Asylum Link Merseyside – Spring Update

It turns out that emerging from a Pandemic is not as clear cut as going into it. For months now we
have been trying to open up our services to a wider number of people, but first Christmas Omicron
and now its new partner Easter Omicron BA2 are making it difficult. We’re still testing twice a week
and despite being sanitised and masked up, the last two weeks have seen more positive cases than
we had all last year.

The period since the New Year has seen plenty of activity with the Bike Club, and now the
Allotments starting up again. We’ve had a small lull on the Action Asylum projects as we get new
funding in place, but we managed a beach clean- up in Formby on a bright and breezy day in early
February. The photographs of the day contain a lot of Orange Hearts. This is the symbol adopted by
the #TogetherWithRefugees coalition, set up to oppose the New Immigration Bill.

Unfortunately, all the good work done in the House of Lords removing and amending the worst
aspects of the bill, have all been undone. These include an Asylum claim determined by how you
arrive in the country, not what you are escaping from, powers given to the Home Secretary to
remove someone’s citizenship, and the possibility of ‘offshoring’ Asylum claimants to other
countries or un-named ‘facilities’.

Following on from the Queens Award last year, we had a visit from the Earl and Countess of Wessex,
who had a brief tour of the building, meeting the volunteers and staff involved in the delivery of our
services. They were well informed on the background to asylum and interested in how people cope
as they journey through their new community.

Looking ahead, there’s still plenty of opposition to the Bill but this will come in the courts rather
than in Parliament, as the UNHCR have already said it contravenes the 51 Convention on the
treatment of Refugees. If you look at it logically, using Afghanistan as an example, a person fleeing
the Taliban, will be given protection if they arrived on an RAF plane, but not if they got here on their
own: it makes no sense.

Refugee week this year is the 20 th  to the 26 th of  June, and this years’ theme is ‘Healing’. Both Asylum
Link and the Merseyside Refugee Support Network are 20 years old this year, and Liverpool
celebrates 10 years as a City of Sanctuary, so the BBQs and events will have a special significance.

Ewan Roberts, Centre Manager
Asylum Link Merseyside ALM
St Anne’s Centre, 7 Overbury Street, Liverpool L7 3HJ
0151 709 1713 (ext4901)
www.asylumlink.org.uk
www.facebook.com/asylumlinkmerseyside