Coram Children’s Legal Centre is concerned by plans for children in this week’s asylum and immigration proposals, urging caution with language.
The Government has announced further immigration proposals that will delay many children, young people and families reaching permanent status. While we welcome the renewed commitment to children in the care system and young people who have grown up in the UK in the consultation on pathways to settlement, we are concerned by proposals that will push families into situations of deep and lasting precarity.
The proposals include doubling the route to settlement for many, including some of the most vulnerable families. This risks exacerbating the two-tier system in which some families are disincentivised from seeking help, leaving children at risk of harm and in deep poverty. This comes on top of proposals launched on Monday to reform the asylum system, which include making refugee visas temporary, limiting family life rights and removing families whose asylum claims have been refused.
The government plans to consult on the process for enforcing the removal of families, including children. It is not clear whether they will resurrect the existing Family Returns Process which is still on the statute book, having been brought in when the Coalition Government time-limited child detention in 2014.
Anita Hurrell, Head of Policy and Practice Change at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, said:
The Home Secretary and other members of the government have talked this week about refugee parents putting their children in danger for ‘personal benefit’. We urge the government to be cautious when talking about children. No statements should present a child as a pawn, especially without evidence; this is irresponsible. Policy to address any instances of child exploitation must be grounded in evidence.
If the government is seeking to remove families with refused asylum claims it must do two things. First, the government must recognise when children belong in the UK and have rights to stay. The government cannot stop the clock and pretend a de facto British child is foreign. Second, the government must hold the line Labour has proudly taken against the administrative detention of children.
Children growing up in the UK do not belong on decades-long routes to settlement. This action will undermine efforts to tackle child poverty, and these changes ignore what we all know to be true: that children integrate.
