Britain's Shame - Excellent Article by Jon Cruddas on Asylum

Editor's note: Another excellent piece from Jon Cruddas, who continues to campaign on the priorities which broad together so many left, progressive forces, from the unions, labour party and beyond, to support his deputy leadership campaign - a campaign which helped put issues such as affordable housing and the rights of migrant workers firmly on the political map.

"Britain's Shame" - Our asylum policy is forcing many people into destitution but politicians are afraid to take up the issue writes Jon Cruddas on the Guardian website.

A new film is being shown to MPs tomorrow by Amnesty International that aims to shame us into action. It's about a group of people forced into abject poverty: sleeping rough, eating food out of bins, depending on churches and charities for clothes. Not only that, many live in fear of being forced to leave this situation for somewhere that may be much worse. This is all happening in the UK, under our very noses. And few politicians will go near the issue because these people are refused asylum seekers.
When someone reaches the end of the asylum process - often after poor legal representation from start to finish - their support is cut off and they are denied the right to work, access to benefits and the right to NHS hospital treatment except in an emergency. They are forced into destitution. Some get "hard case support" but many believe this is a ploy to make them sign up to return to their home country - and many asylum-seekers are simply too scared to go home, or are unable to return.
And many people can't be removed. For people from much of Somalia and Iraq or Zimbabwe, their home country may simply be too unsafe to go back to; in some countries there is no safe airport to fly to. And many people don't have valid travel documents as they were confiscated in their home country or they have been told to destroy them by the agent that brought them here.
I'm not saying that no one should be returned. If someone's asylum claim has been dealt with fairly, with a proper interpreter and legal representation, then if their claim fails they should return, provided it's safe to do so. But that just isn't always the case. And in these cases a humane solution must be found that allows refused asylum seekers to live with some sense of dignity and purpose.
As a member of the Still Human Still Here campaign, Amnesty is one of a number of organisations highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country.
One of those people featured in the film is Afshin, a 38-year-old man who arrived in the UK from Iran 12 years ago, after fleeing to escape the threat of persecution. He had a long history of opposition to the Iranian regime and had been imprisoned and beaten before leaving the country. After waiting for five years for a decision on his asylum claim, it was refused and his appeal was rejected.
Since then his life has been in tatters. He is terrified of returning to Iran but once his asylum claim was refused and his appeal dismissed, he was denied the right to work or receive government support. With no money for food, clothes or shelter, Afshin lived on the streets, sleeping rough or occasionally in a launderette, sometimes eating from rubbish bins. He has had many health problems, but destitute refused asylum-seekers are only able to access hospital medical care for emergency treatment or any treatment they were receiving during their asylum claim. Afshin has twice attempted suicide.
I met Afshin at a screening of the film at the Labour party conference. He's got somewhere to stay now: after converting to Christianity, he lives with a religious order in London. And he's got a better lawyer now that UK NGOs have heard about his case. But should someone really be relying on churches and charities to keep them alive in modern Britain? This sounds like a story from the days of Gladstone and Disraeli, not Brown and Cameron.
This is a policy that doesn't work: it drives people underground, away from the authorities towards illegal labour, crime and prostitution. And once the authorities have lost contact with someone, there's little chance of returning them should the situation improve in their home country.
But more importantly, it's a policy that fills me with shame. Cutting off people's support, denying them the right to support themselves and driving them into destitution is little more than an attempt to starve them out of the country. It's not something that we should tolerate in our modern and affluent society. And if British people were found to be in this situation, I have little doubt that there would be a righteous outcry. It's allowed to go on because it only affects a group of people that have been so thoroughly stigmatised that they are beyond sympathy for many people.
So I hope that plenty of my colleagues get to see the film, Still Human Still Here: The destitution of refused asylum seekers this evening and I hope it has a powerful effect on them. I hope that in a couple of years' time, the film will be outdated as it will depict a situation that no longer happens. But until then Amnesty is asking anyone who cares about the issue to contact them to request a copy of the DVD and show it to their MP, to confront them with the stark fact that Afshin and many others are living in a Victorian Britain that the rest of us have left long behind.