Home Office slammed over ‘chaotic’ handling of Afghan refugee crisis

Thousands of Afghan asylum seekers who have already arrived in the UK are stuck in a “nightmarish limbo” amid mounting pressure to grant them the right to stay in Britain permanently.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said on Monday that the Conservatives’ “chaotic handling” of Afghanistan evacuation “has put lives in danger and their resettlement scheme does not meet the scale of the challenge.”

“As the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates even further, the Home Office needs to urgently publish clear new guidance for people who have arrived in Britain and are currently in the asylum process,” he added.

After deleting key guidance documents used to decide refugee status for Afghans, the Home Office is now declining to clarify whether it has halted the processing of 3,000 living Afghans’ asylum applications.

The government explained the reason for document deletion as being “no longer relevant to the current situation,” after the Taliban retook power in Kabul.

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Meanwhile, several MPs have joined humanitarian groups in urging the government to grant amnesty to those who are already in the UK.

Speaking in a parliamentary debate on the Taliban takeover on Monday, Home Affairs Committee Chair Yvette Cooper called on the government to “recognize the position of those who are currently here, whose applications for asylum may have been turned down before circumstances escalated.”

Home Office statistics show that 2,881 Afghan asylum seekers are awaiting a preliminary decision on their applications, while another 236 cases are under review.

Bella Sankey, the director of Detention Action, asserted, “The fact that even now the Home Office is not conceding that they need to grant them asylum shows how deeply ‘dysfunctional and problematic’ that department is. It’s not a reasonable and rational response to what’s happening.”

She added that the government has been taking a “harsh and unreasonable approach” to Afghan asylum seekers for years.

Tim Naor Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action national charity, said that in the face of the government’s boasting of its generosity to those fleeing Afghanistan, “Thousands of Afghans are stuck in the UK’s damaging and dehumanizing asylum system right now.”

He said that “in stark contrast to the warm words on refugee protection we’ve heard from the home secretary this week, Afghans in the asylum system are stuck in a nightmarish limbo.”

Theresa May blasts UK ‘incomprehensible’ failure in Afghanistan

“We boast about Global Britain, but where is Global Britain on the streets of Kabul?”

Earlier last week, about 40 MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Claudia Webbe, wrote to Home Secretary Priti Patel, calling for adequate protection for Afghan citizens and amendments to some parts of the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would criminalize or deny full refugee status to asylum seekers in the UK.

“Reports confirm extrajudicial killings have already begun… In light of this crisis we urge the government to drop its current inadmissibility rules and its decision to criminalize refugee journeys that are not undertaken through regulated resettlement routes,” the letter read.

The UK government has rejected more than 32,000 Afghan asylum seekers since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Home Office figures show Afghans make up the fourth largest group of asylum seekers in Britain.

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