Letter: Unfair to refugees

Sir: The new Asylum Bill will create a new underclass of poor people marked out to be stigmatised and denigrated to the point, apparently, when coming to England will no longer seem preferable to discrimination, imprisonment and torture at home.

But the present regulations, affecting as they do arrivals this year from the battlefields of the Balkans, the Congo, Rwanda, Algeria etc, cause an unnecessary hardship now.

Asylum seekers await, with obvious anxiety, the interview on which will depend their immediate future - can they stay and for how long? If they live, as many do, in places like Gloucester, they will attend the Immigration Department at Gatwick. This will cost, at the cheapest, pounds 25 each on a coach.

A Serbo-Croatian family of four living in Gloucester, given 10 days' notice of the interview, had to find pounds 100 for fares. They were not entitled to either a loan from Social Security or a grant, although the interview is mandatory.

They also needed to see their solicitor, who is in London and who gave them an appointment for the day before the Gatwick one (pounds 10 each on the coach).

Asylum seekers pick solicitors from a restricted list on arrival, before they are aware of distances and the processes ahead and, in most cases, before they can speak English. The refugees manage, of course. They borrow from each other, which reduces everyone to debt and more hardship.

BARBARA KEW

Gloucester