses were built, if money was invested in the NHS, if asylum seekers could work, if there were safe routes to get to the UK. They’ve heard the warnings and the advice, yet they plug their ears and carry on a rampage to eradicate asylum seekers through legislation like the Nationalities and Borders Act and Illegal Migration Bill. They implement any solution that will make life miserable for men, women and children seeking refuge.
Point fingers but point them at the people responsible. The UK asylum system is broken, but it’s due to political neglect rather than asylum seekers.