Writing for The Mirror, Allan Njanji calls on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to think again about sweeping changes to the asylum system – saying things will change in a ‘profound and terrifying way’
Receiving refugee status is supposed to mean something simple and profound: safety.
When you are finally granted protection, it is not just a legal decision. It is the first moment in months or years when you can begin to exhale. It is the point at which survival can turn into rebuilding, and when you can start to imagine contributing, working, studying, belonging.
But for new refugees, things are about to change in a profound and terrifying way. The Government has announced refugees will now be granted only a temporary reprieve from whatever turmoil they’ve fled, just 30 months until they’re forced to prove, again, that their lives are at risk in the home they were forced to leave. It’s a plan that will set back integration, threaten human rights, and cost taxpayers millions.
As someone who has lived within the asylum system, when your future is uncertain, everything else becomes provisional. You hesitate before signing a lease. You think twice about committing to long-term study.
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You carry the quiet knowledge that the life you are building could be paused again. Temporary protection may sound administratively neat. In practice, it can mean living in cycles of review rather than moving forward.
On top of that, we’ll all be paying a fortune to re-check claims that have already been processed. A Home Office that’s already struggling to clear the backlog of asylum cases built up under the last Government will now, somehow, have to find the time and resources for new 30-month checks.
It will have to make fair decisions based on the long-term stability of countries in turmoil: likely a challenge, for a body which last week revealed it had granted just 34% of asylum applications from Afghanistan , a country which the Foreign Office calls unsafe and “volatile”. It’s not yet clear how appeals will work under this new system, but it’s likely they’ll add to the ballooning and expensive appeals backlog already in place.
All this matters, not just because it will cost taxpayers up to £725m , but because it prioritises political signalling over practical reform. At a time when the asylum system needs efficiency, credibility and evidence-led improvement, the focus should be on designing a framework that is humane, workable and cost-effective for everyone involved.
In 2023, the Australian Government abandoned temporary protection visas for refugees . It did this because they don’t work. Amid a political conversation that’s all about “integration”, living in limbo makes that integration absolutely impossible. Even leaving aside the mental health impact of knowing you could face forced return at any moment, how can anyone be expected to build a stable career, a home, a family, a social circle or any kind of life amid this uncertainty?
In today’s speech, the Home Secretary emphasises this policy would be mitigated by allowing refugees to apply for work and study visas – for a fee. Whilst most people seeking safety who can work are desperate to get back to work, we’ve long known that making someone’s migration status conditional on their job leads to exploitation, trapping people in workplaces they can’t risk leaving.
If the Government wants refugees to forge meaningful careers, it should let people work while waiting for an asylum decision. People who want nothing more than to integrate and contribute will struggle to do so if they’re trapped in poverty for years, with skills stagnating and gaps widening on their CVs, and then told their security is conditional on immediately finding a job.
A different approach is possible. Our Government claims to be looking at international evidence: why not look to Spain , which has just regularised the status of half a million migrants? Why not look at the overwhelming international evidence of the benefits of letting people work while they wait for the decision on their asylum claim? Why not look at the Home Office’s own reports, showing no evidence for the ‘pull factors’ that allegedly justify cruel, counterproductive policymaking?
Today is a dark day for anyone who believes in the principle of sanctuary for people fleeing war and persecution – or in basic common sense. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could think this absurd anti-refugee plan will improve our asylum system for anyone.