Britain must find right way on war refugees

Boris Johnson struggles for an asylum policy as generous as the rhetoric he has deployed. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already offered to host a government in exile should Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy be forced to flee. Extending that same spirit of solidarity to those Ukrainians who are similarly dislodged from their homeland would give real underpinning to the government’s Global Britain slogan.
In the main, there is much to praise in the UK’s response to the Ukraine crisis, especially if you ignore the pitiful first round of sanctions. Britain was quick to send anti-tank missiles and other weaponry and has kept that supply going. It was early to call on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to close down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the ban on Aeroflot and in calling for bans on the SWIFT payment system for Russian entities. Johnson appears to be speaking to Zelenskiy directly most days and promised to match public donations in a humanitarian relief program. Slow and late to crack down on oligarchs linked to Putin, there are pledges to reform a system that made London friendly to dirty money.
The gaping hole in that record, however, has been its offer to Ukrainian refugees. Last summer’s experience with evacuating Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover should have helped work the kinks out of a process that is cumbersome, confusing and often leads to no man’s land. And yet, the kinks are the point of it.
Immigration has long been a sore area for this government. Having won the Brexit wars in part by stoking anti-immigration sentiment, its knee-jerk reaction is to remind people just what good border guards Britain’s elected leaders have proven to be. Especially when it comes to stopping boatloads of migrants, public opinion has supported the government, even when the result has been tragic.
There are currently about 100,000 people waiting for asylum applications to be processed, 60% more than in 2020. The majority have no right to work and must subsist on just over 5.66 pounds ($7.56) a day for food and other necessities. Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is popular with some key voter groups the Tories need to win elections, wears the injustices of Britain’s asylum policy like a badge of honor.
And yet those fleeing Ukraine, mostly women and children, could not be a more obvious example of the whole reason the 1951 United Nations refugee convention was created. While Europe has flung open its borders to Ukrainians, Britain’s initial reaction was notable for its stinginess. Asylum-seekers could apply for a six-month visa to pick fruit if they could find no other way in, tweeted junior minister Kevin Foster. One cartoonist depicted Patel shouting into a burning building asking a Ukrainian-flag holding woman if she’s willing to pick fruit.
Fierce criticism forced the government to come up with something better. During a visit to Poland, Johnson announced the much-criticized family reunification program would be expanded so that up to 200,000 Ukrainians could benefit. Companies and individuals could sponsor refugees. Normal requirements for a minimum salary threshold or language requirements would be waived. The revised policy is indeed generous by UK standards and far better than fleeing Afghans have received. But the visa-based system certainly makes it harder for Ukrainians to claim asylum. Daniel Sohege, a specialist in refugee policy, says the Home Office helpline has not been updated so he has no way to advise people on the new scheme. It also requires Ukrainians being able to access a place where their visa requests can be processed; long queues, delays and application denials are common at these facilities.
The government’s new Nationality and Borders Bill could also make things tough for any Ukrainians who manage to get to Britain without a visa. It seeks to criminalise those who arrive and claim asylum by creating a two-tier asylum system. The House of Lords voted for a series of amendments, but it remains to be seen whether the government will accept them.

—Bloomberg