Mick Hartley

Inside the Home Office asylum system: "The whole culture is rotten".  In the Telegraph:

Home Office staff were invited to celebrate “World Hijab Day” despite asylum guidance which says being forced to adhere to religious dress codes is “persecution”.

Civil servants were accused of being “tone deaf” for sending the internal message to staff who process asylum applications.

That's the main article, but it's just it's just a taster of the dysfunctional state of affairs revealed below by an anonymous civil servant:

I work in the Home Office deciding whether to grant people asylum, and I am terrified that one day one of my cases will end up on the news.

For me, the case of Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, the twice rejected asylum seeker who is suspected of committing an atrocious acid attack on a mother and two young girls, was the final straw. I cannot sit idly by while I watch our broken asylum system fail again and again.

There has been no internal communication about the recent acid attack case. Nothing. Not even an email telling us that they are looking into how it could have been allowed to happen.

Instead we are bombarded with emails that celebrate things like “World Hijab Day’’ at the same time as I deal with cases of women claiming they cannot go back to Iran otherwise they will be forced into wearing these items.

The whole culture is rotten and I don’t actually think half of the senior civil service have the strength, or will, to be tough on asylum. I went to one speech where the head of asylum, who has now left, openly said she disagreed with the Government’s policies.

My colleagues and I all know that most of these cases are not legitimate, but our hands are tied. I estimate that around one in four cases I decide on are genuine.

Not every asylum seeker starts off knowing how to game the system, however, it has become clear to me that word spreads and trends emerge regarding how to game their applications.

Asylum seekers will be coached, often by legal representatives or through friends and family (some of whom may have been granted asylum in the past), to concoct a reason they might be persecuted in their home country.

They “convert” to Christianity, often coming with evidence of recent baptisms, or say they are gay and take pictures in gay nightclubs to prove it (some of these photos look as though they are very uncomfortable being there). In one instance a male claimed that he was gay, only to drop the assertion halfway through his asylum interview because he felt so disgusted by the idea.

In one interview the claimant insisted that he was being persecuted in his home country due to his political beliefs. I asked him to name the leader of his nation’s opposition party and he couldn’t answer. He asked for a break and came back ten minutes later knowing everything about the political situation.

This job is incredibly stressful and I worry that people’s safety is being put at risk. Some applicants will arrive with criminal convictions, including sexual offences, but this does not automatically disbar them from entry.

The Home Office provides endless groups for staff well-being with lots of diversity organisations and so on. But, I could never picture myself going to my manager with my concerns. I don’t think I’m a coward, but I know it will end badly if I say something.

There are a few people I have worked with who are on the same page, but we all know that our promotion chances would be dead in the water if we brought up anything “non PC”.

The Home Office is hostile to those who speak up internally, unless their complaint is about diversity or discrimination or some other civil service obsession.

Home Office directives and pressure to clear the backlog of asylum cases has caused caseworkers to cut corners. The default is now to err on the side of accepting people. For example, we have been told to cut down the time it takes to conduct asylum interviews, which has led to confusion and a lack of clarity over some cases.

Even as someone who is sceptical of many applications, internal targets and incentives mean that I feel under huge pressure to accept people. It takes less than half an hour to accept a case, while it takes around a day to write up a report to reject someone (this is because you have to lay out the evidence as to why you rejected it for legal reasons, which is a timely process)….

The Home Office ethos and “values” are all around safeguarding asylum seekers and protecting their welfare. My department is failing in its first mission and priority, to protect the British public.