What can the UK do to help?
Under a piece of EU law called the ‘Dublin III Regulation’ families have a right to be together. This means that unaccompanied child refugees in Europe have a legal right to come to the UK if they have, for example, a parent, uncle, aunt, sister or brother here. For children who have lost so much and are thousands of miles away from home, this is an incredibly important law. However, once the ‘transitional’ Brexit period ends on 31 December 2020, this EU law will cease to apply to the UK and this right will no longer apply to these children.
So what’s the issue?
There are domestic UK immigration rules that allow lone children, in some circumstances, to join parents (only) in the UK. But these rules do not allow a child to join any other relatives, which means, for example, that orphans cannot be reunited with their aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters or grandparents. In addition, these rules are complicated and contain many restrictions, so much so that the charity Safe Passage estimates that 95% of the children they support would not be eligible if this was the only alternative.
Ok, so what is Care4Calais calling for?
Care4Calais are working with other NGOs who have expertise in this area including Safe Passage, The Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres. We are calling on the UK Government to:
- Make a firm commitment to securing a replacement for the Dublin III family reunion rules via negotiations with the EU, and to ensuring that it does not water down rights for unaccompanied child refugees
- Make a legal commitment to workable and fair family reunion rights in the forthcoming Immigration Bill
- Improve rights for all refugees by extending the definition of ‘family’ in the UK Immigration Rules to grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and making existing reunification provisions less burdensome and restrictive.
How can I help?
We need you to write to your MP to ask them to commit to the 3 “asks” above. You can do this by:
- Enter your postcode in to the box on this page.
- Press “Write to your MP”.
- Select your local representative (if there are several of them please think about sending a message to all of them.)
- Copy the message from the letter below and paste into your message on the WriteToThem website.
- Send the message.
The Letter
Dear {insert MP Name here}
- Make a firm commitment to securing a replacement for the Dublin III family reunion rules via negotiations with the EU, and to ensuring that it does not water down rights for unaccompanied child refugees
- Make a legal commitment to workable and fair family reunion rights in the forthcoming Immigration Bill
- Improve rights for all refugees by extending the definition of ‘family’ in the UK Immigration Rules to grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and making existing reunification provisions less burdensome and restrictive.
From
YOUR NAME HERE
Other ways to get involved
Further Reading
Related Campaigns
The Dubs Amendment
The original ‘Dubs Amendment’ in 2016 was designed to help child refugees in Europe who do not have family in the UK – children who are completely alone and vulnerable. It was hoped that the UK would take in and care for 3,000 of these children but the number was finally capped at just 480, and once these 480 places are filled the UK will not take any more.
Families Together
There is another campaign currently running to help child refugees who are already in the UK but who are separated from their families who are in other parts of the world. Unlike adults, child refugees are not able to sponsor family members to join them, making the UKs rules more restrictive than most countries in Europe. The Families Together campaign seeks to change this. See https://www.familiestogether.uk/
