We’ll all gain by treating asylum seekers with dignity and respect
Listening to refugees’ stories is first step in seeing how an independent Scotland could offer a better process for all
THE Refugee Festival theme this year has been storytelling and I’ve enjoyed hearing first hand from refugees and asylum seekers in Glasgow their stories of hope, challenge and the journeys.
It has been a tonic to the negativity and despair caused by the UK Government’s scandalous Rwanda offshoring plan.
From the songs of solidarity sung by the Maryhill Integration Network Joyous Choir, Women in Action sharing African Women’s stories and poems, to the very competitive Refugee Football Tournament, there’s been a lot to celebrate.
Saturday night’s United Yemeni Community in Scotland event featured traditional male dancing, with a police officer even getting up to join the festivities. There were of course words of gratitude from asylum seekers and refugees for the sanctuary and the new life which they have found here in Scotland but also profound sadness at the lives they left behind, the people they will never see again.
They have also had to deal with the loss of their own country, a fundamental part of our identity. We should always recognise that grief. The Scottish Government’s New Scots plan speaks of integration from day one and I fully support this. Those I see at my surgeries, and those I have been fortunate enough to listen to this past fortnight, often don’t feel made welcome by the UK Government and the Home Office. Disbelieved, moved around the country at short notice, given little choice in where they settle, having to ask permission to get married or to move into further and higher education… the list is endless. And for too many, waiting in limbo for many long months and years for a remote bureaucracy to make a decision about their case.
This uncertainty adds to the anxiety many asylum seekers already experience and makes it very difficult for them to begin the process of dealing with trauma.
Those left waiting are usually unable to work during this time, losing skills they bring with them.
It makes little humanitarian or financial sense to keep people who could be contributing to society dependent on meagre state handouts. The difficult thing to accept is that the Home Office runs the asylum system like this quite deliberately.
It is designed to grind people down, to dehumanise and to make the UK as unattractive a place for migrants as possible – the hostile environment as Theresa May described it.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry into Asylum Provision in Scotland under Baroness Kennedy aims to shed a bright light on the treatment of people in the asylum system, especially during lockdown.
It is not a reality Scotland should accept. In listening to the experience of asylum seekers and refugees, we can begin to talk about alternatives an independent Scotland could have.
Life could be made easier, removing the deep thread of fear embedded in the current Home Office system and treating asylum seekers with dignity and respect.
We have an obligation to the wider world to offer sanctuary to those fleeing persecution.
Scotland has a lot to gain from this; people with skills, with determination, bringing their culture to enrich our society.
They’ve also had to deal with the loss of their own country