Can’t Stay. Can’t Go. Refused asylum seekers who cannot be returned   31 So we’ve actually struggled to get that kind of assistance. When we’ve seen cases over the years where we’ve thought, oh, there might be something there, and we’ve talked to local solicitors, they’ve generally been unwilling to pursue that as an avenue. (Red Cross staff member, Leeds) Seven of our refused asylum seekers are somewhere along the Stateless application process. Anwar (Somalia) is considering a Stateless application, as is Walid (Algeria), but only as a last resort: “I don’t want to have to do that. It’s the last thing I was thinking about.” Faheem (Palestine) is working on a Stateless application. The Red Cross in Leicester helped send Enaya (Palestine) and her daughter to the Liverpool Law Clinic. Enaya’s daughter is stateless. In Palestine, only the father can confer nationality on the child, so Enaya cannot pass her nationality to her daughter. Enaya’s husband was killed before he registered their daughter. Enaya herself is unable to get a passport and has a letter from the Palestinian mission to that effect. She has told her story to students at the Liverpool Law Clinic twice, but nothing has come of it: “I feel like a mouse running in a wheel; getting nowhere.” Violet (Zimbabwe) submitted a Stateless application in March this year. Samir (Algeria) and his solicitor put in a fresh asylum claim on the basis of statelessness. The evidence was acknowledged, but the refusal made it clear that this was the wrong form for making such an application. Samir will have to make a new application on the correct form if he wants to move forward. Kayla (Zimbabwe) and Joshua (Ethiopia) have had their Stateless applications refused. The Leeds staff member reported that refused asylum seekers become so disillusioned that it is difficult to convince them there are options: I mean, there’s people that we’ve worked with who could potentially have been looking at statelessness applications that we just can’t even get past the point of trying to get their documents back from the Home Office…. Some of them you can’t even get past the first hurdle and then they don’t…. Because they’re street homeless and they’ve got mental health issues, just trying to get them in to access the service to try and work on those things is impossible. For them, some of these people that we’ve seen like that, they haven’t necessarily seen what the point would be because they have possibly been through a lot of this before, accessing other services in other towns even, they’ve been somewhere prior to coming to Leeds. So they’ve become disillusioned anyway and can’t really see that anything’s going to go anywhere. (Red Cross staff member, Leeds) 3.16 What changes would they like to see? 3.16.1 Refused asylum seekers We asked our refused asylum seekers to suggest the main change that would improve their lives right now. Getting status Six of our refused asylum seekers felt that being granted status would improve their lives. Fiyori (Eritrea) believes that getting status will enable her to improve her children’s lives: I don’t have the papers, so I feel sad all the time. My children are illegals and that feels bad. I have a friend who has the papers. Her children live nicely; her children go to a good school and have all they need. If I had the papers, I could work. I could make life better. Every day I feel sad. (Fiyori, Eritrea) Being allowed to work Four of our refused asylum seekers said specifically that being allowed to work is the change they want most: Being able to work. To have a normal life like everyone else. To work. To live. I don’t want money from the Home Office; I don’t want benefits. I want to work. I want to have a family and a house. I don’t want to just sit here. I need to be normal. I don’t want to be like this – no money, no house, no food. (Qareen, Palestine) I was asking the Home Office to just give me permission to work. If they don’t want to give me permission to stay, just give me permission to work. I go to work. Not like now. I cannot work; I cannot do anything…. If you cannot give me permission to stay, just give me permission to work until I find some solution…. If you give me permission for work, I’m going to work. I pay my rent, I pay for everything. (Samir, Algeria)