LETTER to all women MPs: Oppose the new Asylum & Immigration Bill
Dear women Members of Parliament,
We are writing jointly from the All African Women’s Group (AAWG) and Women Against Rape (WAR) to express our horror at the changes proposed by the Government to asylum and immigration law and policy. Some of these were outlined in the November 2025 policy statement[i], some have already been introduced and some are in the 30th June Immigration and Asylum Bill. We focus here on the impact on women and children in particular and ask you to oppose these changes.
These proposals:
- Destroy women and children’s chance of family reunion. Refugee family reunion was suspended in September 2025. Now many mothers who win refugee status will never be able to bring our children to safety, tearing our families apart forever.
- Penalise survivors of rape, trafficking and other violence for not disclosing everything they have suffered immediately. This is despite the Home Office's own guidance[ii] which recognises that trauma can cause “delayed disclosure, fragmented memory and inconsistencies”.
- Restrict access to benefits and asylum support, deepening our poverty.
- Restrict appeals and fresh claims denying people a fair hearing.
- Expand immigration detention including of families with children through new detention centres and migrant camps and the “Family Returns” policy.
- Introduce “earned settlement”, making the right to permanent residence dependent on income and paid employment — discriminating against women who are traumatised, denied pay equity and whose caring work is not valued as a contribution.
- Require refugees to pay up to £10,000 for their asylum support and accommodation as part of “earned settlement” — this is extortion from people who were left destitute and housed in slum conditions or camps while private companies made massive profits.
- Restrict access to citizenship based on how we entered the country, even decades before.
- Fail to address the crisis in legal aid: most of us can’t find lawyers to represent us in a complex and hostile system. Reviewing our refugee status every 30 months will make this even more unfair.
We are asylum-seeking and refugee women, most of us are mothers and carers. We have already survived war, persecution, the effects of climate breakdown, rape and other sexual violence, separation from our precious children and profound loss, including of loved ones. We suffer constant fear, destitution and the threat of detention and deportation.
As a new Prime Minister prepares to take office, and as a new Bill is introduced to turn some of these proposals into law, we urge women MPs to speak out against these measures and campaign to stop them. This is an important moment to stand with women seeking safety and oppose measures that will make our lives and the lives of our children even more precarious and dangerous.
We address the proposals in more detail here:
Children need their mothers
Many women in AAWG are mothers who were forced to leave children behind when we fled. Since September 2025, the Government has suspended the Refugee Family Reunion route. This means that women who have finally been recognised as refugees can no longer bring our children to join us in safety in the UK without proving our income and housing situation and jumping through other hoops. Mothers and children who have already been separated by war and violence may now never be reunited. The prospect of this is completely devastating. The new Bill means that if our children turn 18 while we wait for asylum, they will not be able to join us. How can we recover when we know our children are suffering and are unprotected?
One mother spoke for many of us:
“Without my daughter, I’m not complete. My mind is always in two places. Every time I speak to her she asks: ‘Mummy, when are you coming to get me?’”
Rape survivors can’t get a fair hearing
Clauses in the new Immigration and Asylum Bill penalise women for any delay in reporting rape, trafficking and other violence and say that “late claims” should be fast tracked and have less scrutiny. Appeal rights will be limited to a single hearing on a tight timescale.
The Home Office's own guidance[iii] recognises that survivors of sexual violence may delay reporting because of trauma, struggle with memory, or give accounts that have gaps or inconsistencies.
Survivors of rape and trafficking are often treated as liars by the Home Office and the Tribunal, despite the well-documented difficulty victims have in disclosing traumatic experiences. Not being believed about rape causes immense distress, the impact of which is ignored.
These procedures are even more unfair when Home Office country information reports used to decide our claims and remove any right to appeal[iv] are inaccurate and sexist. See our Open Letter about the dangers women face in Namibia that are systematically ignored by the Home Office when deciding asylum claims.
Once we win status, again the impact of our trauma is ignored, as we are excluded from benefits and/or punished for not being able to do waged work.
Making refugees pay for the cost of asylum support and accommodation and “earned settlement” is sexist
The new Immigration and Asylum Bill says that refugees would have to pay up to £10,000 towards asylum support and accommodation before qualifying for settlement.
This and the proposal for “Earned Settlement” discriminate against women who are more likely to have caring responsibilities and suffer trauma which makes it impossible to get a waged job — and when we do we earn less than men.
“Earned settlement” imposes conditions based on income and paid employment. This ignores the enormous contribution of women’s unwaged caring work. Women everywhere are primary carers for children, the elderly and disabled family members, as well as sustaining their communities. Yet this essential work — estimated to be worth more than £1.1 trillion annually to the UK economy — is treated as if it has no value.
Women — and particularly women of colour and migrant women — are paid far less than men because of entrenched sexism and racism in the labour market. Many refugee women are also survivors of rape, trafficking and other violence and need time to recover before we can enter employment. Government research[v] found that refugees are 22% less likely to be employed than those born in the UK and have a 55% lower weekly salary. Policies that tie settlement to payments and earnings therefore institutionalise discrimination. In addition, the longer it takes for women to obtain settlement the more they have to pay in Home Office fees – another financial penalty.
Restricting appeal rights and removing legally qualified judges
The Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 proposes to replace independent immigration judges with a new appeals body that is closely tied to the Home Office. Appeals are the first time women seeking asylum have the chance of a fair hearing before legally qualified judges where there is some semblance of accountability. It will lead to more women, particularly those of us who suffered rape and other sexual violence, being wrongly refused and sent back to our home countries where we face persecution, violence and even death. We submitted evidence to the consultation but this has been ignored.
Cutting access to asylum support and benefits increases the risk of exploitation and violence
Cutting access to what is already inadequate asylum support will force more women into destitution and survival sex. More women will be criminalised as a result. Our survey of women seeking asylum found that 60% of participants are living on an income so low that they are already classified as officially destitute. You must know that no mother will watch her children go hungry. If one of the claimed objectives of this government is to reduce prostitution, then mothers need money in their hands, not for us to be pushed further into poverty.
Once we win status, we will be excluded from benefits unless we meet “economic thresholds”. If we claim benefits, we are punished by having to wait up to twenty years before we can apply for permanent status. Single mothers (and their children) will suffer disproportionately as they are more likely to claim benefits[vi] because it is almost impossible to find waged work that covers the cost of childcare. Plus, the work we do caring for our own children isn’t valued and compensated.
The terror of the racist far right
It is distressing to see that this Labour government is pandering to extreme racist and sexist hatred. Some of us have been trapped in hotels with violent racists demonstrating outside — we gave evidence to parliament on this: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/153247/pdf/. We face more overt racism now and we are fearful for ourselves and our children, so we know first-hand the terror caused by the rise of the far right and the importance of politicians and others in authority standing up to it.
Home Office research[vii] acknowledges that “unmet needs and vulnerabilities”, including long waiting times and restrictions on employment, hinder integration and increase public costs in health, education and other outcomes. Making the asylum process more discriminatory and hostile will only make this worse, particularly as more refugees are forced to seek safety in the UK due to war and genocide fuelled by Western countries. You must know for example that Palestinians are the single largest and longest-standing refugee population globally having suffered decades of occupation, terror and now a genocide. Is it right that people suffering like this are turned away from the UK and denied protection and safety?
Please let us know urgently what you can do to oppose these proposals and demand parliamentary scrutiny where the government is planning to push through changes without even a vote.
Specifically, we ask to you:
- Support EDM 65358 which demands that all these changes are debated by parliament.[viii]
- Defend the right to family reunion so mothers can live with their children in safety.
- End policies that deepen poverty and increase detention and family separation.
- Oppose income-based barriers to permanent status, including Home Office fees.
- Oppose Home Office restrictions on refugee status and citizenship.
- Defend appeal rights and oppose the removal of legally trained judges in an independent Tribunal.
- Reinstate adequate legal aid so asylum seekers can obtain proper representation.
Yours sincerely,
Trinity, All African Women’s Group (AAWG)
Cristel, Women Against Rape (WAR)
[ii] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conducting-the-asylum-interview-process
[iv] By encouraging caseworkers to label our cases as “manifestly unfounded”.
[v] Understanding asylum seeker and asylum-route refugee vulnerabilities, needs, and support, 2022 p.100. Data from 2010-2016
[vi] Single parents—over 90% of whom are single mothers—make up roughly 35% to 40% of all households on Universal Credit. https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/our-work/single-parents-facts-and-figures/
[vii] Ibid
[viii] https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65358/statement-of-changes-in-immigration-rules-no-2