Policy on Paper, Consequences in Women’s Lives

Our Response to the Immigration and Asylum Bill

On 30 June 2026, the Government introduced a new Immigration and Asylum Bill.

Across the refugee and migrant sector, organisations have already raised serious concerns about what the Bill could mean for people seeking asylum, refugees, families, and survivors of trafficking and exploitation.

Sisters Not Strangers shares many of these concerns.

As a coalition of refugee and asylum-seeking women and organisations working alongside women across different cities in the UK, we approach this Bill from a simple starting point: immigration policy is not experienced as an abstract legal framework.

It enters everyday life.

It shapes whether a woman can work or is forced into dependency. It affects whether families can live together or remain separated for years. It influences whether a survivor is believed, whether trauma is understood, and whether someone can begin to build a life beyond the asylum system.

For many women in our coalition, these questions are not theoretical. They are part of lived experience.

This is why we are concerned about the direction of this Bill.

Creating dependency, then charging people for it

One of our major concerns is the proposal that people who have received asylum support may be required to contribute towards its cost.

This raises a fundamental question.

How can a system prevent people from working, keep them dependent on very limited support, and then later ask them to pay for that dependency?

For years, Sisters Not Strangers has campaigned for the right to work because women across our coalition have repeatedly said that they want independence, stability and the opportunity to contribute.

Women seeking asylum are not empty lives waiting to begin.

They have worked as teachers, carers, health professionals, researchers, organisers, artists, business owners and community leaders. They arrive with knowledge, experience, responsibilities and ambitions.

A system cannot exclude people from work and then treat poverty as a personal failure.

It cannot create dependency and then charge people for having been dependent.

For women who have experienced displacement, violence or exploitation, financial insecurity can also create further risks. Poverty can make people more vulnerable to unsafe work, abusive relationships and exploitation.

The consequences of such policies are not evenly distributed. Women with children, women with caring responsibilities, disabled women and survivors of violence may face particular barriers to rebuilding financial independence.

This is why the debate about asylum support must also be a debate about the right to work, economic participation and the kind of society we want people to rebuild their lives within.

Family life cannot be reduced to an immigration calculation

We are also deeply concerned about proposals affecting the right to private and family life.

For refugee women, family separation is not an abstract legal issue.

Across our coalition, women have spoken about the emotional cost of being separated from children, partners and close family members.

Some have watched children grow through a phone screen.

Some live between two realities: physically present in the UK, while emotionally and practically responsible for family members elsewhere.

Some are trying to study, work, volunteer and participate in community life while carrying constant worry about people they love.

Policy discussions often speak about family life through legal thresholds, tests and exceptions.

But family life is also care.

It is a responsibility.

It is the person who notices when you are unwell. The person who helps raise your child. The person you call when something goes wrong. The relationship that gives continuity to a life disrupted by conflict, persecution or displacement.

Immigration control should not erase this reality.

A fair system must recognise that decisions about family life have long-term consequences for mental health, integration, children and communities.

Trauma does not arrive in a neat statement

We are particularly concerned about measures that may weaken protection for survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

There is a dangerous assumption within many systems that a truthful story will always be told immediately, clearly and consistently.

The reality of trauma is often very different.

Women may need time before they can speak about rape, trafficking, domestic abuse, sexual exploitation or coercion.

Some may be afraid of authorities because of what they experienced in their country of origin.

Some may fear traffickers or abusive partners.

Some may feel shame.

Some may not yet have the language to describe what happened to them.

Some may only understand their experience differently after receiving specialist support.

A delayed disclosure is not automatically a dishonest disclosure.

An inconsistent account is not automatically an untrue account.

Trauma can affect memory, communication and trust.

A system designed without understanding these realities risks reproducing harm.

The responsibility of a protection system should be to create the conditions in which survivors can speak and be heard properly, not to expect trauma to present itself in a form that is administratively convenient.

Speed is not the same as justice

The Government has also proposed changes to the asylum appeals system.

There is no doubt that long delays cause serious harm.

Women in our coalition know what it means to wait.

Waiting can mean years without being able to plan a future.

It can mean living in accommodation you did not choose.

It can mean being unable to work.

It can mean postponing education, family reunion, housing stability and recovery.

The current system clearly needs improvement.

But reducing delay must not come at the cost of fairness.

A faster wrong decision is still a wrong decision.

Gender-based asylum claims can be complex. Experiences of rape, forced marriage, trafficking, domestic abuse, and other forms of violence are often difficult to disclose and difficult to evidence.

Some women only speak fully about what happened after receiving proper legal advice, specialist support and time to build trust.

Improving the asylum system, therefore, requires more than accelerating procedures.

It requires better decision-making at the beginning.

It requires access to good legal advice.

It requires decision-makers who understand gender-based persecution and trauma.

And it requires genuinely independent scrutiny when mistakes are made.

A system that focuses only on speed risks moving people more quickly through an unjust process.

Safe routes must not become routes only for the most employable

We support the creation of meaningful, safe and regular routes to protection.

But we are concerned by any approach that treats employment, education or sponsorship as the main measure of who deserves access to safety.

People do not flee persecution according to labour market demand.

Women fleeing gender-based violence, older women, disabled people, survivors of trafficking and women with caring responsibilities may find employment-based or education-based routes difficult or impossible to access.

This does not make their need for protection less serious.

Safe routes must be designed around the realities of those most at risk.

They must be genuinely accessible.

And they must not replace the right to seek asylum.

Protection cannot depend only on whether someone is able to secure a job offer, a university place or a sponsor before reaching safety.

Integration cannot be built on permanent uncertainty

Through our work across different cities, and particularly through our Right to Heal work, women have spoken repeatedly about what helps people rebuild their lives.

The answers are often practical.

Stable housing.

The right to work.

Access to family.

Feeling safe.

Having somewhere to belong.

Being able to contribute.

Being listened to.

Knowing what will happen next.

These conditions matter because people cannot rebuild their lives while constantly preparing for the ground to move beneath them.

We cannot talk seriously about integration while designing prolonged insecurity.

We cannot ask people to participate while preventing them from working.

We cannot say that community cohesion matters while political language repeatedly presents refugees and people seeking asylum as a problem to be controlled.

And we cannot claim to value lived experience while designing policy without taking seriously the knowledge of the people who live with its consequences.

At Sisters Not Strangers, we have learned that good policy is not only about what government intends.

It is also about what happens afterwards.

Who becomes poorer?

Who becomes more isolated?

Who has to wait longer?

Who is less likely to speak?

Who carries the cost of a decision?

These are the questions that should sit at the centre of parliamentary scrutiny of this Bill.

What we believe needs to change

Sisters Not Strangers is calling for an asylum system that is fair, workable and grounded in the realities of people’s lives.

That means allowing people seeking asylum to work and contribute.

It means ensuring that asylum support does not become another source of debt and insecurity.

It means recognising family life as part of human wellbeing, not simply as an obstacle within immigration control.

It means designing trafficking and modern slavery protections around an informed understanding of trauma.

It means improving the quality of decisions, access to legal advice and independent appeals.

It means creating safe routes that are accessible to those most in need of protection, not only those with the strongest economic opportunities.

And it means listening properly to people with lived experience before decisions are made, not only after harm has already happened.

For many women in our coalition, the asylum system is not a policy debate observed from a distance.

It is part of everyday life.

This is why we will continue to ask not only what this Bill says, but what it will do.

What will it mean for the woman waiting for a decision?

For the mother separated from her child?

For the survivor who is not yet ready to tell her full story?

For the woman who wants to work but is prevented from doing so?

For the family trying to rebuild a life while living with uncertainty?

Policy has consequences.

Those consequences are carried by real people, in real homes, families and communities.

Parliament should examine this Bill with that reality in view.

Sisters Not Strangers Coalition