It is not possible to record the full scale of the human costs of the lives of those ended or blighted by the Hostile Environment (some of the impacts in real human terms are recorded elsewhere in this website and through Google searches). Clearly all of those who have planned, direct, and shape as well as protect the operational level Hostile Environment at senior Whitehall level as well as those at frontline level for implementation level who draw their salaries (through which they support themselves and their families, while genuine applicants of UK Immigration services that are subject to the refusals directives against unstated targetted communities, work performance of said frontline UK Immigration agenvcies officers draw only misery, poverty and in not a few cases suicide, or torment in UK deportation centres) from their ‘work.’
However, it is important to list what they are, and to sadly acknowledge that those from the highest to the lowest in the core Hostile Environment implementing HMCTS Immigration Tribunal and the multiple Hostile Environment facets of HM Home Office and its agencies and for-profit Hostile Environment servicing companies. Regarding these such employees draw their salaries on the back of the following ‘work’ against what focused research, exposure media articles, and broader evidence have clearly revealed (and is known to those who make profit out of same, knowingly).
Some highlights (on the basis of independently researched and assessed statistics, and actual real-life experiences known to the Immigration Tribunal & Home Office) of commonplace types of suffering caused by the [high/strategic level, to frontline] operatives of the Hostile are listed below:
- Genuine Hostile Environment victims being prey to waiting on letters from and hearings of their case from an Immigration Tribunal that is commonly (on the basis of industrial scale cases where crucial details and supportive evidence are systematically ignored by most of its judges) neither professional nor fair (and in extreme, especially LGBT cases) neither safe or competent
- Driving genuine Hostile Environment victims to their deaths (LGBTs particularly)
- Driving genuine Hostile Environment victims into poverty and financial distress
- Causing genuine Hostile Environment victims extreme mental health distress
- Causing genuine Hostile Environment victims to live in constant fear of suddenly being taken into detention and being deported, knowing that in UK immigration centres there is a strong probability of racial and physical, and in some cases sexual abuse, and even torture
- Causing genuine Hostile Environment victims to be forced into ‘Skype marriages’ – this repulsive phenomenon is where duly married partners and civil partners are literally kept apart in two different countries while the immigration ‘Tribunal’ considers their ‘case.’
Self-evidently, those ‘overseeing’ (or, as some may reasonably feel) ‘inflicting’ the above human rights abuses and/or human rights compromising impacts of civil servant/bureaucrat overseen impacts of experience of the ‘hostile environment’ have not online at least on ‘.gov.uk’ or any printed information that to date has been produced by HMCTS Immigration Tribunal & Home Office, stated and evidenced that they have experienced such extreme forms of suffering.
For victims of the latter, somewhat cowardly the Tribunal and Home Office only recourse to ‘unnamed officials’ stating that the Tribunal & Home office abide by professional standards in regard to operational level activity and that this is (disingenuously stated given the revealed data trends and multiple horrific revelations concerning individual cases that have come to light / not been able to be hushed up)
… fully compliant with ‘human rights, and that … we are proud of our human rights and equality and inclusion record …’ etc. etc. ad nauseum
The mental health impacts of essentially and regularly repeated trauma caused by Hostile Environment experiences and contact is one that leads to suicides and a range of medical problems. As part of the Hostile Environment, to date, the National Health Service (NHS) and local authority social care teams provide no healthcare support to those suffering often extreme poor mental health caused by the Hostile Environment. The healthcare provision in the immigration detention and removal centres is infamously bad, as will be highlighted elsewhere in this information resource. To date the Home Office through its senior echelons of the Whitehall Civil Service has it appears ensured that the Department for Health has not made any allocation of mental health related support to victims of the Hostile Environment, especially rejected asylum seekers whose appeals are ongoing.
A particularly poignant mental healthcare support need is highlighted by the following tragic experience, which clearly has had major negative mental health impacts:
Woman reports rape to police – and is arrested on immigration charges
A woman who reported being kidnapped and raped over a six month period to the police was arrested as she sought care, Politics.co.uk can reveal.
The shocking case reveals how far Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ towards immigrants has gone and raises serious questions about whether immigration enforcement practices are now discouraging the victims of crimes from reporting them to the police.
However, to conclude, the LGB&T Dorset Equality Network – www.lgbtdorsetequality.network — (supported by the Just a Ball Game? organisation: http://www.justaballgame.co.uk/) as the first LGBT organisation in the UK to do so was successful in having its submission to an important Joint Human Rights Committee report on UK immigration detention centres, towards the end of 2018: http://lgbtdorsetequality.network/network-contributes-to-joint-committee-on-human-rights-uk-immigration-detention-inquiry-report/. In its submission the Network proposed that asylum seekers and other overseas national (LGBT or non-LGBT / All) require statutory NHS and social care support due to their vulnerability to extreme mental health distress (trauma) caused by Hostile Environment contact.