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An article on the absolutely atrocious European/British refugee system:

“Are we delivering safe and legal routes in an efficient and effective manner?” This is what Suella Braverman has been asking other European countries, she said today, during a speech that accused the international refugee system of being too generous.

Addressing an exclusive audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a shadowy libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, the UK home secretary said there had been “an interpretative shift” lowering the bar for the award of refugee status. It was time, she said, for an international debate on reform of asylum laws.

When the Home Office claims to offer a “safe and legal route” to refugees around the world, it is in reference to a resettlement scheme run by the United Nations refugee agency. Braverman has repeatedly pointed to the existence of the scheme as justification for barring those who arrive to the UK by irregular means, such as on a small boat, from having their asylum claim heard.

Earlier this year, I spent weeks speaking to a group of 20 Iraqi families who were registered on the scheme by the UN in Turkey – individuals cannot apply on their own behalf – after fleeing death threats at home. When British troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, they left a country brought to its knees by the invasion to quash an insurgency by the so-called Islamic State. Tens of thousands of civilians would be killed in the conflict that followed.

One woman told me her family left after their home was bombed by the Islamic State. Her niece burned to death in the attack, something which she said haunts her every day. Others spoke of being targeted because they were from religious minorities or employees of the local government. All the families I spoke to shared documents that showed they had been waiting for almost a decade for anyone to resettle them.

Once refugees are registered by the UN, the agency assesses cases and eventually, if they are successful, one of 18 countries (including the UK) accepts a request to resettle them. Some of the Iraqi families I spoke to had British relatives and wished to join them in the UK, though none are afforded a say over where they are resetted by the UN. They had endured years in limbo as they waited for news from the UN. One family told me their youngest child had died during that time because they had not been able to get him the medical support he needed in Turkey. They believed he might have survived if they had been resettled. A widow told me her husband had died of a stroke in the nine years they had spent waiting. She blamed the stress of years of uncertainty.

Many regretted their decision to place their trust in the UN and wished they had tried to seek asylum in the UK by other means, even small boats. A spokesperson for the UN refugee agency did not deny that refugees could be waiting for as long as a decade to be resettled. They pointed out that the scheme was meant to complement, not replace, countries’ own programmes for refugee resettlement.