Home Office blames ‘building rules’ as refugees are left out in the cold
‘Every time I hear on the news that we’re accepting so many refugees I want to punch the television because it’s a lie’
The British official had to say something – the crowd was getting angry. Stepping out into the snow wearing jeans, trainers, a hoodie and the black Home Office lanyard that gives him so much power, he addressed the shivering refugees.
“It’s not acceptable, it’s not good enough,” he conceded. “We’re trying our very best to make it better, but I accept I’m asking a lot. I want to help.”
Couldn’t he at least let the women and children into the warmth, someone demanded.
“Where is the humanity, where is the morality?” asked another.
The answer, for then at least, was not here. Rules were rules.
“There’s a limit to the number of people allowed in the building,” the civil servant pleaded. “We’re trying to negotiate [with the building owner] so we can get more of you inside.”
This, then, is the face of Britain’s welcome to the displaced people from Europe’s gravest crisis since the Second World War.
Again yesterday, dozens of Ukrainians trudged to the temporary UK visa office in the eastern Polish city of Rzeszow, misinformed by a faulty government website that they could turn up without an appointment. It turned out they could not. Indeed, some were told that the next available slot would not be for two weeks.
For physicist Alexander Smorodin, from the devastated city of Kharkiv, it was the pettiness he couldn’t get his head around.
His five-year-old daughter, Diana, was so cold she was almost as pale as the snow itself. Kiril, his 14-year-old son, was pretty quiet, too.
“The children are very distressed,” he said. “I don’t see why they can’t at least let us in.”
The alleged physical constraints of the temporary Home Office centre masks more fundamental logistical problems to the new visa process.
Refugees have been asked to turn up with a translated birth certificate, for example. Not only that, the document has to be franked.
Anton Schembri, a former Cardiff University student who has flown to Poland to help some family friends get to Britain, said: “I understand that normally you need some rules, but in a crisis that should go out of the window.
“Every time I hear on the news that we’re accepting so many refugees I want to punch the television because it’s a lie.”
A common complaint among visa applicants yesterday was that the website through which they must begin their application keeps crashing.
In response, the civil servant had this to say to the crowd: “The website is a bit temperamental. It was working for people this morning.”
Another complaint is the quality of the advice given by staff over the phone from London. Some refugees were this week told to apply in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, despite the centre there having shut and it being 50 miles inside the war zone.
One British citizen, Joe from Hampshire, who has flown to Poland to help get his mother and niece into the UK, said: “On the phone the Home Office said I should apply in Rzeszow, which I did, but when I next spoke to them they said I should apply in Lviv.
“That was on Monday – when I next spoke to them they said ‘oh no, it’s closed’.
“It’s all very well for Priti Patel to fly out to Poland and say ‘oh we’re doing everything we can’, but actually it’s the opposite.”
For those who secure an appointment and whose applications are successful, they then have to wait perhaps four more days to pick up their visa from Warsaw. The glacial process is more than frustrating. In a region experiencing both sub-zero temperatures and an acute shortage of hotel rooms, it’s also dangerous.
One woman, who preferred not to be named, said she had flown from Britain to help her 82-year-old mother flee Ukraine.
“She’s got bronchitis because she’s been sleeping on the floor for days,” she said. “It took five days to secure an appointment; now we have to wait nine days to have it.
“What makes it worse is there is virtually nowhere to stay in this city – it’s impossible to get a hotel.”
Last night, Mr Smorodin was holding out for a call from a volunteer so that his family could stay in their flat. He rated his chances at “50-50”.
Like millions of others, his family have escaped death by Mr Putin’s troops, but they’re still out in the cold.