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What it’s like to spend a year in an asylum seeker hotel [1]
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Date: 2023-04
When Eli* arrived in the UK in March 2022, she was looking forward to feeling safe after fleeing danger in Iran. As soon as she stepped off the plane at Heathrow with her children, an eight-year-old and twin six-year-olds, she told an immigration officer she wanted to claim asylum.
Soon afterwards, she was transferred to a hotel in Manchester, where she has now been living for over a year with her children, waiting to receive a decision on her asylum claim.
“It’s been really bad,” the 42-year-old told openDemocracy. “Night and day we cry.”
The room is a tight fit for Eli and her children. “There are three beds – two singles and one double,” she said. “There’s a cupboard and a chair. They take up most of the space in the room.”
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After her children leave for school in the morning, Eli sits in her room, only leaving to eat, attend a once-a-week English class, and occasionally take newly arrived asylum seekers out to the city centre.
“I was a nurse in Iran,” she said, reflecting on how she is used to keeping busy. “I am so bored [in the hotel] and feel useless.”
Once the children arrive home from school, she puts the TV on for them. “But they really want to go outside,” she said. “They’re fed up and tired of being in the room.”
Eli is wary of letting her children play in the hotel corridors, claiming two of her children were hit by other guests and her daughter was approached by older boys who said they would be her “boyfriends”. She says a man also threatened to kill her after she told his wife he had been bothering her.
The conditions in the hotel, and the length of time spent there, are taking their toll on Eli and her children.
“The carpet [in the room] is very dirty and burned,” she said. “My children have no place to study. They are forced to do their homework either on the beds, which are too soft to write on, or on the floor, sitting in a row in a very small space.”
The food offered in the dining area consists of the same meals on repeat – chicken nuggets, or rice and meat that’s often undercooked.
“I have to insist on the children eating at least a little bit,” she said. “I say there is no food for later on. But they don’t eat all of it. They’re hungry.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/asylum-seeker-hotel-home-office-refugee-action-rwanda/
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