CR spoke with asylum seeker Hanes

Cross Rhythms: What are you doing now? Are you still staying with the Boaz Trust? Or do you have your own place? Do you have your own job?

Hanes: I can say now that I am still destitute because I have only got a paper. I don't have any benefits. My benefits have not yet started. I don't have any national insurance. My support is limited. They told me that I could live in accommodation; so still, Boaz Trust is helping me to sort out this problem.

David: One of the things we find is that when people get their papers, they think this is wonderful; this is the end of all my troubles and in fact its not, because the system is not set up to really help people who have got their refugee status. They just go into the mainstream system, but sometimes it takes forever. Without National Insurance Number, then you can't get a job, you can't get benefits; so until that comes, you're stuck.

Dave Smith, Founder and Director of Boaz with Hanes

If you're in asylum accommodation, then you're given four weeks to get out from the time you get your letter, saying you've got your leave to remain and then you have to get housing, so you have to go through a housing process, but without a National Insurance Number you won't get anything, so that's absolutely key. Sometimes we've even found three or four people who've got their papers and their name has been spelt wrong, so then they have a choice; do I send it back and then wait months and months more, with nothing, or do I just accept the wrong name and pretend to be the wrong person as it were in order to get the benefits? There are some really big problems when people actually get into that integration period.

With Hanes, he's really helped himself over the last few years, because he's volunteered all over the place. He's done sponsored runs for us, he's done all sorts of things to keep himself busy and to get himself educated during that time, but if you're here for 10 years and you've got nothing on your CV, because you're not allowed to work and you're not allowed to study, all sorts of things you can't do and then it's really difficult when you actually get your papers; so big big problems.

Hanes: To add to that point, when you receive a paper they send you letters saying that your house, your contract, your benefits are terminated, but they don't give you any information of where you have to go. That is a main problem we are facing now. I've got a paper but where can I go for housing or for benefits? So I'm back again to Boaz Trust. They are doing the same thing again and helping me. I have a paper but I am still destitute because I don't have any information.

Cross Rhythms: Because of this big problem, does the Boaz Trust try and fix this problem, by writing to MPs?

David: Yeah. I think it was Jim Wallace, the author, who said if you keep fishing the bodies out of the river, there comes a time when you ask the question who's chucking them in. I think, you know, Christian organisations tend to be very good at putting on a sticking plaster and helping people, but we're not very good at asking the questions; why is it like this?

There's a whole social justice issue, as well as social action issue and so its really important to challenge things where they're wrong; to praise people when they're doing things right, like I say the UK BA are improving the way that they do things; but often it's actually government policy that's the problem. You have to challenge that. We're members of a thing called 'Still Human Still Here', which is a coalition of about 50 organisations like 'Refugee Action', 'Refugee Council', 'Children's Society', 'Barnados', 'Amnesty' and all sorts of groups, working around issues of trying to get things much more fair within the system.

We're engaging with the UK Borders Agency, saying we think this is wrong; when it comes to country reports, often they have the wrong information, so when the judges are making decisions and the case owners are making decisions, then they get things wrong, because the country information is wrong. That needs to be challenged.

You don't have a solicitor at the beginning of the process and that's often where the mistakes happen, right at the beginning when you go to your initial interview. If you haven't been briefed by a solicitor and particularly if you come from a country, for example where women are raped, as an instrument of war, somewhere like the Congo, you may be multiply raped and then you're supposed to tell that to somebody within the first week of coming into this country where you don't know anybody and it's somebody in uniform that's interviewing you and somebody in uniform that did it to you. They expect you to tell them all of that. It just doesn't happen. It comes out then at a later stage, at the appeal stage and the judge, or Home Office will turn around and say, 'Well you didn't say that in the first place, you're lying. You're making it up because we refused you'.

We're challenging those sorts of things and saying this isn't right. The system itself needs completely overhauling and the fact that so many people who win on appeal, demonstrates that the original decisions are often wrong. I think that the vast number of people who claim asylum here, have a good reason for being here.

Cross Rhythms: Since you did an interview here last year, what's changed within the Boaz Trust?

David: We've got another house, so I think we're up to 10 houses now. We're looking after more people, we've improved our infrastructure. We're doing a lot of stuff around women being victims of torture and access to counselling. I think we've improved what we're doing a great deal and the situation has actually got more difficult in some ways because some of the people that have been here a long time are liable to detention.

We had one lady deported to Pakistan from one of our houses and we've had three or four people in detention in the last few months and the amount of mental health problems that we're seeing has gone up quite considerably. A lot of people that have got quite severe depression and real problems with schizophrenia and stuff like that and we're not really able to deal with that so that takes up a lot of time, which we'd rather be spending on other stuff if we could.

Cross Rhythms: You mentioned last year that you'd like to employ a solicitor. Has that happened?

David: Yeah, it has, it's amazing. I can't remember quite where we were last year, but we got a donation from some supporters, who basically gave us £20,000 from a slightly larger donation to do just that and we have. There was a barrister who was working with us voluntarily and he's now working for a law firm in Coventry and he comes and works with us one day a week and does interviews in the office and then the second day he works in his firm and he's going to keep on with that. We're going to have to look for more funding, but when it runs out, there will be other sources and his firm is actually going to fund him to do a day a week with us, so that's great. It just means then, that there's a chance of people being able to move on.