Home Secretary Suella Braverman inflamed racism and xenophobia by publicly describing the arrival of refugees as an “invasion”. Such despicable rhetoric recalls that of apartheid, colonialism, and Empire and epitomizes the far-right ideology that pervades the UK Government’s cabinet.
Last week, a processing centre in Dover was firebombed by a man who later committed suicide. The bombing has been described as a terrorist attack by The Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), although Home Secretary Suella Braverman has so far denied calling the attack as such. Occupants of the processing centre were evacuated from the site following the terrorist attack and placed in the Manston centre in Kent.
Following his visit to the Manston centre, immigration and borders inspector, David Neal told MPs that he was left “speechless” by the centre’s “wretched” conditions. Holding over double its capacity of people, cases of MRSA, diphtheria, and scabies ravage the Manston centre.
Braverman is fully aware that her handling of the Manston centre breaches UK law, which stipulates that people are held no more than twenty-four hours at the centre before being moved to alternative accommodation. At present, there are reports of people, including children, being held in the centre’s squalid conditions for weeks.
For the people who are moved to temporary accommodation, they are forced to survive on a measly £8.24 a week to cover sustenance costs, including mobile phone bills, public transport costs and non-prescription medicine. All people seeking asylum in the UK are forbidden from earning money. Whilst the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 states that people seeking asylum are entitled to receive (a paltry) £39.63 per week, people placed in hotel accommodation cannot receive this amount. The government justifies that the £31.39 is used to fund the accommodation and the other services to which people seeking asylum are entitled. This includes three meals a day provided by at the hotel, over-the-phone support available in all languages from Migrant Help, and some NHS healthcare services. However, most people arrive in the UK completely unaware of these entitlements, and the Home Office makes no effort to inform them. In addition, these services have been subcontracted by the government to independent businesses and therefore operate to maximise their profits rather than to support the needs of people seeking asylum.
Once a person’s claims for asylum or refugee status have been processed in a centre like Manston, they could then be detained under immigration powers. There have been cases of torture survivors being held in solitary confinement by the Home Office for indefinite periods. Government statistics show that over 70% of asylum claims in the UK were granted refugee status or humanitarian protection. The UK Government is therefore complicit in the detainment of some of the most vulnerable people in the UK.
Justifying the abysmal state of the immigration policy in the UK, Braverman told parliament “Let’s stop pretending they are all refugees in distress”, and Braverman is right. The people who make it to UK shores seeking asylum are not just refugees in distress. Some people arriving are mothers in distress. Some are unaccompanied children in distress. Some are fathers. Some are disabled people. Some are LGBT+ people. All seeking sanctuary in a country that boasts of being a beacon of human rights and democracy, but is really governed by people allured by the antithesis.
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