Mayor Marvin Rees: Priti Patel’s asylum plan creates ‘worthy’ refugees when it should be helping people get jobs and integrate

Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, article for iNews (24th March 2021) criticized the plans for a new asylum system. Read in full here.

As Mayor of Bristol, I’ve seen how lives are not as simple as the Home Secretary’s immigration overhaul makes out
The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, announced this week that she will be overhauling how the UK supports refugees and asylum seekers. Such change is long overdue – everyone can agree that the current system is fundamentally broken – but this is not the time for political gestures.

The Government’s proposals seek to make a clear distinction between ‘worthy’ refugees who arrive via official resettlement routes, and ‘unworthy’ asylum seekers who ask for protection from here in the UK. But as all place-based leaders like me know, the complexity of people’s lives and situations can never be reduced to such a clear binary. And simply declaring one group of people as unworthy of support does little to improve the situation on the ground for them or for the communities they are part of.

As Mayor of Bristol, I have learned to see the world differently. Leading a city of almost half a million people as I do, particularly in a time of crisis, means I have no time for ideology divorced from practice. Based on my experience of leading a city, here is a pragmatic manifesto for change on our asylum system.

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