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CNN: Britain's asylum system has failed after years of political neglect

2022-11-06 18:14:50Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
CNN: Britain's asylum system has failed after years of political neglect
CNN: Britain's asylum system has failed after years of political neglect

On a cold night at London's "Victoria" station, a group of 11 people got off a bus, some wearing sweatshirts and some not, and left, writes Rob Picheta for CNN .

"They were cold, hungry, stressed and disoriented," according to homeless charity Under One Sky, whose team spotted the group and offered help.

They had nowhere to go until an employee of the Ministry of the Interior found accommodation in a hotel.

The group was made up of asylum seekers who had been staying at the Manston migrant processing center in Kent, southern England, a facility which charities and lawmakers say is overcrowded and in appalling and inhumane living conditions.

According to this ministry, officials were under the impression that the 11 individuals had arranged accommodation in London. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said it was "shameful that they were abandoned in the city centre".

He added that this was a complete failure of duty and leadership.

But the incident is emblematic of Britain's dramatically overburdened system for dealing with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

"The system is broken," Interior Secretary Suella Braverman told parliament.

She blamed a rapid increase in small boat crossings across the English Channel organized by smugglers.

But the chaos facing migrants and asylum seekers in the BM is also the result of a decade of political choices, with funding and actions that do not match the harsh rhetoric espoused by successive Conservative governments.

"It's cruel," Ben Ramanauskas, a research economist at the University of Oxford, told CNN.

"Part of this is due to the culture established by the Ministry of the Interior, which views most immigrants with suspicion and treats them as potential criminals," Ramanauskas said.

The British Home Office did not respond directly to CNN, but said in a statement that "the number of people arriving in the UK seeking asylum has reached record levels and is putting our asylum system under tremendous strain."

Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale says "the main cause of what we are seeing in Manston is not the government but the growing number of immigrants".

These numbers have increased in recent years.

The number of arrivals in Great Britain remains relatively low compared to EU member states.

Last year, the UK ranked fourth in total asylum applications and 19th in per capita applications among European countries, according to the Migration Observatory.

But while the government has pointed the finger at increasing crossings for overrunning the country's asylum network, it has done little to reduce their impact on the WB and a series of ministerial decisions have driven divisions between Britons and migrants.

The speed with which asylum applications are processed has fallen significantly in recent years. That means migrants have been holed up in temporary accommodation and hotels while they wait to hear back on their claims, a policy Braverman has repeatedly criticized.

A Home Office spokesman told CNN there are currently more than 37,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing UK taxpayers £5.6m a day.

Many migration experts point the finger at the government for this bill.

To date, the British government's policy, a deal to deport some migrants to Rwanda, has been mired in legal challenges and has failed to transport a single person in the seven months since it was announced.

"It is clear that it is not working and has not acted as a deterrent in any way to other asylum seekers," Ramanauskas said.

But there are at least partial solutions to Britain's seemingly intractable illegal immigration crisis, experts believe.

They say this is achieved by prioritizing claims processing, increasing funding and establishing new centers around the country.

Britain could drop a rule that asylum applications must be made on its own soil, allowing people to apply at embassies before completing a long journey across Europe.

This is the dynamic facing Rishi Sunak, the new WB prime minister, who has readily embraced the Rwandan plan and spent much of his early political capital defending his Interior secretary, Braverman, as she condemns the broken asylum system in the BM.

Sunak risks quickly losing the confidence of Britons on all sides of the migration debate.


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