Quakers back call for fairer asylum system
Quakers have backed a call from more than 200 organisations for the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to adopt a “blueprint to fix the broken asylum system".
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) is among 219 organisations that signed an open letter coordinated by Asylum Matters.
Signatories include Doctors of the World UK, Freedom from Torture, City of Sanctuary UK and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
The proposals, reported in the Mirror, call for a more humane and effective approach to supporting people seeking sanctuary in the UK.
The letter urges the government to move away from policies that it says have made the asylum system “unnecessarily cruel, costly, ineffective and chaotic".
It calls for measures including safe routes for refugees, the right to work after six months and an end to the use of asylum camps.
Increasingly harsh immigration policies
The intervention comes after years of increasingly harsh asylum and immigration policies in the UK.
Recent governments have introduced measures including the Illegal Migration Act, large-scale asylum accommodation sites, expanded detention powers and restrictions on routes to settlement for refugees.
Quakers have repeatedly spoken out against these policies, joining campaigns calling for safe routes to protection, the closure of large-scale asylum sites and an end to indefinite immigration detention.
A QARN steering group member said: “Our faith calls us to recognise the worth and dignity of every person. We believe people seeking safety should be met with compassion and justice, not suspicion and hostility.
“We hope that the government under Andy Burnham will now reset the approach to asylum and migration, dropping the policy and rhetoric of the hostile environment and stating clearly that no-one seeking asylum is illegal."
The letter says: “We are now calling on your government to take a new approach: protecting people seeking safety, rather than punishing them."
It also argues that “every successive effort to ramp up hostility towards refugees has failed to boost public confidence or political success for the governments," and has left refugee organisations to witness “first-hand the human cost".
The signatories conclude that the government does not have to continue “this failed approach", urging ministers to adopt policies that are “more humane, cost-effective, and beneficial to all our communities".