Home Office to tell refugees to complete questionnaire in English or risk refusal

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/22/home-office-plans-to-use-questionnaires-to-clear-asylum-backlog

22 February 2023

Home Office to tell refugees to complete questionnaire in English or risk refusal

Plans to cut the asylum backlog by sending questionnaires to refugees instead of conducting official interviews will demand that claimants reply in English within 20 working days or risk refusal, a leaked document shows.

The Home Office will on Thursday begin sending out copies of the 11-page document to about 12,000 people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen as part of Rishi Sunak’s plans to cut the “legacy backlog” of 92,000 asylum claims.

The move is meant to speed up the process by which claims are processed so that people can be either given leave to remain in the UK or removed.

But the questionnaire, seen by the Guardian, asks more than 50 complicated questions that it says “must be completed in English” and suggests using “online translation tools” if necessary.

[…] Questions that may have to be translated online into languages such as Pashto, or one of the nine official languages of Eritrea, by claimants include: “If you do fear officials in your country, is it possible to email or telephone family members or friends in your country of origin to request [identity documents] without placing yourself or them at risk?”

Another question asks: “Were you subject to human trafficking (the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit) or modern slavery (severe exploitation of other people for personal or commercial gain) during your journey to or after you arrived in the UK?”

[…] Caitlin Boswell, the policy and campaigns manager at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “People fleeing desperate circumstances clearly need this government to make quicker and fairer asylum decisions, but this latest move from government is clumsy, unthinking and could put people’s safety at risk. No one’s right to refuge should be jeopardised because they weren’t able to fill in an unwieldy form in a language they don’t speak.” […]