Time to Rethink Asylum?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2014
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Finch of the Institute of Public Policy Research asks if it is time for a fundamental rethink of the way we deal with refugees. He investigates the history of asylum as a political issue, the way asylum policy is implemented in the UK today, and discusses various views on how refugees could be handled in the future. Our current system was introduced in the early 2000s in response to public anger over allegations of bogus asylum seekers. Earlier this year responsibility for assessing asylum claims was removed from the UK Border Agency to the Home Office, amidst claims that the system was not fit for purpose. Why does asylum continue to be such a vexed issue?
CONTRIBUTORS
Tua Fesefese, currently seeking asylum in the UK
David Blunkett MP, Home Secretary 2001 - 4
Zrinka Bralo, Executive Director of the Migrant And Refugee Community Forum
Oskar Ekblad, Head of Resettlement at the Swedish Migration Board
Mark Harper, MP for Forest of Dean and Immigration Minister 2012 - 14
Roland Schilling, United Nations High Commission for Refugees Representative to the UK
Rob Whiteman, Director General of the UK Border Agency 2011 - 13
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
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| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading analysis from the BBC. |
| 0:39.0 | For over 40 years, analysis has been examining the ideas and forces which shape public policy in Britain and abroad. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm Tim Finch, and this week I argue it's time for the UK to rethink the way it provides protection for refugees. |
| 0:56.7 | Let's imagine that you are an immigration officer. |
| 0:59.7 | You have to make a potentially life or death decision. You have to decide whether the person |
| 1:04.6 | telling this story should get asylum in Britain. |
| 1:07.0 | I'm 12th, I left Cameron for safety. I was forced to get married to an old man which he was bad for |
| 1:16.2 | witchcraft. I made everybody to know what he was doing and which put me in |
| 1:20.5 | danger. Toe, a young woman from Cameroon, tells you that she was forced against her will to |
| 1:26.6 | marry a much older man who violently abused her. |
| 1:30.7 | She denounced her husband for being involved in witchcraft and then her family and local people turned against her. |
| 1:37.0 | Friends who supported her were murdered. |
| 1:39.0 | A boy would love me like a child friend. I was killed because of me because he was helping me just |
| 1:47.0 | to make me to move from the house. They killed him because of me. So they can kill people because of me. So if they can kill people because of me, then my life is in danger. |
| 1:58.0 | Tuva felt she had to escape. Smuggled into Britain, she spent her first few years here in sexual slavery. |
| 2:05.9 | She was imprisoned for working illegally in a care home, at which point she claimed asylum. |
... |
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