Friday 18-11-2022 - 09:00

Swansea is a City of Sanctuary. Two universities in Wales are Universities of Sanctuary. We’re UWTSD students, and we believe UWTSD should be a University of Sanctuary too. 

You’ll have heard about the outstanding support that communities across Wales have shown towards refugees from Ukraine recently. But Wales has a proud tradition of welcoming refugees from every corner of the world that goes back much further. For instance:

• You may not think of them as refugees, but a high proportion of Irish migrants who arrived in Wales in the 1840s were fleeing famine. 
• Continental European refugees came to Wales in the decades after World War I – many, but not all, of whom were Jewish.  
• Though Cardiff’s vibrant Somali and Yemeni communities initially came to Wales as seafarers – not as refugees – both communities were well-placed to welcome refugees from conflicts in Somalia and the Arab world in later decades.  

This tradition of welcoming refugees includes our University. As UWTSD students, we’re incredibly proud that our University offers up to 4 scholarships every year to asylum seekers and refugees who can’t access Student Finance. These scholarships make it possible for students who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to be part of our university community, and prepare them to integrate and contribute to where they live.  

There are so many misunderstandings around asylum and refuge in the UK that we’re keen to challenge. For instance:

• Asylum seekers don’t get guaranteed accommodation in luxury hotels, or take someone’s place on the list for council housing. Asylum seekers are housed where it’s convenient for the Home Office – they aren’t given a choice over where they’re sent – and they can be asked to move without notice. Some are even housed in unsuitable military barracks (including in Pembrokeshire).    
• Asylum seekers don’t get full benefits. They typically receive less than £6 per day while their claim is being processed – much less than the lowest level of unemployment benefit. Imagine trying to cover all of your daily outgoings on less than what it costs to get, say, a sandwich and a coffee in a high street café.   
• Asylum seekers can’t just decide to get a job to pay their way. They can’t work at all for the first 12 months while waiting for their claim to be processed, and even then they can only get permission to work in certain shortage sectors.    

Last weekend, a group of us visited Swansea Asylum Seeker Support’s Saturday afternoon drop-in. We met with organisers who told us about the barriers that asylum seekers face, and how we can support them through volunteering and campaigning to raise awareness.  We’re excited to get stuck in. 

 

Would you like to join us?  

There are UWTSD students involved in our activities at Swansea and Lampeter campuses, but we’d love to hear from UWTSD students wherever you’re studying – Carmarthen, Cardiff, or in our English campuses in London and Birmingham. Please send us an email if you want to get involved at union@uwtsd.ac.uk.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon, UWTSD Students Supporting Sanctuary.