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There is a feeling of powerlessness that can quickly take hold when watching awful images from conflict zones in the comfort and security of your own home. Whether its in Kyiv, Damascus or Kabul, its hard to know how to respond to stories of families being ripped apart, of people fleeing from being shot in cold blood, of children deliberately targeted in war crimes.

The case for military intervention on humanitarian grounds is rarely as open and shut as its strongest proponents and detractors would have us believe. However, there is one aspect of the humanitarian response that could not be easier to get right. How wealthy countries that can offer safety choose to treat those fleeing war and terror is a reliable test of the moral character of a government: and it is one that Britain is failing comprehensively.

More than three million people have fled Ukraine since the conflict started just under a month ago. The EU responded swiftly, waiving all visa requirements for Ukrainians. Poland is now host to almost two million Ukrainian refugees; Romania half a million. Ireland, a country with less than 10% of the UK population, has offered refuge to 6,500.

Britain stands in contrast to the rest of Europe by the mean-heartedness of our response. Ukrainians with family members settled in the UK can obtain a visa to join them but they have reported long delays, which left vulnerable refugees scrabbling to fund hotel stays as they wait for Home Office bureaucracy to creak into action. Those arriving in Calais were being told to go back to visa centres in Paris or Brussels. Just 4,000 visas for Ukrainians, out of 17,100 applications, have been granted so far. In the first week of the crisis, a Home Office minister posted a now-deleted tweet suggesting that Ukrainians could apply for fruit-picking visas.

It quickly became clear that the public were not going to stand for this. And so the government, last week, introduced an additional resettlement route, Homes for Ukraine, that allows those without family members in the UK to come, so long as they are sponsored by a named individual in the UK willing to house them for at least six months, who will be paid 350 a month for doing so.

There are things to like about this scheme. Perhaps most of all, it shows the strength of public feeling that Britain should be doing more: 150,000 potential hosts registered their interest ahead of its launch on Friday. Placing refugees in peoples homes on a temporary basis can have great mutual benefit: helping them make friends and settle into life in their new communities as well as being incredibly enriching for host families. Unlike refugees who apply for asylum once they reach the UK, people on this scheme will be pre-approved to work, although only for three years.

To realise these benefits though, the scheme must be thoughtfully developed as part of a wider, more generous offer to Ukrainians and others fleeing conflict. Instead, the government appears to have rushed it through in response to a public demand for action, without addressing its risks.

Those risks are serious. Without a trace of irony, given the significant administrative hurdles faced by Ukrainians who are eligible for visas and are trying to get here, Michael Gove told MPs that the government wanted to minimise bureaucracy in matching refugees to sponsors. That means only light-touch vetting checks, although the government has now bowed to pressure to, in time, run more extended checks on those who will be hosting families with children. Refugees must be sponsored by an individual, in many cases someone they have never met. The government has said it envisages the scheme applying to individuals who have hotels or Airbnbs with empty rooms as well as spare rooms in their own homes.

This is a recipe for abuse of female and child refugees: for sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and modern slavery. Unsavoury people including criminal gangs fronting this with individuals without criminal records will see this as an opportunity to get paid as refugee sponsors while using the hold they have as named sponsors on the visa to exploit women for sex and free labour. There is no justification for asking refugees fleeing conflict to accept an individual they have never met as a visa sponsor indeed, the Scottish and Welsh governments will act as super-sponsors to avoid this. There are no details about what will happen if the relationship between sponsor and refugee breaks down; though the government has said refugees will not be allowed to apply for housing benefit, which risks allowing sponsors using the threat of homelessness to exploit vulnerable adults.

To realise the benefits while minimising the risks, this scheme should have been part of a wider visa-free offer not capped at the number of people willing to offer accommodation. Refugees placed with hosts should have access to a case manager either in a local council or charity to help manage the placement and get them out at the first signs of exploitation.

That the government has not done this suggests it is driven more by headlines and less by a concern for refugee welfare. It is in keeping with a government whose driving motivation for immigration policy has been to make the UK as hostile as possible to those not born here, even though it came at the price of terrible consequences for the Windrush generation, who have legitimately lived here for decades, or of cruel levels of bureaucracy and extortion for young people who have grown up in the UK hoping to secure their status when they turn 18. Indeed, Priti Patels nationality and borders bill which the Commons will vote on this week seeks to break the spirit and the letter of international law by criminalising those arriving in the UK to claim asylum, and sending them to be processed offshore to a territory like Ascension Island.

It is very revealing that Boris Johnson appeared to treat the safe evacuation of cats and dogs from Afghanistan as a higher political priority than getting out individuals who had worked to support British forces. However, the scale of the response to Homes for Ukraine is a reminder that while the government may see refugees as legitimate fodder for its culture wars, the British public are more generous in their approach to asylum than successive Conservative prime ministers have given them credit for.

Originally posted here:
The publics urge to help Ukrainians pitched them against the governments miserly response - The Guardian