I ended the previous blog by noting that the alternative to dangerous journeys (safe routes to protection) were few and far between. The Refugee Council has identified 2 main routes (what the government calls “safe and legal” routes) for people seeking asylum in the UK: they are the family reunion and the resettlement routes. The Refugee Council also calls for the creation of humanitarian visas such as those used by the EU states (Safe routes save futures, Refugee Council: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/safe-routes-save-futures/).

Family reunion. For the 5 years prior to the Nationality & Borders Act (NBA), around 29,000 people were reunited with their families through family reunion schemes. 90% of them were women and children. However, the Act now denies the right to family reunion for Group 2 refugees, who are only given temporary refugee status (arguably illegally). The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) made the following point before the Bill became an Act:

With the possibility of applying for family reunion foreclosed, moreover, more women and children are likely to attempt dangerous journeys, either at the same time as the men who might previously have sponsored them under current rules, or to join them afterwards. This risk has been recognized by the Council of Europe, among others, and has been borne out in Australia, where the abolition of family reunion rights for holders of “Temporary Protection Visas” was followed by a threefold increase in the percentage of refugees trying to reach Australia who were women and children (UNHCR Observations on the Nationality & Borders Bill, para 20, p. 7: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/615ff04d4.pdf).

Patel often holds up the Australian government as an example to follow in its asylum policy. However, the result of doing so in this case means that her declared objective (to reduce deaths and dangerous journeys) is likely to be defeated.

Refugee resettlement schemes. According to the Refugee Council:

Europe generally accepts very few refugees for resettlement. Between 2004 – February 2021, the UK has been resettling around 750 refugees annually, from all over the world, through the Gateway Protection Programme. This was in addition to the 20,000 refugees from Syria who were resettled to the UK by February 2021 (https://refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/refugee-resettlement-facts/).

The Syria resettlement scheme ended in March 2021. Two resettlement schemes were set up to cover Afghanistan. The first was the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) — https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-relocations-and-assistance-policy/afghan-relocations-and-assistance-policy-information-and-guidance. The scheme, set up in December 2020, was restricted to “employees of Her Majesty’s Government”. There were four categories of eligibility in the scheme. However, there was a further restriction built into it, found in the words “directly employed”. This meant that if you applied for the job through an agency you were not eligible to be included in the scheme, whether your job was to support the armed forces or with the government in general, whether you were a bodyguard or an interpreter. This angered, and left stranded, a large number of people.

The second scheme was the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) — https://www.gov.uk/guidance/afghan-citizens-resettlement-scheme. It was a half-hearted affair from the start: it was announced in August 2021 but wasn’t launched for another 5 months and seemed at first to be restricted to those who had already come to the UK during the chaotic evacuation following the Taliban’s takeover and the USA’s and the UK’s withdrawal from the country (https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/safe-routes-save-futures/). It was eventually divided into three pathways. The first was, as mentioned, for the people already here. The second pathway was through UNHCR referrals. This is for people who have fled Afghanistan to a neighbouring country (e.g. Pakistan) and who may want, for example, to join relatives in the UK. The third pathway is for “those at risk who supported the UK and international community effort in Afghanistan”, plus particularly vulnerable” people such as women and girls and ethnic minority groups (like, say, the Hazaras). Unfortunately, this pathway is no longer available. There is no indication why this is so (it may be because the first year’s quota has been reached, but the ACRS page doesn’t say so and it doesn’t say if or when the pathway will reopen).

It’s difficult in fact to know what is available. Supposing you have managed to get out of Afghanistan? The official government Guidance tells you the following:

If you have fled from Afghanistan to another country looking for humanitarian support, and are seeking resettlement to the UK, you should not make a visa application (“Support for British and non-British nationals in Afghanistan”, Guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/support-for-british-and-non-british-nationals-in-afghanistan).

The Guidance then directs you to the ACRS page, where Pathway 2 tells you about being referred for resettlement by UNHCR — not that the Guidance (being skimpy) has mentioned UNHCR, but you may just notice it on the ACRS page. How does UNHCR referral work? Well, if you are in touch with UNHCR yourself a “self-referral” may be possible, or an “internal referral” by a staff member; if you are in touch with a non-governmental organisation (an NGO), you may be able to get an “NGO referral” to the UNHCR. But if you have limited contacts in the country to which you have fled, arranging this may be difficult. There are no links in the government Guidance to these UNHCR procedures. They might be found elsewhere, but my experience didn’t suggest they were easy to get to. I googled a simple question: “I am an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, how do I contact UNHCR?” The result was two invitations to donate to help refugees (one from UNHCR and the other from the Red Cross), next came a UNHCR plea for “support” followed by an appeal to donate to help women in Afghanistan, and then came information, from “UNHCR Pakistan” (https://help.unhcr.org/pakistan/), aimed at people travelling in the opposite direction, that is who want to be resettled back in Afghanistan under UNHCR’s “facilitated voluntary repatriation programme” — the opposite of what I (or, indeed, any Afghan refugee escaping the Taliban) might be looking for. If the government were serious about protecting refugees it would put clear information in one obvious and easily accessible place. Did I say the scheme was half-hearted? It is. Incidentally, the UNHCR Pakistan page did, if you scrolled past the “voluntary repatriation” section, provide a link to further information for new arrivals. The link didn’t work when I tried it.

Supposing you haven’t left Afghanistan? The UK government offers the following guidance under the heading “Support for British and non-British nationals in Afghanistan”, with the assurance that “We continue to work at pace to assist people facing serious risk in Afghanistan”. So here you are, a “non-British national” (i.e. an Afghan) facing serious risk:

Afghan nationals need to apply for a visa to come to the UK to study, work, visit or join family … There is currently no Visa Application Centre (VAC) operating in Afghanistan. If you are in Afghanistan and wish to make a UK visa application, you will normally have to submit your biometric information (fingerprints and photograph) in a VAC in a third country to complete your application (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/support-for-british-and-non-british-nationals-in-afghanistan).

So you have to go abroad, scramble out to a third country, with your children, and all your biometric information if you’re lucky, and find a VAC! Are VACs part of UNHCR? Don’t know. Keep looking, Afghan national. But if you lose heart and decide to make your own way here to join your relatives, you could end up in Rwanda.

More on safe routes in the next blog.