The uncertainty over the resettlement program’s future has left families who were promised resettlement in limbo and put councils under strain, jeopardising the services built over the past five years. But the UK is harder to get to, and the VPRS has provided a supportive route for refugees in need – until now. Other countries accept more people via asylum processes: for the past five years the annual number of asylum claims in the UK has ranged between 26,000-37,000 (with an average grant rate at initial decision of about 40%), compared to an average of over 100,000 in France and over 200,000 in Germany. Since 2014 the UK’s different schemes have resettled over 25,000 people, more than any other European country between 20, though the almost 20,000 resettled under the VPRS is a small fraction of the more than 6.6 million Syrian refugees (close to 7 million more have been internally displaced in Syria). Across the world, resettlement serves fewer than 1% of refugees, but as Europe grapples with fatal sea crossings, xenophobic politics, and overcrowded asylum facilities, the successes and shortcomings of the VPRS hold lessons for the wider region’s immigration policies. For the government, it has been used as a counter to criticism of an antagonistic approach to asylum seekers crossing the English Channel. For refugees, it has offered one of the only safe routes to Britain, as well as designated support on arrival. But despite growing concerns over the impact of delays on services, the government has yet to confirm when a planned replacement will follow.Ī lot rides on the program, deemed the “gold standard” of UK resettlement schemes in a 2017 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). At the end of 2020 the program began to resume and is intended to run until this original commitment is met. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the government to pause the program in March 2020, a few hundred shy of its target of resettling 20,000 people between 2015-2020. This program, the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS), has been a core part of the UK government’s refugee policy for the past five years. It placed them in Eastbourne with refugee status and resources for their immediate needs. Then in late 2018 they received a rare lifeline: entry to the UK under a government program to resettle the “most at risk” refugees in the Middle East displaced by the Syrian conflict. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Syrian refugees, they first went to Jordan, where Al-Halabi worked three jobs a day to keep his family fed and housed. Their route to this seaside resort town took many years, and yet was relatively direct. It’s been eight years since Al-Halabi and his family left their home in a pummelled suburb of Damascus, fleeing the conflict devastating their country. The beans, peppers, and kusa squash he’s growing are other staples from that faraway climate. “In Syria summer is longer, and these grow even bigger,” the 33-year-old says, waving admiration aside. Parting the leaves, he reveals several large bottle gourds, quite unlike anything growing in his neighbors’ plots. At the back of a sprawling set of garden allotments in Eastbourne, on England’s south coast, Mahmoud Al-Halabi gently pulls up two carrots for his children and gestures to a thick curtain of green vines.
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