Read this paragraph from today’s Guardian:
“Home Office officials are being rewarded with shopping vouchers for helping to ensure failed asylum seekers lose their attempt to stay in the country, new documents reveal. Official guidance obtained by the Guardian shows that immigration staff have been set a target of winning 70% of tribunal cases in which asylum seekers are appealing against government decisions that they should leave the UK. These officers are also incentivised by Home Office reward schemes involving gift vouchers, cash bonuses and extra holidays, according to information received under freedom of information laws.”
Targets, then. So whatever happened to the constant Home Office mantra, “All asylum cases are dealt with on their merits”? Nothing, is the answer – because that was never the way the asylum system worked, and this investigation confirms what many of us have been saying for a long time.
And incentives? To be clear:
“Asked what rewards were given to presenting officers and case owners in the fields of asylum and immigration, the department confirmed high-street vouchers for £25 or £50 were handed out to ‘recognise positive performance over a short period of time’, including when officers ‘exceed their casework targets for a month’.”
Those of you who remember my neighbour Moh will wonder if his caseworker had “exceeded his or her casework targets for a month” when Moh was deported after 12 years in the UK. “Terribly inefficient, of course, to take so long, but let’s not quibble, Mr Jones, you’re the one who got there in the end. Here’s a £50 shopping voucher and some extra holiday time. Keep up the good work.”
Such schemes will increase the number of asylum seekers fitted up by their caseworkers. The following is taken from my PhD research, finished in 2010. FS3 is the codename I gave an Iranian refugee I interviewed. The quotes are from the official transcript of his interview and from the caseworker’s official letter refusing asylum. The letter sought to discredit FS3’s account of the experiences which led him to flee Iran. None of that letter stands up to scrutiny, but I simply mention here the passages referring to FS3’s detention in Iran. First, the caseworker writes:
“You say that whilst in detention, you were beaten, kicked, and ‘a crazy person’ burnt you with a cigarette. It is unclear whether the crazy person was a member of the security forces, or another detainee.”
It is perfectly clear in FS3’s account that the “crazy person” was a member of the security forces. FS3 is telling a story of abuse by the authorities in the detention centre. It is clear that when he claimed that he had been “beaten up, kicked” and that “my face was swollen, with blood pouring out of my nose”[1] he was accusing the staff at the centre. When he claimed that he heard “the cry of others who were being tortured in other rooms”[2] and that he “could hear the cry and begging of other prisoners”[3] he meant they were being tortured by the guards. When he said, “At the end a crazy person came and put his cigarette out on my hand”,[4] the culprit was clearly a guard, not “another detainee”.
Secondly, the caseworker writes[5]:
“When I asked you how often you were beaten Q36 , initially you were unable to say, then you responded ‘4-5 hours’, during which [you] sustained a bloody nose, and eye.”
The impression given is of a man who was uncertain of the story he wanted to tell, finally inventing an implausible four- to five-hour beating, from which he emerged with no more than “a bloody nose, and eye”. However, virtually none of the interviewer’s account is true. FS3 was perfectly able to answer question 36, and he did so immediately and appropriately – but it was not the question the caseworker claimed it to be:
“Q36: Could you tell me how you were beaten?
A: Some of them punched me and some kicked me. My nose was bleeding and my eye. At the end a crazy person came and put his cigarette out on my hand …”[6]
FS3 then replied immediately to question 37, which did ask how often he had been beaten. However, he did not claim to have been beaten for four or five hours but to have been beaten four or five times:
“Q37: Could you tell me how often you were beaten?
A: I did not know from the day to the night. I would say about four or five times but I don’t know if it was day or night.”[7]
FS3 was refused asylum in the first instance on the basis of the caseworker’s inaccurate account of this and other aspects of his asylum claim, but he was eventually given leave to remain on appeal. Yet the inaccuracies in the caseworker’s account were still not noticed by the court. But, luckily for FS3, leave to remain was granted on other grounds.
These fit-ups seem bound to increase if targets and incentives remain part of the picture. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has guidance for caseworkers. It contains this interesting paragraph:
“… while the burden of proof in principle rests on the applicant, the duty to ascertain and evaluate all the relevant facts is shared between the applicant and the examiner. Indeed, in some cases, it may be for the examiner to use all the means at his disposal to produce the necessary evidence in support of the application.”
Fat chance of that if targets, shopping vouchers and extra holidays rule the day.
The full Guardian article can be read here:
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