Pushback

When “they” are Ukrainian this country automatically accepted them as refugees even before being “processed”, in fact airlines provided hundreds of Ukrainians free flights to this country, and Ireland, buses and trains were free. 

And many Ukrainians traveled through multiple safe countries before coming to the UK. Cats and dogs from Ukraine are even given passports. We know this to be the case because we observed the patterns from the data 📊 on over 3,000 Ukrainians who contacted us.

We also know this because we did the work in 2022-24 directly sheltering hundreds of Ukrainian families in Scotland and England through Room for Refugees. We continue to do so with people of all nationalities. But the level of racism against refugees who are not white is shocking to observe. We are in a position to help more people but the UK governments won’t let people of colour come here even when they have cast iron legitimate claims.

When refugees are the brown and black people of the world whose countries were bombed and obliterated by this country, then they are immediately considered suspect or “illegal”. 

And here’s a fact check from our data 📈 - refugees tell us categorically they don’t want to be in miserable hotels with packet sandwiches, and concentrated orange juice from a straw, they don’t want to be idle and they don’t want £9 a week to waste their lives away. 

They want to get on with their lives, the same way the Ukrainians do. Doing jobs, paying taxes, standing on their own resources. They resent having to depend on you. They want desperately to contribute, learn English, be good neighbours and get out of the an asylum system that is built not to care. 

If the hotel bill for asylum seekers feels like a lead weight on the taxpayer it is the successive UK governments since 2001 (and in the case of the hotel bill especially the last Conservative government) who created that “burden” and are to blame. Not refugees in trouble. The billions it costs don’t go to refugees, they go to the corporate giants that are paid to accommodate asylum seekers. 

When it comes to asylum and immigration, racial prejudice is colouring many people’s  judgement, this was government led racial prejudice that filtered down to the street. 

The failure to see a person’s worth and what they can contribute to this country will cost this country dear. This country’s racism is costing this country dear. Time to pushback on every last nuance of prejudice. On TV screens, in newspapers, social media, all of it. 

Because we, the people of the brown eyed world of all colours, do declare that we have simply had enough of this nonsense. 

Dr Robina Qureshi