Image: Rareclass
“Adilah” grew up in one of the former Soviet republics, daughter of a Russian mother and a Chechen father. She did well at school, was allowed to go to university, and qualified as a lawyer. Then, however, her father’s relatives kidnapped her and forced her into marriage with an older man from their Chechen clan. She lived in Chechnya under the harsh supervision of her mother-in-law, was abused when her first two children were girls, and was only granted some relief when she gave birth to a boy. As the children grew, so did her husband’s gambling debts and she was sent to Moscow to work (always under close supervision from family members) in order to earn money for these debts.
In spite of the close supervision from her Chechen cousins, she managed to meet a British citizen via the Internet and then face-to-face when he visited as a tourist. Although her children had been taken as hostage by her husband and mother-in-law, she managed to take them out of Chechnya, saying that she wanted them to visit her mother and, at great risk, brought them out of the country to London.
She has now been living here for almost six years and her children are now 14, 13 and 11. With her new partner she has a daughter who is almost five years old and a British citizen. Adilah was not aware that being the mother of a British citizen could save her from deportation and all through her asylum case she was terrified that she and all the children would be sent back either to her country or to Russia. The Home Office and the judge did not believe that wherever she went, even anywhere in Russia, her Chechen relatives would find her, kill her for dishonouring the family, and marry her daughters into bondage. Her last words to the judge were: ‘They would kill me.’ The judge did not believe her.
While admitting that her identity should be protected, the judge did not grant her refugee status but gave her instead “Discretionary Leave to Remain”, saying that there is really very little difference between DLR and full refugee status. The judge was wrong. There is one very significant difference.
Refugee status is granted for five years, can be renewed free of charge for a further five years, and can lead to permanent Leave to Remain, also free of charge.
Discretionary Leave to Remain is for 2.5 years and then has to be renewed; it has to be renewed again after five years and 7.5 years until, after 10 years, the applicant can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain and then, after a further year, British citizenship. All this comes at a huge cost: currently, £2,033 (which includes a compulsory “health surcharge” which will increase in October 2020 from £400 per person per year to £623 per person per year adding a further £557 per person) plus £26 for a biometric resident permit and (usually) £100 for a biometric enrolment appointment. This is per person, even for babies born after the DLR was granted.
In Adilah’s case, it applies to herself and her three non-British children – amounting to over £8000 every 2.5 years, and this in an economic situation where millions of people in the UK are only one pay cheque away from homelessness. The victims of this cruel system include the high percentage of asylum seekers who are granted DLR instead of full refugee or humanitarian status. The term “Discretionary Leave to Remain” is misleading as, in fact, the grants of permission to stay are made on the grounds of protecting a right to family and private life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, so, actually, no discretionary decision is involved.
These fees were introduced without warning in April 2015. Before that, renewal was free. The original fee was £1133, so there has been a massive increase over the five years. The actual administrative costs to the Home Office are only a fraction of these amounts, so the government is making an enormous profit from the some of the most vulnerable people.
If a mistake is made in the application then the fee is not necessarily returned. There is no legal aid for renewals and, whilst an application can be made for the fee to be waived if the applicant demonstrates that they will otherwise become destitute, solicitors face the dilemma that they cannot apply for a fee waiver without charging an extra fee themselves. And there is no guarantee of success.
In December 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that profit at the expense of children is unlawful and described it as ‘shameless profiteering’. This was in response to a case supported by Amnesty International about the £1012 fee for child citizenship (making a profit for the Home Office of £640 per registration of children who were born and have spent the first ten years of their life in the UK). The government has left the fee unchanged while it appeals against this decision.
Various groups are campaigning on the whole issue of fees, including Scottish Faiths Action for Refugees, the Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) and Migrant Voice. The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) has just produced a leaflet about this scandalous situation and is encouraging people to bring it up with their MPs. The leaflet is available from the QARN website.
