'A dizzying maze': how the UK immigration system is geared to reject

Navigating the roadblocks into Britain gets ever more difficult and expensive, as government hostility leaks into every transaction. By Maya Goodfellow

On an industrial estate on the edge of central Birmingham, in a building nestled behind a car park and overlooking the city’s network of canals, I met a group of about 30 people who had come from all over the world but whose experiences of the UK’s immigration regime were remarkably similar. They formed a circle in the middle of the room and began talking about the problems they had faced. Overstretched lawyers and immigration specialists were on hand to offer advice.

Diana was there that night. She came from Zimbabwe and moved from a visitor visa to a student visa, before going on to marry an EU citizen. But her marriage quickly deteriorated: “I had to come out of the relationship because of domestic violence.” She says she left her partner to save her life. She knew nothing about the asylum process, but in 2013, she was told that because she feared persecution in Zimbabwe, she could apply for refugee status. Diana quickly learned how many people are “ready to mislead you”. One of her lawyers did not give her the right information about applying for asylum, which meant that, when she went to court, she did not present the relevant facts that might have helped her case. Other lawyers she paid barely gave her any time and did not go through her case properly. At each appeal, she was refused the right to stay in the country.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2N63fG7