Welcome Home
What would it take to make you to leave everything and flee? Imprisonment without cause?
Mutilation? Torture?
Refugees are people who have fled persecution in their their home country and made a successful claim for asylum. Asylum claims can take many months or even years to be resolved by the Home Office.
Once a person is granted asylum, it's a time of great relief and celebration, but also of new challenges as new refugees lose their
accommodation and financial support - if they are receiving any - within 28 days of
being granted leave to remain.
Now starts the journey of applying for National Insurance numbers, and finding work or applying for benefits. Many refugees are highly qualified but can't prove this as most will have been forced to flee their home without being able to take anything with them.
Even if a refugee has been living in Britain for years as an asylum seeker, integration can still be challenging as an asylum seeker has no work, no college network, and little way of making British friends. Refugees have been forced into idleness for months or years as it is a criminal offence for an asylum seeker to have paid employment.
The Nottingham Welcome Project mentoring programme provides one-to-one support for refugees to find work, develop new skills and enable them to rebuild their lives. As each refugee chooses their own mentor, it is the mentee who sets the pace and tells the mentor what they would like help with. Read more about our mentoring programme here.
We are currently working to provide training for volunteer support workers to attend the Jobcentre and
other agencies' appointments with clients. Volunteers
will also receive training in mental health issues as refugees can often
experience a deterioration in mental and emotional health due to the
stressful process of seeking asylum and unresolved past experiences
which led them to flee their country of origin.
The Refugee Council has created a short film, narrated by actress Zoe Wanamaker, to mark 60 years of the 1951 Refugee Convention. View film.
Who are asylum
seekers?
In the UK, an asylum seeker is someone who has made a formal application for asylum and is waiting for a decision on their claim. The Home Office must decide whether or not that person qualifies for protection under the 1951 UN Convention on refugees. A refugee is someone whose application for asylum has been successful and has been given permission to live in the UK for an initial period of five years, after which, subject to checks, they can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain.
Who is a refugee?
The 1951 UN Convention on
refugees is the key legal document in defining who
is a refugee, their rights and the legal obligations of states. It was initially
established to protect European refugees in the aftermath of World War
II. The Convention defines a refugee as: "... a
person who is outside his/her country of nationality or
habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of
his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social
group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail
himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there,
for fear of persecution”.
But they're just here to claim benefits, aren't they?
Asylum
seekers in the UK have to live below the poverty line; they are not
allowed to work and have no choice about where to live. They have a
greater chance of being refused asylum than accepted and are at risk of
being detained and forcibly deported back to the country they were
fleeing. War, persecution and political instability are the main factors
that drive people to seek asylum in the UK.
I heard that asylum seekers get priority for council housing and receive thousands in benefits ...
Asylum seekers aged 18-24 receive a weekly payment of £30.28, while those aged over 25 receive £38.26. They have to live on 30% less than unemployed UK citizens and are excluded from many other mainstream benefits. Asylum seekers tend to be housed in hard-to-let properties that UK citizens do not want. They do not qualify for council housing tenancy and so cannot “jump the queue” over other homeless people. Their accommodation is provided by local councils or private landlords, but is paid for by central government.
A recent report showed that 85% of organisations working with refugees said their
clients sometimes or frequently experienced hunger, while 95% said their
clients couldn’t afford clothes or shoes.