On a LGBT+ pride march
The BBC could have decided to expose the real scandal of how asylum seekers are disbelieved, criminalised and mistreated.
Instead, it chose to investigate claims that lawyers are coaching asylum seekers to falsely claim to be LGBT+ to improve their chances of gaining asylum in Britain.
Undercover reporters alleged that asylum seekers were encouraged to attend Pride events, fabricate relationships and rehearse testimony—while being charged thousands of pounds for the service.
Hussein is a solicitor at Asylum Justice and a trustee for Rainbow Migration, a charity that supports LGBT+ people navigating the asylum and immigration system. He told Socialist Worker that narratives like the BBC’s risk being used to justify even harsher immigration controls.
“The BBC report is a malicious and dishonest attack. It paints a picture that refugees and asylum seekers are bogus and deceptive.
“The wider context is that actually people misunderstand the asylum system. There’s this perception that people arrive here and that they get a PlayStation and get put up in 5 star hotels.
“The reality is that they are given pennies, less than £5 a day, and are made to stay in accommodation which if it were any one of us, we’d say was a human rights violation.
“They are fleeing desperate situations, and this government is making their life a misery, so it becomes intolerable for them to remain here.”
The British government’s most recent data release shows that only around 2 percent of all asylum claims included sexual orientation as a reason for needing protection. LGBT+ people have to prove they have a well-founded fear of persecution to qualify for refugee protection in Britain.
Hussein told Socialist Worker that claiming asylum on grounds that you are LGBT+ is actually one of the hardest and most difficult routes, with standards of proof being unrealistic and decisions inconsistent.
“The idea that you pass a card that says I am gay and you get a visa just couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.
“There’s a huge culture of disbelief in the Home Office. Even those whose cases are approved need to reapply every two and a half years.
“This government demands those seeking sanctuary continue to prove and justify their existence in this country.”
Britain’s asylum system already forces people to prove deeply personal aspects of their identity, often under humiliating conditions. LGBT+ applicants are routinely asked intrusive questions about their relationships and experiences.
“LGBT+ people are told, despite how demeaning and humiliating it is, that they have to prove their gender identity or sexuality. There is such a high evidential standard,” said Hussein.
“I’ve had clients who are lesbians using pictures of themselves holding hands with their partners as evidence and being told ‘how do we know that’s not just you and a friend?’
The insinuation that your gender identity or relationships can be faked, and that they need to be proved, is very offensive to every LGBT+ person living in Britain
“During interviews people have to speak in the most romantic, almost Shakespearean language, about their partners. And still they can be told that their statements are lacking in detail or too vague. They are made to go into detail about their private, intimate sexual experiences.
“People should not have to justify or prove that their identity is real. And the insinuation that your gender identity or relationships can be faked, and that they need to be proved, is very offensive to every LGBT+ person living in Britain.”
Hussein highlighted that LGBT+ asylum seekers experience dual oppression that means they are even more stigmatised and susceptible to scapegoating and prejudice.
“Almost 70 countries persecute LGBT+ people, some with the death penalty. Of those countries, 36 have at one time been under British rule,” he said.
“Many of the homophobic and anti‑trans laws in these countries come from the colonial laws put in place by the British.
“Britain’s hands are not clean. People who are fleeing to Britain are those who are suffering today from the generations of harm caused by British colonialism.”
There might be a small number of asylum seekers who are so desperate to be safe that they say they are to be LGBT+, or Christian, or victims of domestic violence.
But, if that ever takes place, it’s a reflection a racist immigration system that puts up ever barriers to people seeking safety.
They are vulnerable to exploitation, as Hussein acknowledges. The government could go after those who are exploiting desperate people, he says.
“The ecosystem that exists in the British asylum system is one of scarcity of legal representation, slashing of aid and an insistence on criminalisation of asylum seekers.
“The emergence of cowboy firms that exploit people who fall into their trap is because the government has slashed legal aid, meaning that there are much fewer of us who do this kind of work.”
“There is also the demonisation of lawyers who support asylum seekers as akin to criminals themselves. The BBC has purposefully found advisers who are misusing the asylum system to generalise.
“The BBC is complicit in one big ruse, but the ruse is the article itself, which is not genuine at all.”
Njeri Gateru, from the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Kenya, spoke to Socialist Worker.
“‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,’ wrote the poet Warsan Shire,” they said.
“I don’t think that anyone who’s never had to leave home can truly comprehend what it is to have to make a decision to leave relative safety to go into uncharted ground and then to be rejected there.
“We have criminalisation. We have pervasive homophobia. We have institutional homophobia.”
Since the organisation was founded in 2014, it has dealt with over 1,500 cases. She added “This is only our organisation. So, I can’t imagine an annual compilation of all of the cases across the country.
Njeri Gateru (she/they) of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Kenya
“We have a history of violence against queer people from different institutions and different people and, unfortunately, we have a history of those issues being ignored.
“We have cases that the police don’t follow up and, even worse, situations where people who are survivors of violations are themselves victimised.
“In 2018 my organisation won a court of appeal ban on anal testing.
“We were able to campaign and successfully get it banned from the courts, but it’s still used as a threat to this day.
“We are currently litigating to repeal the sections of the law that criminalise homosexuality, but as it stands, homosexuality is still punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment.
“You can imagine the situation that just having that in the law books creates. Think of the kind of justifications that it gives for all manner of violations and discrimination against people assumed to be queer.
“Even the smallest things like, you need a haircut at a barbershop, you get told, ‘we don’t accept your kind here, you guys are criminals’.
“We see cases of ‘corrective rape’—I hate to use the term. We see cases of sexual violence and physical violence, people being disinherited by their families, being terminated from their jobs, being unlawfully evicted from housing.
“My life’s work is to end these bad laws that shouldn’t have been here anyway.
“It’s not just the opposition we have in court and from the government which wants to retain the discriminatory laws.
“The next institution we’re fighting is the Anglican Church.
“When we look at our learning from pre-colonisation, we realise that queer people have always existed, queer narratives always existed in our traditional societies.
“What happens is that they became erased.”
Rainbow Migration, a charity which offers support to LGBT+ people claiming asylum, told Socialist Worker about the reality of the process:
“Every day we work with LGBT+ people who have fled life-threatening situations and are hoping to rebuild their lives in safety here. For many, claiming asylum can be their only way to escape persecution.
“A gay man from Pakistan who came here as a student told us how his family and community sent threatening messages after they found out he was gay. He was warned not to return home.
“Another person from Pakistan was abused, harassed and beaten many times. To leave your country, your family, your childhood, and to come here, is not easy for anyone. But when your life is in danger, you have to make a decision.
“And if you come with a student visa, you are dependent on your family, we don’t have any job, any money.
“My whole life I’ve been scared. I was depressed, running away alone was not easy. It’s very dangerous.”
Britain has seen years of tightening immigration controls alongside rising backlogs and worsening conditions for asylum seekers.
A volunteer with refugee charity Care for Calais, who supports hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in Britain navigating the asylum system, spoke to Socialist Worker.
He explained that advisers con many asylum seekers because routes are limited or inaccessible.
“The asylum process is incredibly long and there is very limited access to legal advice. It’s incredibly stressful and difficult for people.
“There is next to no pro-bono help given without a fee. They have to go through the process on their own.
“People think that when people arrive in this country, they immediately get a lawyer and their claim gets looked at—complete rubbish. People wait for months and months.
“When they do get an interview, they don’t know what to expect. Sometimes these can stretch days and sometimes they’re over in 20 minutes.
“Even if the country that you have come from is terrible, the system basically says ‘tough shit, the whole world’s terrible’, that’s not enough to allow you to claim asylum.
“You have to be able to show that you are personally at risk.
“I think people don’t realise the kind of criteria that is involved in being granted asylum.
“The whole process is isolating and demoralising for people who are already traumatised.
“The idea that people sit there and invent these stories is just bollocks.
“There are people out there that advertise as lawyers and they are complete charlatans. They swindle people out of any money they might have had.
“But what I find so infuriating about this BBC report is that no one’s going after the profiteers, they’re going after asylum seekers who are the ones that are the victims of exploitation and state racism.”
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