Sunday, Jun. 16, 2002

Asylum Centers

By HELEN GIBSON/Arncott

Residents in this rural village some 80 km northwest of London are by turns anxious, indignant and downright angry. When they meet at the Plough, one of its two pubs, the conversation inevitably turns to one topic: the proposed accommodation center for asylum seekers to be located just down the road. With 750 refugees, the center will equal the populations of Arncott and nearby Piddington combined. To stop it, the three-month-old Bicester (pronounced Bister, a nearby town) Action Group sent a 10,000-signature petition to Parliament with names gathered from the area. On top of being angry at the lack of consultation, Arncott residents both resent and fear the arrival of asylum seekers. They have been told that up to 80% could be young males who, during a two- to six-month stay while their applications are processed, will not be permitted to work but will be allowed to leave the center by day. The villagers worry that the presence of so many unemployed young men will bring crime, an apprehension fed by stories of riots and knife fights at Sangatte, near Calais, where French authorities house 1,300 refugees in a bleak hangar close to the cross-Channel railway terminal. Television footage of groups of refugees breaking into freight yards to stow away on Britain-bound trains hasn't helped.

Sangatte is a powerful reminder of how badly many asylum seekers want to reach Britain. In the first three months of this year, there were 19,520 asylum applications — with Iraqis, Afghans and Zimbabweans the most numerous — compared to 18,005 the previous quarter. The government is pushing new asylum legislation through Parliament to reform the country's slow, backlogged processing system and is promising to deport promptly those whose asylum claims are "clearly unfounded."

But in Arncott, villagers still feel aggrieved that millions could be spent on creating and staffing a center with educational, medical and sports facilities while their own public services are deteriorating and short of funds. "Some old people are losing their day-care centers, and we don't have a local football pitch because it is too expensive to maintain," says Kathy Merriman, owner of the grandly named Arncott Emporium, the village's only shop. At the Plough, Michael Tiffin, 54, an ex-serviceman who was wounded in the Falklands War, agrees that asylum seekers must be housed somewhere, but grumbles, "The authorities can find lots of money for them, but when I lost my job and needed a place to live, I could not get housing help of any kind." Says his friend Fred Campbell, gloomily, "I had buyers for my house until they heard about the center. Now, I can't sell it at all."

There are also mutters in Britain about refugees coming to sponge off the social-welfare system. But many refugees find the accusation insulting. "I would be much better off financially in my own country," says Alex, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Belarus. "I would have a car. Here I have to live on very, very little." A computer science student who now lives in Oxfordshire, Alex was on vacation in Britain in 1999 when he was warned from home that his political activism was under police scrutiny. He lives in a permanent state of uncertainty, waiting to hear whether he will be granted asylum. Mekonen (not his real name) also rejects the view that most refugees come seeking an easy life. "You always feel that you have betrayed your country by leaving, and no matter how much you achieve here, you are still a nobody, a refugee," says Mekonen, who came to Britain 10 years ago to escape political persecution in Ethiopia. "At home you can contribute to your society, be someone." He has received permission to stay in Britain indefinitely, but still misses home. Some area residents are embarrassed by the hostility shown to asylum seekers, and have formed a Bicester Refugee Support group. But feelings are also running high in villages around two other sites in rural Britain earmarked for refugee centers. If these prove successful, a dozen or more may be built.

Meanwhile, the small extreme right British National Party has been quick to exploit the protests, and Arncott soon received leaflets offering help to stop the center. Bicester Action Group coordinator Dionne Arrowsmith says her organization wants nothing to do with the party, but adds: "If the government doesn't listen to the people who elected them, there will be some who feel the B.N.P. is the only way to get their views heard."

That's a somber warning. And ironically, refugee experts and asylum seekers like Mekonen agree with the villagers — if for different reasons. They argue that the rural facilities will leave them too isolated from support networks. Yet the government may not listen. It's convinced that rural areas should house refugees just as urban centers do. In the end, though, this could leave neither the asylum seekers nor the villagers satisfied.