Michael Kelly: The way we treat asylum seekers is shameful

THE tragic case of the three people who jumped to their deaths from multi-storey flats in the north of Glasgow is disturbing.

It is not yet clear whether general lessons can be drawn from the very specific factors involved there. However, for some time, there has been disquiet about how the UK and, indeed, the European Union in general deals with refugees.

Since 1951, it has been recognised by international treaty that there is a universal right for anyone fleeing persecution to cross the border of their country to seek refuge elsewhere. It is a problem that has grown, with more than 350,000 people – increasing by 5,000 a day – in one refugee camp in Kenya alone. The UK handles only 25,000 a year.

It seems a bigger problem here because, in casual discussion about asylum seekers, it is far too easy to lump them in with other migrants seeking entry to our country. And there is a long list of those. There are the citizens of EU countries who have rights to live and work here. There are those admitted under the new points system. There are economic migrants, often here illegally.

Any and all forms of immigration are going to be at the top of the agenda at the forthcoming general election. Parties showing sympathy towards immigrants are likely to suffer. And the stench of BNP candidates breathing down the necks of the main contenders is enough of an excuse to harden the hearts of even the most liberal.

Sadly, in this country, which sometimes still likes to claim to be Christian, no-one is likely to stand up and advocate more immigration. Overburdened health services, shortages of housing, unemployment caused by the recession: all of these can be wheeled out as excuses to avoid meeting the demands of justice to share our vast wealth with the have-nots in the third world. Indeed, international refugee bodies claim Europe is building a fortress from the borders of the former Soviet Union to the Mediterranean, to ensure that our desires to buy a bigger telly, a better car and two foreign holidays a year are not inhibited by having to cater for those who have not sufficient food to feed their children.

Our treatment of asylum seekers must be considered within those social attitudes. Government policy could be to recognise that there are areas of the world – Somalia, parts of Afghanistan, for example – that are clearly dangerous to certain political, ethnic or religious groups and to admit, with little individual scrutiny, those who present themselves from those countries. But the UK's approach is much less generous. It assumes all asylum seekers are bogus and the process is directed at stopping them at source. Immigration officials are being posted to world troublespots to ensure any suspicious travellers do not set foot on the plane to Heathrow.

Those who do make it to these shores are forced into a strange legal process, in which there is a presumption of guilt rather than of innocence. If they fail, then after they have exhausted their appeals, they must voluntarily return.

A better system would ensure the higher voluntary uptake evident in other countries. Like the rest of the UK legal system, the process is adversarial. Often, asylum seekers do not engage a lawyer from the start and, as a result, their cases are often flawed with fatal technicalities. This is being improved by attaching one immigration officer to each case throughout the process and with lawyers appointed from the start. The object is to give the "client" more confidence in the thoroughness and fairness of the procedure so that the outcome is more likely to be accepted.

That certainly saves a lot of embarrassment. Because once families arrive here and are able to put down roots in local communities, the dawn raids and the detention of children as the authorities deport failed asylum seekers triggers outrage and protests.

The government is taking other steps to avoid triggering these. Ideally, it would have liked to house all asylum seekers together in remote centres during the entire legal process. But this plan proved to be prohibitively expensive, so individuals and families are still housed in the community.

That means we need welcoming towns and cities prepared to make the effort to provide the services and support necessary to make the daily lives of asylum seekers tolerable. To Scotland's shame, Glasgow is the only local authority that has a contract with the Home Office to accept dispersed asylum seekers. The council volunteered because it wanted the vibrancy and diversity an influx of different cultures would bring to a city with a declining population.

It also had the empty houses. Unfortunately, those houses are in the most deprived parts of Glasgow. Thus, asylum seekers are mixing with poor unemployed people, many of whom resent the apparently preferential treatment they receive. While the council has done much work on integrating the communities, there is still a degree of hostility based as much on ignorance as on racism. The reality is the government has set up a separate benefit system for asylum seekers, which in many ways is less generous. Benefits are not index- linked and for those whose applications have been refused but who appeal, they fall to 35 a week – at which level they have been for five years. Many argue that this conflicts with Britain's treaty obligations to treat refugees "as they would treat their own people".

This is part of a policy of what many see as "enforced destitution". When asylum seekers' cases fail, they are expected to return home voluntarily … they may be more willing to consider it an option if they cannot sustain themselves here. This is no way for us to behave. The system has been improved, in that it is now faster, and so few asylum seekers are being allowed to integrate in ways that make it even harder for them – particularly the children – to be dragged away.

But it has hardly become more humane, because the target of a six-month turnaround is not likely to be met any time soon. More depressingly the "legacy" cases from the old system, which has led to people waiting years for a decision, will take at least 18 months to resolve. A caring government would grant them all indefinite leave to stay – and hang the electoral consequences.