Evidencing the extremely poor quality of Training in LGBT communications & engagement, that is used by the Hostile Environment implementing agencies in the UK and overseas, is particularly highlighted safety and safeguarding needs particular to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people.
As the Hostile Environment architects and implementers from Director General and Chief Operating Officer to ECO and caseworker, to Border Force & IE personnel levels appear to time and again, not to know about, or purposely ignore the main defining issue for LGBT people, whether or not they are Out as LGBT or forced for safety and bullying and family rejection reasons to be forced to conceal their LGBT identity, there has certainly been no chance for the directly connected safety and safeguarding needs (often of literally life or death seriousness).
Explaining and providing compelling evidence about LGBT safety and safeguarding issues and needs, and about NOT being Out, to all too many UK Immigration agencies & entities personnel, is simply a waste of time, for it will be almost certainly ignored.
In the Home Office asylum seekers interview office in Cardiff interviews are conducted by caseworkers with LGBT community members in which, for example, they repeatedly bank/ignore multiple occasions where the interviewee, a married gay man (married to a British national) has made it clear (providing extensive authoritative evidence, that same-sex marriage is illegal in his home country where the Home Office caseworker subsequently suggested both could live. This is example of de-facto homophobia by Home Office employees shows that the latter are happy with placing British citizens (if gay) in positions of danger and illegal status, overseas, and completely contravening right to family life protections under British and EU human rights protecting laws.
The following example of homophobic practice gives a valuable insight into the Hostile Environment and LGBT safety and safeguarding purposed putting of LGBT lives in danger, whilst at the same time maintaining the UK immigration system is LGBT appropriate – rather than what it is, namely neither safe to use or competent on LGBT engagement:
15 LGBT refugees say UK Home Office has ‘abandoned’ them to danger in Turkey
The group, many now in safehouses, say they are at risk of homophobic discrimination
LGBT rights activists shout slogans at an Istanbul march in Turkey. Photograph: Bülent Kılıç/AFP/Getty Images
Fifteen LGBT Syrian refugees are launching a legal challenge on Monday against the Home Office claiming they have been abandoned to a life of danger in Turkey, despite promises to bring them speedily to safety in the UK.
The Home Office accepted all 15 on to a refugee resettlement scheme, which avoids the need for them to go through the often lengthy asylum process. Yet many are still waiting to be airlifted to safety two years or more after applying for the scheme. Many have been forced to live in hiding as a result.
Source: The Guardian, 15th April 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/15-syria-lgbt-refugees-say-uk-home-office-has-abandoned-them-to-danger-in-turkey