The systemic/institutional indirect discriminatory approach of UK immigration services is evidenced well from the following elements from the interview of an asylum-seeker married to a British Citizen same-sex husband – an experience that from Home Office (UKVI) LGBT refusal data in the public domain, and multiple more extreme examples of this phenomenon covered in UK national news media, is characteristic rather an exception.
- The Husband, even though the official representative of the applicant, his husband, was not allowed to attend as a non-speaking, witness of the interview (something that also happened at the initial interview of the applicant at the UKVI offices in Croydon).
- The very same-sex relationships and same-sex married partners contemptuous approach of complete disrespect to same-sex partners indicated by [recorded] question: ‘So why did you chose Britain’ — this showed complete disrespect towards and ignoring of the fact of the interviewee as a gay man in a same-sex committed married relationship. Of course, one could only seek to settle in the country of ones married partner. If the lady interviewing had, positions reversed, been asked the same question, she would have, as was the interviewee, been deeply offended (this question relates to total non-acceptance of same-sex marriage: a major and in the Hostile Environment, often reoccurring theme from de-facto revealed UKI Immigration personnel that are revealed as homophobic through such questions)
- Throughout the interview, on multiple occasions, the interviewee explained that he and his husband could not live in his (interviewee) country of origin as same-sex marriage was illegal. The interviewer though given at every time this fact was stated, chose to not reply – this because the anti-LGBT dimension of the Hostile Environment KNOWINGLY seeks to place genuine applicants in positions where British Citizen [if LGB or T] married and civil partners are forced out of the UK (or have to endure Hostile Environment cruelly inflicted ‘Skype marriages’) and placed in positions where they can be blackmailed, attacked or potentially killed in the country of their same-sex married or civil partner.
More on the specifically anti-LGBT ‘culture of disbelief’ can be found in this Independent article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/lgbt-rights-gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender-asylum-uk-a8468456.html This is what LGBTQI+ people have to go through to gain asylum in the UK
It is incontrovertible that at an operational level, the UK Immigration services and Immigration Tribunal have a very well established record in regard to overwhelmingly negative responses to genuine LGBT visa applications, LTR, and especially asylum ones.
The UK Immigration services regularly state, usually via statements from nameless Home Office officials, that ‘The Home Office has a proud history of welcoming genuine LGBT applicants to the UK’ and that they comply with UK equality legislation, including for LGBT minorities. In practice these statements are usually made when scandals are revealed of often life-threatening actions against genuine applicants from sexual and gender minorities.
Here is a particularly extreme but very characteristic example – one of many illegal deportations — of this, which effectively puts the architects, implementers and protectors of the Hostile Environment on the same side as gang rapists. It is worth reading in full. https://attitude.co.uk/article/uk-home-office-fighting-against-return-of-lesbian-woman-it-unlawfully-deported-to-uganda-1/21460/
The UK Home Office is appealing against the return of a lesbian women it unlawfully deported six years ago to Uganda, where she says she was subsequently gang-raped.
The government was ordered by the High Court to return the 26-year-old woman, known only as ‘PN’, earlier this month after it ruled her deportation in 2013 under the Home Office’s “detained fast-track” system was unlawful.
PN says she has been forced to live in the shadows since being sent back to Uganda, where same-sex sexual relations are punishable with life imprisonment and the persecution of LGBTQ people by members of the public is widespread.
The former hairdresser says the violence came to a head last year when she was gang-raped. She fell pregnant and has since given birth to a son.
“I was sleeping one night, the people came, they banged on the door, they stole everything and they raped me. I was on my own in the room,” she told The Independent. “I couldn’t tell the police as I don’t want them to know who I am… I moved away from that place.
“The only people I have in my life are my baby and the people who are helping me in the UK.”
PN is due to return to the UK on Monday (29 July) – the first person deported under “detained fast-track” to be ordered back to the UK – but the Home Office says it will appeal against the decision, leaving her long-term fate uncertain.
PN originally came to the UK in 2010 as a 17-year-old after being subjected to threats and violence in Uganda because of her relationship with a woman. She says her grandmother, who she had grown up with, was killed as part of the targeted abuse.
Upon arriving in the UK on a visitor’s visa she began working as a hairdresser, but after overstaying her visa was arrested by immigration officials.
“When I first got to the UK, I wasn’t sure that even there it would be okay, but when I was there I realised no one was going to kill me or catch me, so I could be myself,“ she said.
“I was happy because I had left everything in Uganda, no one was going to harm me or to kill me and I started feeling that I was going to be okay now.
“I had friends, my gift was making hair and that helped me make friends there and that’s how I got money to live.
“It shocked me to find out I had to go back.”
PN is being supported by Movement for Justice, which has started an emergency fundraiser to help cover her initial living costs after arriving back in the UK.
Her case could potentially open the doors for thousands of similar challenges from those deported under the “detained fast-track system”, which was introduced in 2005 by Tony Blair’s Labour government and was in place until 2015, when it was ruled to be “structurally unfair.”
Karen Doyle, national organiser of Movement for Justice, said: “Thousands of asylum seekers who were subject to an unfair process and who right now could be living in fear, imprisoned or murdered.
“The Home Office have a responsibility to put right this injustice, they should publicly put out appeals in countries people were returned to, for those removed under fast track to seek legal advice.”
A government spokesperson said: “It would be inappropriate to comment whilst legal proceedings are ongoing.”
According to The Independent, data published last November showed that 78 per cent of asylum claims referring to sexual orientation were refused by the Home Office in 2017-18.
That figure was a 52 per cent increase on 2015, when 61 per cent of sexual orientation claims were rejected.
The Home Office was recently blasted for covering its social media logos in rainbows to mark Pride month while keeping up its policy of deporting LGBTQ people back to countries where they will face persecution for their sexuality, and was banned from attending UK Black Pride earlier this month.
Meanwhile, we recently highlighted the story of Attitude Pride Award winner Kenneth Macharia, who is fighting deportation to Kenya – where judges recently rule to uphold laws banning homosexuality – with help from his gay rugby teammates. You can read more about his story here.