With all this Uganda and Malawi and Senegal hoopla, we’ve long wondered just how willing the United States would be to welcoming refugees from the African continent that Sec. of State Hillary Clinton says we’re going to protect? Well now here’s an answer as to Britain’s willingness to accept LGBT refugees: Uh uh.
A report from the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group puts Britain’s acceptance rate for these asylum seekers between one and two percent. To be fair, a single country cannot accept everyone who applies for asylum, except the British government accepts other categories of refugees at much higher rates. As a whole, other groups are granted asylum some 27 percent of the time.
Why the discrepancy? Explains UKLGIG’s Angela Mason: “It seems clear that case owners making decisions about lesbian and gay asylum claims do not have training on the particular issues arising from persecution based on sexual orientation or identity. They are also relying on out of date information on countries of origin and too often ignoring the UNHCR Guidance Note on Refugee Claims Relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The result is that lesbian and gay asylum seekers who are already experiencing persecution may also face discrimination in our own country. This is something that should not and need not happen.”
So what’s the British government’s solution for the persecuted? Move. Reports LGBT Asylum News:
How about we take this to the next level?
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The report says that two thirds of the cases were refused because UKBA staff said that claimants could ‘internally relocate’. It says that this is especially difficult for lesbians and gay men because, for example in the small island nation of Jamaica there is a culture of virulent homophobia which exists everywhere, with violence committed frequently (and us well documented) against lesbians and gay men.
Nine out of ten of the Jamaican cases reviewed were told to go home and relocate. Yet all the cases were claiming asylum precisely because they were ‘caught’ with a partner or were already perceived to be lesbian or gay. This, says the report “is an impossible no-win situation.”
Nick
Note that the Lib Dems are the only of the three big parties planning to change this.
DON’T VOTE TORY.
Lamar
Personally I have found Britain to be quite xenophobic (especially to Americans) and homophobic. Whilst debates for gay marriae happen in the US they are notably seen as a non issue to most politicians sadly. Being gay and an immigrant puts you at a major disadvantage here.
Bill Perdue
The Home Office and UKBA are pandering to a vile combination of racism and homohating.
Both are under the control of the Labour Party, who are otherwise the leading party on LGBT rights. Labour in England is moving so far right that they are now more like Democrats in the US.
Their chances of winning the upcoming election are diminished by their prowar and union busting policies.
The Tories are virulent homophobes who have learned Obama’s trick of smiling as the bus runs us over.