Cidna uma maqna, ceelna uma qodna

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week

 

Abdi, 34 Somalia

 

It would be wrong to describe Abdi as poor because this suggests he doesn't have enough money to survive on, which would be to put a rather optimistic spin on his situation. He isn't poor, he just doesn't have any money at all, and hasn't done for the last six months since his asylum claim was rejected in December.

 

He is pragmatic and uncomplaining as he explains how he manages to subsist beyond the fringes of society, hand to mouth, on meals of bread and tuna bought with Red Cross food vouchers. He has noticed, however, that the longer he lives like this, the heavier the toll on his health.

 

The Red Cross today publishes an uncharacteristically hard-hitting report attacking the "shameful" way the British immigration system treats those whose claims for asylum have been denied, and who have yet to return home. Once an application is turned down, the asylum seeker loses all eligibility for accommodation and financial support. Estimates suggest that there are about 200,000 asylum seekers who receive no state support, of whom perhaps 20,000 are surviving on food provided by the Red Cross or other charities. The organisation compares this emergency aid distribution to the work it does in Sudan, and is calling for the government to adopt a more "humane" approach.

 

Once you lose your home and financial support, the priority is to find somewhere safe to sleep. Abdi has three places he sleeps regularly, and he rotates them according to weather conditions. The first is in a mosque in a suburb of Birmingham, particularly useful when there was heavy snow. To stay there, you need to go to last prayers, join the worshippers for a while and then slip away and shut yourself in a toilet cubicle. Shortly afterwards the lights are switched off and the building locked up, and there is a secure place for the night.

 

Anxious to avoid suspicion, he doesn't risk staying there too often. So he has also been sleeping intermittently on a flattened cardboard box at the top of a concrete stairway to a block of flats nearby. This place is sheltered from the rain, and it has the added advantage of a light bulb that can be left on or unscrewed when he wants darkness, but the neighbours are not tremendously welcoming, and he tries not to get there until he calculates they will all be asleep. When they see him, they are generally abusive and threaten to call the police. Someone has scratched "Your Dead" into the side of his cardboard container, which he has left leaning against the wall.

 

"They're just joking with me," he says amiably.

 

The third place is in a narrow alleyway between park railings and a row of back yards, a few streets away. He has hidden his sleeping bag (marked "Don't take it. Please. Homeless") underneath a heap of discarded building materials, wooden planks with protruding nails, and broken mirrored glass. The adjoining section of park is a place where teenagers hang out to take drugs in the evening, so most people prefer to avoid the area, which means he is mostly left undisturbed.

 

For food he goes to the Red Cross every Tuesday, where he queues up for £10 worth of Morrison's vouchers, usually alongside up to 100 other failed asylum seekers. Volunteers here used to distribute emergency handouts of £15, but funding shortages forced them to reduce this to £10. The recipients did not protest, says Joseph Nibizi, manager at the destitution clinic; they are desperately grateful for whatever help they can get.

 

Although Birmingham has a large number of destitute asylum seekers they are not very visible. They do not sit at train stations or by cashpoints; instead they linger in the shadows, afraid of attracting attention from officials.

 

Abdi cultivates invisibility. He spends his day pacing from one spot to another, afraid to loiter too long, worried that people will think he is a criminal. He doesn't approve of begging. He is prohibited from working, and does not want to try working illegally – washing cars at the traffic lights – for fear of jeopardising the fresh claim for asylum he is preparing.

 

Existing without any money naturally causes logistical problems. Tomorrow he has to travel to Solihull on the outskirts of Birmingham for his monthly registration with the Home Office, and the bus fare will cost £3.50. He visits Morrison's to see if he can get change from his vouchers, but he knows from previous visits that the cashiers are not very well disposed to asylum seekers, and will only give change if at least half the value of the voucher is spent. It seems a trifling point, but since the change from the Morrison's voucher represents the only coins that pass through his hands during the week, it is of critical importance.

 

As he walks through the 14 aisles of the vast supermarket, he waves towards the shelves full of food and says: "I pass everything by because of my budget." He buys some discounted sliced bread, four tins of tuna chunks, four small tins of baked beans, and a litre of milk. He doesn't own a tin opener, but a nearby cafe owner usually agrees to lend him one, and he eats whatever he buys cold.

 

(At the till there seems to be some inconsistency about the policy on giving change from tokens. A cashier is happy to give me £4.50 change when I give her one of the £5 tokens to buy the 50p loaf of bread. A manager I check with smiles and says I can spend as much or as little of the £5 gift token as I like. When Abdi asks another cashier, he is told he must spend at least £2.50.)

 

Abdi pours out stories from his existence on the streets; they are not very cheerful, but he tells them with a sense of humour, outlining the absurdity of his situation. He has a story about a young woman who befriended him on a bench; after several days of sympathetic visits from her, it transpired that she was merely attempting to recruit him to deal drugs in the park. He has another story, told equally cheerfully, about a family who set their dogs loose on him in the alleyway where he was sleeping.

 

It is a bleak existence, but he is not inclined to return to Somalia. He won't say much about what prompted him to flee through Africa and then Europe hidden in cars and lorries, commenting only: "If you understand that it is a choice between living here in this way and going back to be slaughtered, then you understand that there is no choice."

 

His original asylum claim was refused by a judge who described it as "not credible". Campaigners point out that the asylum system is not wholly reliable, characterised by a "culture of disbelief", the onus being on asylum seekers to prove that they are not lying. Last year, 28% of people who appealed against refused asylum cases were granted leave to remain, a figure that campaigners say reflects serious flaws in the initial decision-making process. Besides, whether or not someone's claim is legitimate is not relevant to the question of whether they should be forced to live on the streets, campaigners argue.

 

The Red Cross is responding to the humanitarian needs of people who have nothing and nowhere to live, and staff members do not attempt to judge whether their clients' claims are solid or not. "We are a humanitarian organisation, and we believe that people run away from persecution. It is for the government to decide whether they have good cases or bad cases," Nibizi says.

 

Abdi has a meeting with a Home Office official later this month to go through his appeal submission. It is increasingly hard to find a solicitor, especially if you have no money. The UK's leading asylum charity, Refugee and Migrant Justice, announced yesterday that it was going into administration because of funding shortages, due to government delays in the payment of legal aid. If he submits an appeal, and it is accepted by the Home Office as potentially viable, then he will be eligible for hardship support payments and housing, but it is difficult to secure that status. Until then, he exists in limbo.

 

It is a confusing situation to understand. Abdi is not here illegally, since he is going through all the correct legal hoops, registering his presence with the Home Office every month, and until he gets served a removal notice he is not breaking the law by staying. He is at pains to do everything correctly, abiding by the stipulation not to work, determined not to break the law, even if that means surviving in a gutter on ad hoc charity handouts.

 

"Criminals in your prisons still get their basic needs. What about people who come here searching for safety?" he asks. "If they deny these things, do they want us to die? Or do they want us to break the law? When people see me sleeping in the stairway, they say 'Go home' or 'Get a job'. I can't do either."

 

Abdi is careful not to express any hostility towards the government for its policy, but Nibizi is angry. "You can remove people back to their home country, or you can keep them here. But you have to give people food. It is inhumane not to give people food. You cannot starve people out of the country," he says.

 

"Nowhere else is providing the kind of support [the Red Cross does]. Ten pounds is not enough to live on, but it can sustain them until someone else can help them. Our service is meant to be an emergency response, but the government is not dealing with them. We can't leave them to die outside."

 

The Guardian

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Muhammad, 27 Somalia

 

Muhammad is unsmiling and guarded, very troubled by the 18 months he has been sleeping in Birmingham's parks. He came here in 2008, helped by an uncle who bought him a plane ticket to Heathrow, where he was immediately arrested. He claimed asylum, giving details of the murder of both his parents in 2006, shot dead by al-Shabab militants as they were minding their vegetable stall in the village market. The gunmen were raiding the stalls; when his parents tried to protect their stock of bananas and tomatoes, they were killed. His claim for asylum was refused 18 months ago. Shortly afterwards, he had to hand over the keys to the hostel where he was staying; that was the last time he had a shower or slept in a bed. He hopes to appeal against the decision but has not yet managed to put together a new case.

 

Everything he owns he carries in his backpack – one shirt, one sheet, one T-shirt, one pair of shorts, two heavy files of documents relating to his case, letters, photographs. He sleeps with his head on the bag to be sure it is never stolen. He doesn't have a sleeping bag, so he relies instead on old cardboard boxes as protection against the wind.

 

He speaks almost no English, but explains through the translator that he has learned to understand "Move" and "Back home" from the refuse collectors who sometimes find him still asleep by the hedge or at the edge of the outdoors baseball court, where he usually spends the night. Sometimes some west Africans sleep there too, but he can't speak to them, because they have no common language. He admits he has become very lonely. Another Somalian whom he met occasionally at the Red Cross recently disappeared, leaving his cardboard boxes behind. Muhammad wonders if he was taken to a detention centre but is not sure.

 

With his Morrison's vouchers he has bought a pot of Nutella (£1.21), a long baguette (60p) and a bottle of Highland Spring water (78p), because he has no access to a tap. He will cut the baguette into small sections and that way it should last for three days, when he will return and spend the second £5 voucher.

 

"My ambition is to live in peace. My ambition is to get peace. I would like to work and contribute to the community where I live, which I cannot do now. There is no peace in Somalia."

 

He is not optimistic that an appeal to the Home Office would succeed. "The last letter they sent me, they said I should go back to Somalia. I will be killed in Somalia."

[Somalina]

How do we help Abdi?

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

NNC, aad ayaan ugu naxay walaahi. Sister. I wouldn't myself mind helping of whatever I can to the brothers.

[Aaliyyah]

aw that is so sad.

 

Ilaahay faraj khyr qabba ha u furo..

[Somalina]

Waxaan wax ka daran ayaa aduunka ka socda, but I will never walk away without doing something for this poor guy (as a Somali person). A sad story indeed! however, not sadder than what is going on back home!