Home Affairs Committee
Submissions/UKBA feedback
We offer support for lesbian and bisexual asylum seekers and refugees. At our monthly meeting, we collected some feedback from members about their experiences with the UKBA:
Screening Interview:
1. Applicants are not treated as human beings
2. Interviewers and interpreters often homophobic
3. There is no privacy during the interview due to the space which makes it difficult to talk about sensitive issues such as sexuality
4. Applicants are asked to ‘prove yourself’, their sexuality during the interview
5. Interviewers asking for scars and assume that applicant has not been tortured when no scars
6. Some interviewers make applicants cry and don’t seem to care; others are nicer and listen better
7. Interviewers need to be more sensitive and supportive and not doubting things
8. One interviewer made a woman feel safe just by saying ‘don’t worry, you are safe here’
Issues with interpreters:
9. Gender of interpreter and interpreters being homophobic—in one case the interpreter walked out of the court room as he didn’t feel able to interpret for a sexuality claim.
10. One woman reported that interpreter had a shocked expression on his face when she said that she is lesbian.
11. Interpreters not keeping professional boundaries: After her 8 ½ hour (!) interview, an applicant met the interpreter on the bus. He asked her whether she ‘was really a lesbian’ and questioned her for the whole 45 mins bus journey home.
12. In many cases, women felt that the interpreters had wrongly interpreted or switched languages that they did not understand
13. Interpreters give opinions to applicants during the interviews (‘you don’t say that’)
SEF Interview/Issue with caseworkers
14. Caseworkers asking inappropriate questions: One woman reported that caseworker wanted to know details how/where her parents had met
15. One woman had an 8 ½ hours interview—she said she walked in when the centre opened and walked out when it closed!
16. Many women did not know that I have the right to ask for the interview being recorded
Issues with country information
17. Country information on situation of lesbians and gay men are often based on reports addressed to gay tourists, such as ‘gay times’. Situation of women/lesbians is often not discussed in these reports.
Lesbian Immigration Support Group
April 2013