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Sixty-two per cent of refugees in Britain have been street homeless within the previous 12 months.
Former Liberal Democrat Minister, Sarah Teather, who is the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, says the asylum process in Britain is “deeply and profoundly flawed.”
It is pushing people into destitution, she says.
Speaking at the 40th conference of the National Justice and Peace Network (NJPN) in Derbyshire during the weekend, Teather told attendees “deliberate cruelty” has become “a tool of government policy” on refugees.
She said the policy aims to try and “get people to give up their claim for shelter.”
Justice and peace representatives from Britain were joined at the conference by missionary groups including the Columbans, Mill Hill Missionaries and Assumption Sisters.
Exploring the conference theme ‘In the shelter of each other the people live’, Teather and other speakers discussed building a Church and a society with the most vulnerable at its heart.
The 30,000 asylum seekers who apply to come to Britain each year are “a tiny number”, Teather says.
“Very few people actually make it here to claim asylum but those who do make it have a very difficult time.
“Everyone faces the same hermeneutic of suspicion” and things become “really difficult” if the government doesn’t recognise someone as a refugee, she says.
In her opinion, besides deliberate cruelty, a web of policies aims to make life difficult for asylum seekers.
These include enforced destitution, diminished access to legal aid, the criminalisation of work, and forcing people like landlords to report on those who don’t have immigration status.
Recently the Jesuit Refugee Service undertook research into those who attend their day centre. This provided information about the 62 per cent who had been street homeless within the previous 12 months.
Some were street homeless for extended periods. Others were sporadically homeless, moving around from sofa to sofa among their friends.
The research also found 40 per cent of those whose applications for refugee status are turned down initially have those decisions overturned on appeal.
“That gives you some sense of how bad the initial decision-making is,” Teather said.
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