Morning LabourList: The women in Yarl’s Wood

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Following Diane Abbott’s immigration speech earlier this week, today she will visit Yarl’s Wood.

I’m told the shadow home secretary has been trying to access Britain’s largest detention centre for women since she took up her post over a year ago. Now that she is being allowed in, she will speak to the detainees face-to-face and see the conditions they are living in first-hand. The visit comes at a time when 120 women are on hunger strike, calling for an end to indefinite detention and to victims of sexual violence being held.

The Home Office is not fit for purpose – its failures reach every area of responsibility. Parliamentary offices are inundated with immigration casework. MPs’ constituents ask for updates on the progress of their applications, which have far surpassed the target response time, and UK Visas & Immigration’s answers are normally “unfortunately we cannot provide a timeframe for completion” or “the case is considered complex and falls out of our normal service standards”.

Some immigration lawyers suspect the “complex” response is just a delaying tactic. Visa applications are not being processed efficiently, with 2017 figures showing 8,000 asylum claimants waiting over 6 months for a decision. I spoke to people who had been waiting for years.

Other cases are opened for constituents whose family members would like to visit them but have had their applications repeatedly rejected on spurious grounds, asylum seekers staying in shockingly unsuitable accommodation provided by the National Asylum Support Service (a division of the Home Office), and those who have simply had their original documents lost.

Applicants have problems getting in touch with UKVI themselves, either because they are charged for sending emails (over a fiver for visitors’ visas) or because the responses offered every time they call for an update are contradictory.

While the latest data show the government’s net migration target is still being missed, qualified doctors are turned away due to a punishing tiered visa system. For the women in Yarl’s Wood, there is no time limit on their detention. The system isn’t working for anyone. As Diane Abbott and Thom Brooks wrote for LabourList this week, reform is needed urgently.

@siennamarla

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