Why we need safe and secure routes

A joint policy between PCS and refugee charity Care4Calais, ‘Safe and Secure Routes: Refugee Visa-to-Travel Proposal’ argues for the introduction of a Ukrainian-style visa system that would not only prevent deaths in the Channel but go some way towards destroying smuggling gangs overnight.

PCS recently spoke to a former pilot for the Afghanistan army who was forced to flee his country in 2021 after the collapse of Kabul to the Taliban – and now advocates passionately for this alternative vision of our asylum system.

Hoping to avoid detection by the Taliban after they missed out on evacuations by the coalition forces, Ahmad*, his one-year-old daughter and his wife moved dangerously from location to location. Although he managed to get to Iran, he made the difficult decision to leave his family behind and travel illegally to Turkey when his three-month visa expired.

His application for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme - meant to help those who had worked with British forces in Afghanistan to relocate to the UK - was rejected, causing him to feel “completely shocked and disappointed, especially after serving and working so closely with British forces”.

When he tried to leave Turkey, he was arrested and placed in a detention camp. His eventual release led him to another huge life decision: get arrested and deported back to a potentially life-threatening situation in Afghanistan or travel on a small boat to Italy. “Tired of it all,” he entered a boat built to fit 10 people with about 70 men, women and children, who were crammed together for five days and four nights.

‘Unimaginable horrors’

Later unable to claim asylum in Switzerland and Italy, he decided that “the UK would understand my situation better and give me the protection I needed”. Once he arrived in Calais, he saw the atrocious living conditions there for migrants.

On the Iranian and Turkish borders, he had already witnessed “unimaginable horrors”: smugglers taking people hostage, torturing them, demanding ransom money from families in exchange for their release.

“They choose these dangerous routes because they have no other choice - it is their last and only option,” he tells PCS. “I don’t believe anyone would willingly take such a terrible journey, leaving behind their homeland and their loved ones, unless they were truly desperate.”

Eventually, Ahmad reached British shores, but only after a treacherous journey across the channel by small boat in freezing cold November weather. After a year of dangerous travel, he was shocked to hear that his claim for refugee status was denied by the Home Office, which told him he would be sent to Rwanda as part of the heinous Tory scheme that PCS helped defeat.

Now, following a long battle, he has refugee status and is reunited with his family, who are “trying to stand on our feet again to rebuild our lives here in the UK”.

“There is no reason why people should die every day trying to make the journey,” he adds. “I’ve met lots of high skilled migrants from different countries. These people are not criminals. They cannot return to their countries and they need help and shelter. Their voices must be heard - they are human beings.”

*Ahmad is a pseudonym to protect his identity.

Download and read the Safe Routes report

Look out for a full blog from Ahmad for World Refugee Day on Friday (20) to read about his treacherous journey fleeing the Taliban from Afghanistan to the UK (via Iran, Turkey and Italy), the inhumanity of people dying on small boats, and why he advocates for the PCS/Care4Calais policy of safe routes.