Labour Peer Says His Immigration Bill Amendment Would Give Refugee Children "A Decent Life"
3 min read
Senior Labour peer Lord Alf Dubs has tabled an amendment to the government's immigration legislation that would enable refugee children to be more easily reunited with their families in the UK.
Dubs, who arrived to the UK in 1939 fleeing Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, said the amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill would ensure child refugees "can begin to lead a proper life".
The amendment, which has been designed in consultation with refugee charities, seeks to ensure that children outside of the UK can be reunited with close relatives who have been granted the right to stay in the UK, as well as remove "existing financial barriers to reunion".
It is co-sponsored in the House of Lords by crossbench peer Lord Kerr, Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Hamwee, and The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford.
"It's an amendment that a child refugee or asylum seeker should be able to apply and join relatives in this country," Dubs told PoliticsHome.
"Under the immigration rules, they've got very little chance of doing that."
Dubs said the amendment was necessary because previous arrangements that enabled refugee children to be reunited with family members in the UK no longer exist, meaning they face being "alone and vulnerable somewhere, somewhere, possibly in danger".
"Up until around Brexit, there was an arrangement under the Dublin Treaty for this to happen: if there was an asylum-seeking child in one EU country, they could join their relatives in another," said Dubs.
The peer said the status quo was resulting in children taking dangerous journeys across the English Channel in small boats in a bid to get to family, or being left alone abroad.
"I'm not saying we should take everybody, but we should at least take some of them, and there shouldn't be any particular financial barriers to stop them being able to get here, which there are at the moment," he told PoliticsHome.
Dubs said both his own experiences of being a child refugee influenced work on the amendment.
"It gives them a decent life, it gives them a life where they can actually have a home, hopefully some loving care, hopefully they can get back to education — which they probably miss a lot of — so they can begin to lead a proper life, despite having suffered enormous traumas in times of escape from where they escaped."
Jon Featonby, Chief Policy Analyst at the Refugee Council, said the organisation welcomed the Dubs amendment because "provision of safe routes and family reunion" is one of the "key gaps both in the bill, [and] probably in the wider government's approach to refugee and asylum issues".
"The amendment that Lord Dubs is pushing and advocated for through the passage of the Borders Bill is a really important one, because it would allow children who have been displaced and are outside of the UK, who maybe are unable to be with their parents, to join wider family members who have already reached safety in the UK," he told PoliticsHome.
"That might be a sibling that they've got here, or an uncle or an aunt or a grandparent, and we know that that does happen in a few instances.
"The amendment is a key way of trying to expand access to that safe and legal route of family reunion."
The Home Office was contacted for comment.
