Refugee families in the UK must have a safe route to reunite with a lost child
Refugee child in a refugee camp in Northern Iraq | Image by: ton koene / Alamy
3 min read
Lord Dubs' amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill would address the heartbreaking choices faced by parents separated from their children
Parliament will this week consider a change to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which would reopen – for a small number of lost children – a door slammed shut in September when the government suspended Refugee Family Reunion. The change would allow parents who, passing all the tests, have been accepted here as bona fide refugees, to apply to bring in children lost on the way.
The change is proposed by Lord Alf Dubs, who speaks on such issues with rare, cross-party moral authority. Aged six he escaped from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport, reaching the UK in 1939, fleeing the fate that claimed a million children's lives. He's spent a life of public service working for refugee protection, trying to do for others what was done for him. In 2016 he championed a landmark legislative amendment – the so-called ‘Dubs Amendment’ – which was supported on all sides of both Houses and accepted by the-then Conservative government. It led to the admission of 480 unaccompanied refugee children, mainly fleeing carnage in Syria, who had been stranded alone in Europe.
This time his aim is to give family members living here a safe way of bringing in a lost child. His proposal is hardly radical: it would mean the partial restoration of a basic protection in place until we left the EU. Children who before Brexit were able to be reunited with their family here are now stranded on the streets of Calais, or trapped in over-crowded camps in Greece or Italy.
Asylum must not be abused – but nor should children be parted from their loved ones
We all want to put the small boat gangs out of business. But without the new Dubs Amendment, parents separated from their children by the Channel face a heartbreaking choice: stay apart – or pay up and see the child take their chances with a smuggler. There has to be a third way. That's why the amendment has such wide all-party support.
The change to the law, like the number of families who would benefit, would be small but the moral challenge to the country is huge. How much importance do we attach to ensuring that a lost child, alone and vulnerable, can be welcomed back into safety and family life? What kind of country have we become?
I'm optimistic about the answer. The evidence is that, for all the rhetoric of the far right, public sentiment on refugee children is compassionate. When the issue is seen in terms of reuniting families, even those generally sceptical about immigration accept that what Alf Dubs wants reflects traditional British values. Asylum must not be abused – but nor should children be parted from their loved ones.
Let's hope Parliament once again listens.
Lord Kerr is a crossbench peer and former FCO permanent under-secretary, and a former Refugee Council trustee
