Report tells of 'underground lives' of asylum seekers

A report by Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (PAFRAS) has revealed the difficulties of failed asylum seekers in the UK.

PAFRAS compiled the “Underground Lives” report from interviews with 56 asylum seekers, many of them Christian, from 20 different countries. None of the asylum seekers were economic migrants and around two thirds of those interviewed said they had been tortured in their home countries.

Among those interviewed were a surgeon, a lawyer, a civil engineer, a poet and a painter. However many of them said they were now living on less than £5 per week.

According to PAFRAS, the number of refused asylum seekers in the UK could be between 300,000 and 500,000. The UK Border Agency says it has around 450,000 unresolved cases at present.

According to rights charities, many asylum seekers in the UK are currently sleeping on the street, or in parks or churches. The Government does not include them in their homelessness statistics and they are not allowed to work, or receive housing or benefits, and many are vulnerable to physical and sexual attacks.

Most of those interviewed said they would be killed or tortured if they returned to their home country. A woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo claimed to have been tortured after being forcibly removed from the UK. She was then able to escape and apply for asylum a second time using her scars as evidence.

According to the report, the UK Border Agency does not make enough effort to check on what would happen to failed asylum seekers if they are deported.

The report said that failed asylum seekers in the UK are “forced to live underground, enduring severe poverty, extreme hunger, mental and physical ill-health and multiple forms of abuse, as well as constant fear of being rounded up and deported. They walk down the same streets as UK citizens, but inhabit a terrifying, parallel universe.”

Last week, the Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon & Leeds, said, “Asylum-seekers often find a place in the churches that they don’t find in the rest of our society. We have learnt from the Windrush debacle of the 1950s."

Windrush was the name of the first ship which brought nearly 500 immigrants from the West Indies to Britain following the Second World War, and is often seen to mark the start of immigration from former British colonies to the UK.