Rebecca Duffett spoke with the Boaz Trust

Dave Smith

The Boaz Trust is a Christian organisation serving destitute asylum seekers in Greater Manchester. Refused asylum seekers are not allowed to work or to attend college. They have no income and are unable to pay travel expenses. Two out of every three asylum seekers, who flee persecution in their home countries due to civil war or for political or ethnic reasons, are refused sanctuary in the UK by the Home Office and there are over 100,000 refused asylum seekers nationwide. Rebecca Duffett spoke with founder and director Dave Smith to find out more about their work.

Rebecca: What does the Boaz Trust do?

Dave: We're a charity set up in 2004 to alleviate destitution amongst asylum seekers. We came across a lot of people who had been refused asylum and left here with nothing and so we help them out with accommodation and advocacy. It's a holistic service.

Rebecca: How did the name Boaz Trust come about?

Dave: If you look into the history of Israel, you'll find that there was a welfare state that should have been operating at the time of Ruth in the Bible. Boaz welcomed Ruth into his field that he was harvesting and treated her really well. She was, in effect, an asylum seeker. She had come from Moab. We just thought that was an excellent name because it sums up how asylum seekers ought to be treated.

Rebecca: You're based in Manchester. How much of a problem is there for asylum seekers in Manchester?

Dave: The problem is quite large; in fact all the major cities in this country have got problems with people who have been refused asylum and not sent back.

In 2008 the Independent Asylum Commission estimated that there were 284,500 refused asylum seekers still here in the UK. If you are refused and you don't sign up to go back voluntarily then you are left with nothing; you have no recourse to public funds so you can't get benefits, you can't get housing, you don't even qualify to get into most night shelters because they require people who are on Housing Benefit and you are not allowed to work. You are literally left either living off friends or living off charity.

Rebecca: Is there anything that the government can do in this situation to help asylum seekers? Would you like to see the law changed?

Dave: I think there's a lot that can be done. I most recently wrote to Damian Green with six suggestions as to how he could save a lot of money and at the same time deliver a much fairer asylum system.

Hamed- a former client and now volunteer at the destitution project

At the moment, when you come into the country you are not given a solicitor straight away, but you do have an interview almost within the first week usually. For people who are traumatised and people who have gone through horrific things, to be faced with somebody who is official at an interview within the first week without having had access to a legal rep. at that time, it causes all sorts of problems. For example, women who may have been raped in somewhere like the Congo, where rape is endemic, they will not want to tell a male official about what's happened to them. As a result of that, nine out of ten people are refused at the initial stage. On appeal, it's still two out of three and often they are told that their evidence is not credible because they have added something since the initial interview. The things that are added are the things they couldn't talk about at the beginning.

Rebecca: So do you think we should be letting more asylum seekers through?

Dave: There's very few coming in now because we've stopped them getting here in the first place. We have border controls on the other side. We're stopping people getting onto the planes at various airports, even in Africa. We're stopping people getting across the Channel. Last year there were less than 30,000 who came in and applied for asylum. That's a very small number. The year before it was even less than that, so we're talking about very small numbers. We would easily get them into the Britannia stadium in Stoke-on-Trent with room to spare and that's in a whole year.

There's a much bigger problem than that. When people are targeting asylum seekers I think they are doing this very unjustly. From the experience I've had, the vast majority that come in are genuine; they have a real fear of returning home. We need to change the system and we need to get the initial decisions right and then those who are refused would probably go back home willingly. Most won't go back now, even with incentives.