Time for Home Office to keep promise of reuniting lone refugee children with family in UK
Today, several MPs are using Home Office questions to demand an answer to why no real progress has been made on speeding up family reunion to the UK since the Government announced a commitment to make this happen.
This follows a big Unicef UK campaign, supported by more than 100,000 signatories, to help reunite unaccompanied refugee children with their families in the UK. Monday is the moment the Government can live up to its promises on family reunion in Europe. To motivate her to act now, an open letter to the Home Secretary has been written and signed by some of the boys who have now been successfully reunited, and are living safely in the UK.
The children in Calais have a bed waiting for them in the UK, and have a legal right to be reunited with their families here. Instead they are waiting months in squalid camps for the slow legal machinery to get moving, which puts them at a huge and unnecessary risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking.
Monday is the moment the Home Office minister can fix this. By committing to just a further ten more officials to work on these cases we believe the children could be in school in time for September. The Government should also develop a plan to do the same across Europe.
Below is the open letter from four of the boys who have successfully been reunited thanks to the work of Citizens UK working in Calais:
Dear Home Secretary,
We are the children you see on the dangerous boats to Europe, torn from our families by war.
We’re the children you see living through hell in ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. We will never forget those horrific months.
Now, we’re the lucky few. After months of worrying and waiting, we have finally been reunited with our families in the UK. But our friends are still suffering in Calais, facing more and more danger every day, even though they have a right to be here with their families.
Only you can take our friends out of danger. If you had 10 more staff working to reunite children with their families, all of the 157 children who are alone in Calais right now - and, like us, have family living in the UK - could be here in time to start school in September.
In the past three weeks, more than 100,000 people have joined Unicef UK and Citizens UK in calling on you to reunite children with their families in the UK as quickly as possible. Among them are children, parents, MPs, and high profile people including Michael Sheen, Andy Murray and Sir Chris Hoy. It means so much to know that all of these people in the UK are speaking up for child refugees like us. Please listen to them.
Some people have a negative view of refugees, but we just want a second chance of living a happy life with our families and away from war. We are glad and thankful to you that we are now safe with our families in the UK. Please help the other children in Calais – along with those in Italy, Greece and elsewhere – by letting them be with their families.
Yours sincerely,
Bilal, 16, from Syria
Hasan, 16, from Syria
Moussa, 17, from Syria
Mohamed, 17, from Syria
(Names have been changed to protect the children’s identities)
