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So you’re a Group 2 refugee, are you?
This is the third blog in the series on the UK’s Nationality and Borders Act 2022
The first thing to note if you are a Group 2 refugee is that you are a temporary person: “Temporary protection status will be for a temporary period, no longer than 30 months …” (Policy Statement, p. 20, see link below). Once that period is over, you will be protected from absolutely nothing. In Patel’s impersonal language, “individuals will be reassessed for return to their country of origin or removal to another safe country” (ibid.).
Three main problems arise immediately. The first is that it may not be safe to send you back to your own country. The UK government will argue that, since your claim of persecution has been rejected, returning you to your own country will not put you in danger. But, as we have seen, the Home Office’s decision-making is open to question and we will see in later blogs that in any case its knowledge of countries of origin is often inaccurate or out of date. So your safety is far from 100% certain. Moreover, there are plenty of examples where governments, especially if the Home Office has informed them of an asylum seeker’s return, punish them once they get back, and the UK government does not check on the welfare of the people it returns. Labour Immigration Minister Baroness Scotland told the House of Lords in 2006:
Where we refuse a claim and the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal dismisses any appeal we … consider that it is safe for that individual to return. This is one of the reasons why the Home Office does not routinely monitor the treatment of individuals once removed from the UK (cited Mouncer, B. (2010), Dealt with on their Merits?, p. 98).
The second problem is that so far Rwanda is the only country to agree to take asylum seekers passed on to them by the UK, and we don’t know if they will include the UK’s temporarily protected refugees, how they would be treated if they were included (settled there or removed somewhere else?), let alone whether there will be agreements in the future between the UK and other countries.
Thirdly, temporary protection status also means “family reunion rights will be restricted and there will be no recourse to public funds except in cases of destitution” (Policy Statement, p. 20). In practice this must mean that family reunion rights will be defunct in practice (for who would want to bring their family over for a maximum of 30 months, only to be deported to some unknown destination after that, possibly in a state of near-destitution?). But even “restricting” the right to family life surely breaches the spirit of the Refugee Convention, if not the letter. For although there is no specific reference to family reunification in the Refugee Convention, the Conference that adopted that Convention passed a strongly worded recommendation urging governments “to take the necessary measures for the protection of the refugee’s family, especially with a view to ensuring that the unity of the family is maintained” (The Right to Family Life and Family Unity of Refugees, etc., p. 9, para. 2.1.4: https://www.unhcr.org/5a8c40ba1.pdf). Jastram and Newland argue that “Recognition as a refugee gives rise to a prima facie reason to admit the refugee’s close family members to the country of asylum.” (Jastram, K. & Newland, K., Family Unity and Refugee Protection, p. 581: http://refworld.org). They give the same reason: “Reunification in a country of asylum is the only way to assure the right to family unity for refugees, who cannot by definition return to their country of origin.” This has been accepted by most signatories to the Refugee Convention ever since its inception.
The Home Office has described another scenario. In its Explanatory Notes it says that “individuals may be eligible to apply for long residency settlement after 10 years if the necessary requirements are met.” (Explanatory Notes, p.6, para 19). It doesn’t specify who these individuals might be or explain the contradiction between the 10-year period envisaged in this scheme and Patel’s firmly limited protection period of “no more than 30 months”. But with no basis in international law for the creation of Group 2 refugee status, the deportation of recognised refugees, whether after 30 months or 10 years, clearly breaches the Refugee Convention, Article 32: “The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order.”
Finally, we have seen that if you are given Group 2 status, with its temporary protection, you will have “no recourse to public funds except in the case of destitution” (Policy Statement, p. 20). However, for UNHCR, a refugee is a refugee regardless of the notion of temporary protection or the allocation of any “Group 2” status. UNHCR is clear that a “Group 2 refugee” is entitled to “public relief and assistance on the same terms as nationals”, as laid down in Article 23 of the Refugee Convention (UNHCR Comments on the New Plan, para. 45; Refugee Convention, Art. 23). A ban on such benefits must surely be a breach of the Convention.
Policy Statement:
Bob Mouncer's blog 