The threat of being deported to Rwanda, as the conservatives plan if they win Thursday’s elections in the United KingdomOr, it will not serve to deter many desperate people who risk their lives to cross the English Channel, believes Kolbassia Haoussou, who made that journey from Chad and now helps asylum seekers.
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“If you see that your life is in danger every day, in a country at war, where bombs are falling left and right, or you and your family are being persecuted… you have to be very stupid not to try to save it,” he says. EFE Chadian Haoussou, survivor of torture in his country.
The electoral promise of Tory leader Rishi Sunak, who aims to stop the boats and deport Rwanda This will not discourage new arrivals from travelling to the UK, says the asylum seeker.
The Chadian arrived on the coast of Dover in south-east England more than a decade ago in a canoe and, after a spell in detention and an attempted deportation, now runs Freedom from Torture, a charity that provides therapeutic care for people like him.
This 47-year-old migrant describes that getting on a canoe or a raft inflated with air is “very dangerous” and “you either get it or you don’t; we like to stay with it.”
The number of migrants
In search of a better future, Rwandan refugees fight for their place in the UK.
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Images of people like Kolbassia landing on British beaches account for “around 2.5% of immigrants arriving in the United Kingdom,” he told EFE Dr. Koldo Casla, director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Essex, England.
According to the academic, of every ten thousand people living in the country, thirteen are asylum seekers, compared to twenty-two on the European average.
“In the United Kingdom they receive less than in most European countries, and in Europe less than in most countries in the world”, especially in the southern cone, says Dr. Calsa.
Asylum seekers are a small percentage of immigration, which has increased since Brexit, but it is these “who are the ones who are focused on because they do not want to talk about the lack of measures to regulate immigration,” says the academic.
Contribution to society
“There is a hostile atmosphere. In the UK they are presented as illegals, the Rwandan plan to send them back… as if when they leave, everything will be fine,” says a young refugee from Eritrea, Rashan Sagai, in a conversation with EFE in Canterbury (southeast English), when referring to Sunak’s program to send to that African country, after prior agreement, migrants who arrive in boats.
Sagai is a few months away from finishing Nursing and working for the British Public Health Service (NHS). She arrived as a minor in Dover without this being the destination she wanted, “she was just looking for security,” she says.
The atmosphere is hostile. In the UK they are presented as illegal immigrants, with the Rwandan plan to send them back… as if everything would be fine once they left.
He said he passed through Libya, where she was held by traffickers, crossed the Mediterranean, where she almost lost her lifearrived in Italy and later in the Jungle of Calais, the refugee camp in northern France.
This future nurse wonders why there is a stigma of illegality towards innocent people and not “against traffickers” and wonders “why are they not looking for safe routes to stop them? or similar visas to Ukraine.”, in reference to those who entered in force in Europe after the Russian invasion of that country in 2022.
When they are minors, Kent County has a duty to care for them, Sarah Monday, who belongs to the Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN), a small organization that works with unaccompanied refugee and asylum-seeking minors, tells EFE.
For two decades, KRAN has been helping children with education by providing classes and activities.
“We believe in their potential to do wonderful things and contribute to the country they have chosen” to take refuge in, Monday said.
Faced with those who say that immigration usurps work or laziness, Sagai, in her capacity as ambassador, says that it is important “to raise awareness, so that people understand that we contribute to society.”
“I will be joining the NHS from December – after finishing my studies – that is contributing to the UK, which is suffering from a lack of staff. Refugees contribute to doing something for the country, as well as for ourselves.”
EFE
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