Ms B, a refugee from Bosnia: There was a time when Claude Moraes MEP was on the news all the time - asked to comment whenever anything happened. But we don't have those spokespeople any more, and that leadership is lacking. You hardly ever hear the head of Amnesty International on these issues. There is no-one to speak with confidence and charisma on immigration and asylum issues. Very, very rarely does it happen.
That's why you have people like Sir Andrew Greene (of MigrationWatch) - an establishment figure of some standing because he has been a British ambassador to Washington, Berlin, and Saudi Arabia - who you now hear uncontested, giving their views wall-to-wall. And he's trusted. But if I was to speak: I'm biased, because we are all part of one criminal gang! There is a vacuum where there should be someone of authority who commands some respect, and has independent standing, not a party political stance - because that too gets hijacked - who can say, look this is a question of humanity and what kind of country Britain wants to be.
The result of the imbalance is that the threshold of what it is acceptable to do to people has gone from bad to worse in the last ten years without anyone saying - hang on! Ten years ago everyone was outraged when the government suggested another draconian measure. Now, it's almost acceptable. It's happening to people tucked away in Hull, or Sunderland, where the neighbours don't know them... it's happening far away from here. That's too bad.
Look what happened to ESOL (English for speakers of other languages). The government said, "we're cutting ESOL" Why? Because too many people need it and it's too expensive. Then for six months they kept on shouting, "people must learn English!" and I kept thinking I know at least five hundred asylum seekers and refugees and I have never heard any of them say that they didn't want to learn English - quite the reverse. Even 85-year-old Eritrean women want to learn English. But for six months they say, "everybody has to learn English and we are going to introduce lessons, but only after three years!"
It makes your blood boil, nobody challenges it - journalists used to challenge it but not any more - and even people like Rageh Omaar, don't have the capacity to challenge. Why don't the rotweiler journalists say, "why shouldn't we allow these asylum seekers to work?'"They always say, "so minister, why should we let all these asylum seekers in?" And then they say to you later on, "Oh I'm sorry - I have to be devil's advocate."
Why aren't they devil's advocates on behalf of the refugees and asylum seekers. Why do they have to be devil's advocates on behalf of the Daily Mail? And how do we make them understand that there are people out there who want asylum seekers to come and be allowed to make a contribution - not only to afford them protection, but because they could be such role models to people in this society. Because from their different countries - they are survivors!
Yes it's true, we too only give the good news to our funders, because they are interested in organisations that are doing well - but when it comes to commenting on policy and provisions and so forth, we are always saying, this is terrible - so we are complicit too in this negativity, or at least we play into it. We don't have the opportunity to set the agenda a lot of the time - so we are always caught on our back foot - always catching up. Always trying to answer the questions on the defensive rather than being able to ask the questions and be taken seriously.
We asylum seekers and refugees are not organised into political party - we aren't one constituency - so we can't expect to have a spokesperson perhaps. But what we can expect from journalists is that there is some honest scrutiny of what is going on - and that they are not lazy, ignorant - just living off their preconceived ideas. The only chance meanwhile for us out there is that we start working laterally with our neighbours, with our schools, and communities, and not being shy, and not letting ourselves be harassed and bullied into silence by the whole situation.
