London, United Kingdom. The UK has been a leader in admitting refugees from the war torn middle east, but disturbing statistics are coming forth that verify that tens of thousands of these poor souls are suffering without any fundamental standard of living as the UK lets them in, but does little to assit their functional assimilation into UK society.
Theresa May’s government has conceded that more needs to be done to make the asylum system welfare more responsive to migrant needs, following revelations that destitute asylum seekers are disproportionately sent to poor, unprepared parts of the UK and simply dumped.
Recent analysis showed that almost 60% of destitute asylum seekers who need government housing are sent to the poorest third of the country, while just 10% are put in the richest third. The analysis also revealed that 34,936 destitute asylum seekers live in areas that are not able to provide fundamental services to the migrant arrivals.
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, called for an overhaul of the asylum dispersal system, which she described as “a deeply unfair shambles”.
The Home Office previously wrote to all councils that were not asylum dispersal areas to ask them to consider joining the state managed plan. Participation in the asylum dispersal system is voluntary, though local authorities do not receive additional funding to assist with the costs of education or health services required by asylum seekers. There are 174 so called local authorities – or 45% of the total – that do not house any destitute asylum seekers, while 69% house fewer than 10 asylum seekers.
Roughly half of the 77,000 asylum seekers in Britain qualify to be housed under the Home Office dispersal scheme because they are destitute. The remaining 38,000, who can support themselves from their own means, are able to live wherever they want.