Last week, the Public Accounts Committee published a damning report which stated that the Home Office are making policy decisions based on “anecdote, assumption and prejudice” instead of relying on evidence. The influential parliamentary committee also said the Home Office has “no idea” what its Immigration Enforcement Directorate’s £400 million annual spending achieves.
Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said:
“The Home Office has frighteningly little grasp of the impact of its activities in managing immigration. It shows no inclination to learn from its numerous mistakes across a swathe of immigration activities – even when it fully accepts that it has made serious errors.”
The International Observatory of Human Rights has long stressed the need for the Home Office to learn from previous actions, such as the Windrush scandal, and to make the necessary changes to its immigration policies.
It is all the more evident as, on the same day that the Committee’s report was published, it was reported that a Syrian teenager, despite having the right to live in the UK, is forced to live on the streets after the horrific fire at an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Ahmed has the right to live in the UK, as he won the right to join his family, who is waiting for him in a town in the north of England, four months ago. But because of bureaucratic delays at the Home Office, instead he is stuck in limbo on an island, homeless and searching for food on the streets.
“I’ve been waiting for the ticket to join my family in the UK,” he says. “Every week they say God willing it will be this week, or next week; we are waiting. My family can’t do anything to help me. It’s only the government who can,”
Ahmed told the Guardian.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said:
“This is a truly awful situation involving a child who has been granted a legal right to travel. Ministers must live up to their promises and responsibilities. Unaccompanied children are in some of the worst conditions imaginable in Lesbos. The government needs to act swiftly to right this wrong.”
Ahmed came to Moria, the refugee camp on Lesbos, as an unaccompanied child refugee, but with the legal right to travel to the UK to be reunited with his family. Yet, as Beth Gardiner-Smith, the CEO of Safe Passage International, the organisation trying to help Ahmed, says:
“Children are often made to wait for months before this can happen.”
Ahmed’s story and the Committee’s report show that there are severe gaps and issues with Home Office policies, in particular around reunification and children. This is also evident from the extortionate fees the Home Office charges of £1012 for citizenship for children.
#ChildrenNotProfit
#ChildrenNotProfit is an IOHR campaign which calls on the government to waive citizenship fees for children. It also aims to increase public awareness that the Home Office is profiting from the charge it levies for citizenship fees and the severe implications of these on children’s lives as well as the burden on families.
For many children, the pathway to British citizenship can take several years and fees have spiralled out of control. Valerie Peay, Director of IOHR called for action,
“A year ago we brought this issue to discuss at the party conferences then the High Court ruled that the Home Office needed to replace this policy. Nothing has changed and families are still being left to pay exorbitant rates to secure their children’s future. Children are living in a world turned upside down with coronavirus restrictions. Now is the time for the government to give them certainty of their future without the steep price tag.”
Tens of thousands of families are facing unaffordable costs, which is why IOHR is asking the government to end the practice of profiteering from citizenship applications and waive the cost of citizenship for all children.
We want to ensure no child is priced out of a status our laws recognise they have the right to possess.
Watch IOHR TV’s investigation into the citizenship fees for children and their impact on families to learn more.
IOHR also took the issue to the Labour and Liberal Democrat party conferences last year to urge them to support the call for the government to waive the citizenship fees for children.
Brexit – the next Home Office scandal?
The EU family reunion law which gave Ahmed the right to live in the UK is set to be lost once the UK leaves the EU. The Committee report also stated that
“The Home Office is unprepared for the challenges the UK’s exit from the EU presents to its immigration enforcement operations.”
According to the report, it could provide “no evidence that it had even begun discussions with the EU partners it relies on to support its international operations, including the return of foreign national offenders and illegal migrants.”
The Committee concluded that it “is not convinced that the Department is sufficiently prepared to properly safeguard the existing, legal immigrant population in the UK, while also implementing a new immigration system and managing its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Ms Hillier MP said of the Home Office:
“It accepts the wreckage that its ignorance and the culture it has fostered caused in the Windrush scandal – but the evidence we saw shows too little intent to change, and inspires no confidence that the next such scandal isn’t right around the corner.”
This is a point emphasised by IOHR. By relying on EU citizens in the UK to apply for their status the settled status scheme potentially risks another Windrush scenario and their legal status must be guaranteed in legislation.
#UKWelcomesRefugees
Similarly, until the Syrian refugees who came to the UK under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) can secure actual citizenship, they will not be confident that their right to remain will not be challenged.
The scheme was launched in January 2014 and was extended in September 2015 with a pledge to resettle 20,000 Syrians in need of protection. In July 2017 it was expanded to include other refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria but do not have Syrian nationality.
As of March 2017, 7,307 people had been resettled under VPRS, half of whom are children.
Those eligible under VPRS receive upon arrival to the UK Biometric Residence Permits issued with five years’ Refugee Leave and now, many are coming to the end of those five years. Some children under the scheme will now have the right to British citizenship but the outrageous costs provide a huge barrier to many families where everyone will need to secure their right to remain.
In addition, the fortunate people who have been successfully applied for British citizenship have been told they cannot be granted citizenship until they attend a ceremony, despite the fact that they have been suspended for months during the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result of coronavirus restrictions, in-person citizenship ceremonies were suspended in March and, although they have recently restarted, campaigners have warned that a severe backlog has built up and urged the Home Office to temporarily suspend the requirement to attend citizenship ceremonies in order to ensure thousands of people are not left in limbo.
It has been 15 years since the then Home Secretary declared the UK’s immigration system “not fit for purpose” and that is still the case. Radical transformation is needed and to waive children’s citizenship fees would be a good start.