How can we solve the refugee crisis?

BBC NEWS ON CHANNEL DROWNING:

BBC NEWS THEME MUSIC/REETA CHAKRABARTI: Four people have died after a small boat carrying migrants capsized while crossing the Channel from France in freezing conditions.

BBC NEWS ON RECORD NUMBERS OF CHANNEL CROSSINGS

HUW EDWARDS: At least 430 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK yesterday, according to the Home Office, a new record for a single day.

HOME SEC AT TORY CONFERENCE:

SUELLA BRAVERMAN: I would love to be here saying, well, claiming victory. I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream – it’s an obsession.

INTERVIEWER: When will that happen?

VOICE OVER: Suella Braverman, the UK Home Secretary, could soon be sending some asylum-seekers on a one-way flight to Rwanda. Her plan has been grounded, for now, by legal challenges from charities representing them. But she is confident it will go ahead after a recent win in the High Court.

V.O: Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Joanna Bale from the iQ team where we work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas, and talk to people affected by the issues we explore.

In this episode I ask, ‘How can we solve the refugee crisis?’

The expression ‘refugee crisis’ has dominated the media over the past two decades - and the terms ‘refugee’, ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘migrant’ are often used interchangeably. But it’s important to distinguish between them as there’s a legal difference, which we will explore.

I’m going to talk to a former Lieutenant Colonel, now LSE academic, who argues that the UK should stop lagging so far behind other European countries in helping those genuinely seeking asylum.

I’m also going to meet a prominent Afghan women’s rights activist and recent LSE master’s student who has had to flee her country twice. She says refugees are the perfect solution to the UK’s labour shortages.

But first, I’m visiting a hotel which is home to 700 refugees to talk to one woman who tells me the Rwanda policy is already an effective deterrent – as intended by the government.

HALIMA : I know some people in Afghanistan that have heard about that and they have changed their mind about coming. So definitely it would change people’s minds about coming if they know they’re going to risk their lives, spending nights with no food, no blanket, out in the jungle, and snow in the cold winters, only to come here and get taken back to Rwanda…

HALIMA: Rwanda’s like just the same as Afghanistan.

V.O: This is Halima. We are speaking in her room at a hotel in West Sussex. The modern steel and glass building is just ten minutes from Gatwick airport and receives top ratings from tourists on TripAdvisor. But it’s now closed to the public, surrounded by security guards and reserved by the Home Office for Afghan refugees.

Halima’s is a typical room, with a double bed and bathroom. She, her husband and four children have been allocated three rooms next to each other. There are no cooking facilities so they eat all their meals in the hotel restaurant.

They have been living like this since being airlifted from Kabul in August 2021 when it fell to the Taliban after US-led forces withdrew.

Halima was among thousands who fled to the airport in harrowing scenes that were broadcast across the world.

BBC NEWS, KABUL AIRPORT

HALIMA: It was complete chaos. Just the amount of people that were there, the stampede, people getting crushed alive, people lost their children, so many people just trying to get out.

Nobody was calm, nobody was patient. They were just screaming and pushing and shoving. And the Taliban, they were getting very impatient. They began hitting people. I remember they whipped my husband and my daughter; she was four, she was in his arms…

But eventually we did manage to find a little hole in the barbed wire out where there were British soldiers. They were pulling people through a small opening in the wall. We managed to get through there, but we did have to walk through what seemed like open sewage.

V.O: Halima was evacuated under the UK government’s Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme because she has a British passport, having been born in London. She had been living in Kabul for ten years. Her Afghan husband and four children were allowed to flee with her. But they left behind many desperate relatives and friends.

HALIMA: I remember the moment that the plane actually took off, and I remember feeling this weight come off of my shoulders, and the feeling that now we are going to be safe, and be finally out of that chaos, and the horrible terrifying scenes there were in the airport.

JO: And safe from the Taliban as well?

HALIMA: Safe from the Taliban. Safe from the uncertainty of what the situation was going to be after, in the new government. How the things that are happening now, for example, women can't work, girls can't go to school, girls can't go to university, all of these things that we were worried about, they did actually become reality.

JO: Was your husbandin danger because he was in the army?

HALIMA: He would have been in danger if the Taliban had found out.

V.O: The UK government spends almost seven million pounds a day on hotel accommodation for people seeking refuge in the UK – one million pounds on Afghan refugees alone. Critics of the government say the daily cost is so high because of the time taken to decide on applications - and a ban on asylum seekers working while waiting for refugee status. From Halima’s experience, it also appears to be due to the UK’s chronic housing shortage.

On arriving in the UK, Halima was free to work as she has a British passport, but her Afghan husband had to wait six months before being given a residency permit. He now works in housekeeping at another Gatwick hotel and she works part-time as an interpreter. Three of their four children are at a local primary school. For the past year, the family has been waiting for help in finding a house to rent. It’s the same story for the many Afghan families that live alongside them in the hotel.

HALIMA: I don't know why it's taken so long. I presume it's the shortage in properties and the families that come here. They're not small families like you would often find over here, two or three children. A lot of families have 5, 6, 7, 8 children.

Obviously finding a property to match with that many people would be hard in the UK. So I don't think that there's anything that the government could do to speed up the process. But then on one hand, if I think about it, I think the amount of money that they're spending on hotels, that could have by now, it would've been ….rent if it was also spent differently.

JO: Have you been given any idea how long you’ve got to wait?

HALIMA: Absolutely no timeframe.

JO: Have you seen other families being moved out or is everyone just frozen in time…waiting and waiting?

HALIMA: There are some families that have moved out, but I would say there’s more families coming in than there are moving out.

JO: How do you feel about being here for such a long time?

HALIMA: I mean personally, I'm quite happy. I don't mind staying here, as long as we're safe and as long as we are well. I'm happy to stay here, but I know I've spoken to other people in the hotel that are very depressed.

The people you speak to, everyone has their own kind of feelings. I spoke to some people, a lot of people have got family left behind and they're very depressed, and some people, even, they want to go back. But then there's some people that want to stay in the hotel, for the fact of the people, the socialising. And lots of other women here that can speak their language and they can communicate with. They are concerned that, "What if we move out of here and we are completely isolated, we don't have other people that we can have to socialise with?"

But personally, I'm quite happy.

V.O: Halima and her family are among the 37,000 asylum seekers and refugees living in 200 hotels around the UK – many for extended periods of time. Some are also held in immigration detention centres where conditions are much less comfortable.

Let’s explore the difference between the terms "refugee", "asylum seeker" and "migrant".

According to the Home Office, a refugee is legally recognised as a person who has fled their country because they are at risk of persecution there. In the UK, refugees are entitled to claim social security benefits to help with the cost of living, such as those for people who are unemployed or on low incomes.

An asylum seeker is someone who hasn’t yet been legally recognised as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision. They are given £45 a week cash support and somewhere to live while their case is being considered.

A migrant is someone who has left their country because they want to work, study, join family - or maybe escape poverty, political unrest or natural disasters but don’t meet the strict terms required for refugee status. If they don’t have a legal right to be in the UK, they are asked to leave or are deported.

Stuart Gordon is an expert on humanitarian issues at LSE’s Department of International Development. He is a former government advisor on Afghanistan, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the UK Armed Forces and has worked in many conflict zones around the world. I asked him about the history of asylum.

STUART: The idea of asylum has an incredibly long antecedent. The ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians had the idea that you were inviting divine retribution if you attacked somebody who sought sanctuary in a holy place. And the right of asylum has gone through many, many versions, but the UK has often accepted asylum seekers and, particularly with the signing of the 1951 refugee convention, was an active provider of international asylum.

V.O: Stuart is referring to a landmark United Nations convention, signed by one hundred and forty-nine states. It legally binds them to recognise and protect people who flee their home nations because of persecution or conflict. But critics of the government say the UK is failing to meet its obligations.

Last year, the government introduced new legislation – the Nationality and Borders Act – that radically changed the asylum process. This includes penalising those who arrive using unofficial routes, such as in small boats.

For Priti Patel, who was Home Secretary at the time, it was a moment of triumph:

V.O: The Law Society, the professional body representing solicitors, says that it is concerned that penalising those who arrive in small boats is incompatible with the 1951 convention.

But around the world, rich and poor countries alike are slashing the number of refugees they are willing to accept - and denying asylum to those who would have been admitted in the past.

Here in the UK, more than forty-five thousand people crossed the Channel in small boats last year, the highest figure since records began. Most claim asylum, although not all are successful. According to the Home Office, 23 percent of ALL those who claim asylum in the UK are initially rejected. One third of those who appeal are successful.

Rishi Sunak, the UK Prime Minister, has made stopping the Channel crossings one of his five main priorities before the next general election:

V.O: Some of the political rhetoric has framed the arrivals as nothing short of an invasion. But is the UK right to pull up the drawbridge? Are we really being overwhelmed?

JO: How do we compare to the rest of Europe in terms of numbers that we take in?

STUART: Well, the UK actually has a fairly sorry record when it comes to the numbers of asylum seekers that we take. We are probably in the region of 14th in terms of the number of European states when you measure per capita numbers of asylum applicants. But compared with the other major European states, we take a tiny, tiny proportion. Last year there were 630,550 asylum seekers across the European Union and Germany took very nearly a third of all of those. And behind those were a range of other countries where the UK was nowhere to be seen from that number. But France took nearly 20%, Spain, 10%, Italy, 8.4%, Austria, 6.1%. So you can see that the UK, in terms of international burden sharing, for people who are fleeing the fear of persecution, the UK is hardly a welcoming state.

V.O: The Home Office says there are safe and legal routes to the UK - and only those who arrive using unofficial routes will be sent to Rwanda for processing and settlement. However, some routes are only available to people from specific countries such as Afghanistan and Ukraine, or for British National status holders in Hong Kong.

Organisations including the Refugee Council and Amnesty International insist there are NO safe and legal routes for MOST people to seek asylum in the UK. And that expanding legitimate avenues would help reduce exploitation by people traffickers, including those who organise the boats across the Channel.

JO: What schemes and routes are available?

STUART: Well, there are a variety of routes. We will take people that have been recommended through the UN High Commission for refugees. And certainly when it came to Afghanistan, there were routes that were operated by various government departments, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, and the Home Office Scheme as well. And there's a degree of coordination between these, which is probably more myth than reality in many ways. But these schemes are extremely limited. We're talking about 4 or 5,000 per scheme over an ill-defined period of time. So these schemes themselves are not particularly generous, within a much broader context of not being terribly generous to asylum seekers globally in comparison with like-minded states.

JO: So which nationalities are the schemes aimed at? Is it just Ukraine and Afghanistan, or is it other nationalities as well?

STUART: Other nationalities as well, certainly the Ukrainians are flavour of the month at the moment. And globally, Syria has become the largest producer of refugees and asylum seekers for Europe again, for the first time since 2015 I think it was. But previously, once Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, obviously Afghanistan produced an enormous wave of asylum applicants across Europe and North America. But really now Syria is the global producer once again.

V.O. You are listening to the LSEiQ podcast where this month we are asking, ‘How can we solve the refugee crisis?’

Stuart and I are joined by one of his former students, Sveto Muhammad Ishoq, a leading Afghan women’s rights activist, UK Parliamentary advisor and recent LSE master’s graduate. In 2016, she was studying at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, when the Taliban stormed the compound, killing 15 students and staff. She has been forced to flee her home nation twice with her family because her army commander father feared for his life.

She tells us that she dislikes the use of the term ‘refugee crisis’, an expression which has dominated the media over the past two decades.

SVETO: Crisis is very negative. So it just means that ‘you are creating problems for us’, whereas I see something different. I see it as an opportunity for your country, especially a country like the UK who needs workers, who needs talent, who needs people.

V.O: Sveto is referring to the UK’s labour shortages, identified by the International Monetary Fund as a key factor holding back the economy. It’s also severely impacting public services like the NHS and social care. We have half a million fewer people in the workforce than before the pandemic as a result of people retiring early and the decline in EU immigrants following Brexit.

JO: Whatwould you prefer rather than ‘crisis’ then?

SVETO: I don't know. That's a difficult question. That's a good one, actually. I need to think about that.

STUART: I don't think there are easy words, are there, to replace it? You want to give it a sense of the immediacy and the importance of it, but what you don't want are the negative connotations of the idea of crisis.

SVETO: Exactly. And actually talking about refugees as they're like, oh, a bunch of people, like not even people. I think we need to humanise these processes and just learn and hear the stories of them.

SVETO & STUART(41.20-42.59) I think in the world when they say ‘refugee’, they just imagine people who are a burden for their countries and they're just passive. They don't know that they are human beings there with ambitions. They have passion, they want to build a better life.

They just need that short term support because whenever you leave everything behind, you don't have anything, you're so vulnerable. So you need to support. And I feel like the governments should support them very short term, one year, half year, help them to start on their own feet and they will contribute to that environment and that country enormously.

STUART: But I think that's part of the problem, that governments focus on the upfront costs of refugee populations. They focus on what it costs politically for numbers of people from other continents to come into the country. They focus on the cost bureaucratically and they focus on the costs to sustain those populations and houses and to give them some form of social security payments.

But the reality is once refugees have been given the right to work and they're able to engage in the economy, they fill labour shortages, they often fill areas of the marketplace that have real skill shortages and they tend to work across the entire spectrum of the labour force. Everything from menial tasks that it's difficult to fill, all the way through to the much more specialised medical and research tasks. And I think this is the problem that you are alluding to, that the word crisis encourages that short-term thinking…

SVETO: Exactly, exactly. So right now, the fact that Afghans are in hotels – it actually costs £1 million a day for taxpayers. So I think that's something that governments can think about and solve that problem very soon and think about it more seriously.

STUART: I think part of the problem has been the current government cutting funding, and there being a finite number of very cheap hotels that you can purchase for that funding. And if you combine that with a not fit for purpose bureaucracy that's unable to process claims sufficiently rapidly, and also a lack of clarity on some of the asylum schemes in the UK, you're going to prolong that initial period in ways that are deeply damaging both for the refugee population and for the Exchequer.

V.O: So Stuart says we are lagging too far behind other European countries in helping genuine asylum seekers. He and Sveto also believe that refugees could help solve the labour shortages that are holding back our ecnonomy.

We’ve been focusing on Afghanistan – but let’s look at another major conflict and howits refugees are treated.

V.O: As millions of Ukrainians fled the Russian invasion last year, Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, announced a plan to pay UK residents £350 a month to put them up in their spare rooms. More recently, this has been increased to £500, as many are now becoming homeless.

The UK has taken one hundred thousand refugees under the scheme. This is around ten times the number of those from Afghanistan. Local authorities have also been given funding to help support Ukrainian refugees move into their own homes - although some are now living in hotels due to the housing shortage.

I asked Stuart about the difference between how the Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed compared to the Afghans.

STUART: There's certainly been a big difference in the way in which the UK government has responded to the Afghan asylum seekers and the Ukrainian asylum seekers. You can see that there are fewer impediments to Ukrainians trying to get into the UK. There are fewer checks and balances and more of them are allowed in. So you can see that there is a big difference. And some people argue that this is a racialised difference, because there is greater cultural proximity between Ukrainians and the diverse range of British populations, it makes it easier for politicians to encourage these groups.

But in many ways, it also reflects strategic concerns. The UK has been part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since its inception. NATO has been configured around defending against a Soviet and then a Russian incursion. And you can see that the UK would have significant strategic interests in being seen to support the Ukrainians in a number of different ways from both humanitarian through to military interventions.

JO: Can you talk a bit about how there has to be more security clearance for Afghan refugees? Is that right?

STUART: Yeah, the vetting processes for Afghan refugees are much more developed than those for Ukrainians. And if you talk to policymakers, they'll tell you that there is a risk of Islamist fundamentalists, terrorists using the refugee flow to gain access to western economies and western societies. But in many ways, these are not serious threats. The vast majority of terrorist threats in the UK have been through homegrown terrorists. They've not been through asylum seekers or bogus asylum seekers coming into the country.

And there's a real danger when you start using language like ‘crisis’ and the ‘migration crisis’. There is a migration issue, but there is also a tidal wave of people fleeing from very difficult, very dangerous circumstances. And to use language that conflates the economic migrants, those that pose a security threat and those that are fleeing in fear of their life and it's a well-founded fear, is really, really dangerous.…

STUART: If you use the Royal Navy, a military force to intercept boats, it looks like you're portraying it as a naval invasion whereas actually, it's a group of usually young men and young children who are on inflatable rubber dinghies trying to cross the 21 miles or so of the Dover Straits, desperate to get into the United Kingdom to start a better life.

V.O: Stuart is referring here to the Royal Navy being deployed last year to help patrol the English Channel. The controversial initiative made dramatic news headlines but appeared to make no difference to the numbers crossing - and has recently been scrapped.

STUART: So if you start using the instruments of national security and the language of threats, you manufacture a threat. And that's extremely dangerous. It makes it very difficult for these populations to integrate, to be welcomed. And it makes it quite challenging for the politicians to secure the kind of resources to ease their first six months in country, after which they tend to be a productive part of the tax base and the economy.

V.O. Halima talked earlier about how the Rwanda policy is already deterring people she knows in Afghanistan from travelling to the UK using unofficial routes to claim asylum. Stuart, on the other hand, is unconvinced that it will have much of a deterrent effect.

STUART: The Rwanda policy is appalling. I was speaking to some quite senior humanitarians from a major international humanitarian organisation last night, and they were talking about the Britain of today not being the Britain of 10 years ago. It's unpredictable. It doesn't necessarily abide by international rules. If it does abide by them, there's no confidence that it will stick with them. And the Rwanda policy was used as an illustration of that, that it's a headline grabbing policy, which is incredibly expensive, likely to lead to human rights abuses on a fairly significant scale and sends completely the wrong messages…

STUART: I think the idea that you can export surplus humanity as you see it, is deeply immoral and distasteful for many British people.

JO: The government would say it's a deterrent really more than anything, and they're desperate for deterrence. Do you think it will be a deterrent?

STUART: I don't think it'll work as deterrent at all. I think the expense will make it eventually prohibitive - if it ever gets off the ground. I think, from what we understand, is that asylum seekers will simply return again. And the risks of being intercepted are, if you really take the illegal route, are fairly limited, and therefore it will still be worth their while to pursue the routes that they're pursuing. I think it will be a drop in the ocean, and I think it sends all of the wrong signals about the values and standards which the United Kingdom upholds.

JO: So what is the answer then, do you think, to stop the boats in the Channel, and to try and sort out a problem that seems to dominate the political agenda and dominate the news headlines?

STUART: I think it's an extremely difficult issue to wrap policy around. And I think the reasons why people move are phenomenally complicated. What we need is a policy that supports development and stability in other regions, and it needs to be a genuine engagement with those countries. We need a reform of international institutions that will help countries to maintain stability and to get the investment funding that they need.

We are going to need to think very carefully about how we deal with the labour shortages in the United Kingdom and moving towards points-based systems for migration. Liberalising the flow of migration would be very, very sensible.

And for those that are seeking asylum and have a well-founded fear of persecution and or death, the United Kingdom does need to open its doors and it needs to be at least as generous as other European states, particularly somewhere between France and Germany. That would be the ideal position in terms of generosity. But to find the United Kingdom lagging so far behind on what is an important indicator of the kind of values that the country supposedly stands for, I think is deeply disturbing.

V.O: So, how do we solve the refugee crisis?

Stuart and Sveto believe we should take in more people genuinely seeking asylum - and speed up the process so that they can become productive members of society.

They also suggest that we could expand an existing, but very limited, points-based immigration system which allows economic migrants to qualify for work visas based on their qualifications and other characteristics.

Finally, they agree that we could offer more support to development and stability in other regions to help prevent people having to flee in the first place.

The last word goes to Sveto.

SVETO: I always say in my talks, whenever I talk, I just have this key message about being a refugee is never a choice. And obviously that's because of my personal experiences - the UK is the sixth country I have lived in.

SVETO: They are passionate, and they want to work, and they want to pay taxes, and they want to live life like any other British citizen.

OUTRO: This episode was produced, written and presented by me, Joanna Bale, and edited by Oliver Johnson. If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the show notes. And if you enjoy iQ, please leave us a review. Coming up soon on LSE iQ: Sue Windebank asks How can we make homes more affordable?

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