By Catherine Pepinster
The Roman Catholic Jesuit order has stepped into the breach to provide legal assistance for refugees coming to the UK.
It follows a growing demand for legal help from migrants claiming asylum in Britain and a lack of willingness from lawyers to get involved in the complexities of refugee cases.
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), founded 45 years ago and now operating in 50 countries, was created to offer advice and support to people fleeing persecution.
That advice in the UK included recommending specialist lawyers to asylum-seekers. But a shortage of specialists means the service, which depends on the Jesuit order for financial backing, is now providing the legal advice itself.
The growth in the JRS’s legal work comes at a time when illegal migration is high on the political agenda. Increasingly large protests outside hotels housing migrants have increased tensions around migration, while the new home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has begun a review into slavery laws, saying that migrants are using vexatious last-minute claims that they are victims of modern slavery to avoid deportation.
A week ago, the first migrant to be deported via the one-in-one-out deal with France was flown out of Britain. And the following day, an Eritrean man was deported after his legal challenge over human trafficking failed. Now a family of three has been brought into the UK under the “one in, one out” deal.
So far about 30,000 migrants have come across the English Channel in small boats this year and the Home Office says 39 per cent of those claiming asylum arrive in this way.
The recent Court of Appeal hearing over Epping District Council’s attempt to stop the Bell Hotel in Epping from accommodating migrants was told that the government was providing accommodation for 103,684 asylum seekers.
Sir Keir Starmer has said that about 32,000 asylum seekers are in taxpayer-funded hotels.
According to the JRS, these large numbers are down to the inefficiencies of the system and people getting caught in it because of a lack of legal advice, particularly for those who have been rejected as asylum-seekers and have appealed against the decision.
Dr David Ryall, director of the JRS, says the difficulties that people are facing a sign of “a profound moral failure”.
“Without legal advice, people face separation from their families and return to countries where they are at risk of persecution or even death,” he added.
“These people are part of much bigger trends. They are driven by poverty, by conflict, by persecution, and destabilisation in their countries. And the way Britain is rowing back on international development is not helping.”
Dr Sophie Cartwright, senior policy officer at the JRS and author of a recent report on detention, said: “The lack of legal advice is a vast problem. People get trapped in the system and it’s largely because there is a shortage of people to give legal advice.
“There has been a systematic underfunding of legal aid for this work and lawyers are often reluctant to take on the most complex cases. It means that some people are living in destitution for a decade or more as they await their appeal hearing.”
Asylum-seekers are not normally allowed to work while their claim is being processed. Instead, they receive accommodation and a small weekly allowance from the government, currently £49.18 a week. If someone has been waiting more than 12 months for an initial decision on their claim, they can apply for permission to work, but only in roles where the government has identified a shortage, such as certain health and social care jobs, or some skilled trades.
Michael Tarnoky, senior legal adviser at the JRS, said service first began its legal advice project six years ago when law firms started to pull out of this work. “We started doing the work ourselves,” he said, “and demand has grown”. JRS has two full-timers and one part-timer credited to work in the immigration courts “but we could employ an unlimited number”.
A recent study by JRS, based on the Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre, showed that many people who were detained never received the legal advice they were entitled to under the Detained Duty Advice Scheme and that the automatic legal representation they should get under the detained asylum casework system frequently fails.
This lack of advice often meant that people could be in prolonged detention, separated from their families and even wrongly deported.
As hostility to refugees has grown in Britain, claims have been made that they are mostly young men who cause trouble and have no need of support from Britain. But JRS workers tell another story.
Anita Sharma, its detention outreach manager, said: “They have often undertaken really perilous journeys to arrive in Europe and then come here. The reason that young men come is because families sometimes decide at home who should come, who is mostly likely to survive. They make choices about who they can safely send and if women come, they have often been in terrible circumstances, at risk of abuse.”
The government has continued, in the face of opposition from other political parties and the public, to tighten rules regarding asylum. In September, the previous home secretary, Yvette Cooper, temporarily barred those granted asylum from bringing family members to the UK.
And now dozens of refugee charities and homelessness organisations have written to Mahmood and Steve Reed, the housing secretary, urging them to cancel the reduction of time — from 56 to 28 days — after which they must move out of government-provided accommodation if allowed to remain.
They say that it is not enough time to find a job, sort out benefits and find somewhere to live, leaving people vulnerable to ending up on the street.
“Twenty-eight days is very short for anyone, let alone a refugee,” Mr Tarnoky said. “It does not give them enough time to help them get on their feet.”
JRS workers have also found that people in detention centres, who have no idea how long they might be kept in detention, often suffer mental breakdowns and self-harm. Some even attempting suicide.
Even those housed in hotels — the object of big protests over the summer — are not free to move around and are living in very restricted conditions, the JRS points out.
Dr Cartwright said: “The fact they are in these hotels is because the government is not efficiently processing asylum claims. They have created a backlog.”
As well as its legal work, the JRS provides pastoral and practical work, including offers of accommodation through its volunteers’ hosting scheme, a house for male refugees and one for women, and food, clothing, toiletries and other essentials through its refugee centre in east London, as well as hardship grants.
“Our desire to help is driven by the huge need there is for help for refugees but it is also a Gospel imperative,” Dr Ryall said. “It is about witness and commitment.”
And with refugees now facing increasingly hostile rhetoric and being made scapegoats for social problems both by the public and politicians, the JRS is now looking to expand its work to help refugees engage with other people in society through joint projects such as litter-picking and celebratory meals for events such as the Coronation and VE Day.
“This work of encounter is now essential,” Dr Ryall added.
