Sara (not her real name) is a young lady from Ethiopia. Her mother died when she was young, and her father, to whom she was very close, mysteriously ‘disappeared’ after the government was overthrown, and has never been seen since.

Both Sara and her brother were arrested and thrown into prison – there she was abused. When she was eventually set free, she managed to escape to Sudan with the help of one of her father’s friends. From there she flew to England to seek asylum.

On arrival in the UK Sara was allocated a solicitor in London, and then, under the Home Office programme, dispersed to Bolton. Since phoning and visiting a solicitor 250 miles away is almost impossible for someone on £37 benefits a week, she sensibly asked her housing manager to recommend a local solicitor. The one he suggested (not in Bolton, but Darwen) proved to be a disaster, as he was not available once in 6 months, despite numerous phone calls and visits to the practice.

Sara eventually gave up and changed solicitor again. Just one week later her refusal letter arrived from NASS, telling her that she would receive one final benefit payment and have to leave the accommodation within 14 days. She was numb with shock. How could she have been turned down when she had never even had an appeal hearing?

It turned out that her original London solicitor received notice of the appeal hearing, but failed to send it on to Darwen.  Her Darwen solicitor had never bothered to find out what was happening with her appeal, therefore no-one represented her at the hearing, and she was refused asylum in her absence.

Although her third solicitor subsequently put in an appeal to the Home Office, this was rejected as being ‘out of time’. Even the intervention of her local MP could not alter this. The Home Office’s refusal to reconsider the case was justified on the grounds that it was Sara’s responsibility to know the state of her appeal! After this her third solicitor’s firm stopped doing Legal Aid work, meaning that she had to find a fourth solicitor. This lady appeared to be the best so far, but suddenly left the practice 6 months later, and her files were transferred to a colleague who already had a full case-load. He has decided not to continue with Sara’s case.

Since being evicted three years ago she has lived with a friend whose asylum case is still ongoing. This friend’s licensing agreement forbid her to have anyone staying (if discovered she too could be evicted).

Sara has lost her place at college, as she no longer qualifies for free education, and she is on medication for depression, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to access free prescriptions. Daily life is a depressing drudge with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Sara was living off Red Cross handouts. Like many others, she struggled to manage on this, and desperately found work in a pizza parlour to make ends meet. Because asylum seekers are forbidden to work, she borrowed a friend’s NI card to get a job. Unfortunately she was discovered, and sentenced to four months in Styal prison for deception. When we visited her she had just been released from the prison hospital after swallowing a bottle of disinfectant to try and end her life.

What hope is there for Sara? If she returns home, she believes she will face imprisonment and torture. And if she stays here she will be in this ‘limbo-land’ for the foreseeable future, stripped of her dignity, prevented from living a normal life. No wonder the rate of severe depression amongst failed asylum seekers is so high! 

This story highlights the importance of campaigning and speaking up on behalf of destitute asylum seekers.  We can try to alleviate their poverty, but in the long term nothing will change until there are changes in the asylum system.  And that won’t happen until the public stop believing the scare stories in the tabloids and learn the trust about asylum seekers in the UK.