Laura Weldon is a Conservative Party activist and was Parliamentary Candidate for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley at the 2024 general election.
The Home Office has some new leaflets.
They are supposed to address the problem of asylum seekers’ attitudes to women and sex, but I don’t think they will even scratch the surface of the problem – and I know, because a few years ago I was a Welfare Manager for one of the Home Office’s major asylum contractors. I was the person who had to hand out those pamphlets, and in my experience they usually end up unread in the bin.
62 per cent of asylum seekers are adult men, with the majority of those being both young and single. Of the roughly 350 asylum seekers on my books, there were around 10 who had been charged with a sexual offence, compared to national statistics of 3.5 sexual offenders for every 1000 people.
We know people are coming from cultures where women are oppressed, but just telling them that rape is illegal when they’re already here won’t fix the problem. What the Home Office gets wrong isn’t what these men think or fail to understand: it’s how they get their information and when they get it.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from – the importance you place on information is a function of the esteem you hold for the person who gave it to you.
For the average Brit, trustworthy information has well-established sources. We inherently trust that written information published by our democratically elected government is (broadly) reliable. We have a culture of widely-circulated written and broadcast media. Few homes have no TV or radio access at all. Most people have at some point read a newspaper – and we know which ones are about Princess Diana conspiracy theories and which ones contain reputable reportage.
Myths can be quickly debunked because we can easily share information that is understood to be authoritative. When someone sends you a link to fake news, you can reply with a link to gov.uk, or The Times or the BBC telling you in black and white that it’s not true.
For many asylum seekers, that’s not their system, and it makes very little sense to them.
The very people who need it spelled out that rape is illegal are not largely from sophisticated urban centres – those people pass through the system without much issue. The problems come from men from communities that are rural, impoverished or marginalised by tribal or caste dynamics. If their country has experienced war or political turmoil, they don’t have any concept of stable governance with a functioning state. Economic instability may mean they don’t have regular access to broadcast or print media. Authoritarian regimes put out propaganda, not facts. Add low levels of literacy and education into that equation and you are left with an information vacuum. Even for those who can read, they live in a society where the written word is a ‘nice to have’, rather than the norm.
But these communities have their own trusted sources: tribal leaders, family elders, religious leaders – and the people that they, in turn, endorse.
On many occasions I asked an asylum seeker on my lists where they heard a particular piece of information. The response was often “my uncle”, “the head of my village”, or “my friend”. Their veracity is based on their personal reputation, not necessarily provable evidence. This means that the most trusted source of information for asylum seekers is the WhatsApp Rumour Mill, which cranks out more asylum information than every Home Office pamphlet I’ve ever seen, and was virtually impossible for me as a blonde, white, British woman to contradict to their satisfaction.
All over the developing world, even where people don’t have reliable mains electricity or running water, they increasingly have mobile phones with internet access. As well as WhatsApp there’s also video and social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The ‘likes’ system to someone with no culture of official verification gives a false sense of reliability – if my friend sent me this video, and 100,000 people liked it, then it must surely be true?
Within these apps, would-be asylum seekers are watching content in their native language (or a close dialect). There aren’t many everyday portrayals of UK life available in Amharic, Pashto, or Kurdish Sorani, so what they know about us is filtered through some often iffy lenses. Which brings us neatly to more or less the only western-produced media content that many of these men will have ever seen: hardcore pornography.
If you’ve never seen Eastenders, but you’ve watched hours and hours of naked western women engaging in every act imaginable with seemingly unabashed glee, while women you know are covered head to toe and guarded as the property of their fathers and husbands, you may have a hard time being convinced that women in the UK are not simply a sexual buffet that’s there for the taking.
Where access to women is limited by complex marriage negotiations based on your social status or wealth, it’s difficult for them to comprehend that men here are expected to control sexual urges independently without the guarantee of violence from male relatives, while women can make free choices about their sexual behaviour with little social reprisal.
So, if a leaflet won’t cut it, what should we do?
We need to target these men where they are culturally at.
For many years I’ve advocated for campaigns over social media platforms, using native speakers and influencers – to reach them before they get in a boat. This communicates the message far more effectively than the Home Office’s staff are able to do by handing over a pamphlet, but we also need to toughen up on consequences for stepping out of line.
On multiple occasions, male asylum seekers threatened or verbally abused me because as a woman I wouldn’t clean up after them, or I told them to obey the rules, or – and I swear that this is true – I wouldn’t help them to get a girlfriend. There’s a cursory form to fill in to report this behaviour, but consistent reports of aggressive and unapologetic misogyny need to be taken into account when making asylum decisions.
The final piece in the puzzle is the asylum and migration charities. They’re mostly staffed by good-natured people, but unfortunately, they don’t often want to entertain even the most sober discussion about how some asylum seekers are dangerous people. They have as much, if not more, access to asylum seekers as the Home Office does, and while they’re giving out bus passes and running art classes, they could use their position to broadcast the message that you will be far more readily accepted in Britain if you respect our culture and abide by societal rules of respect for women and sex being exclusively an act between consenting adults.
The ‘community’ of asylum seekers in Britain centres around these organisations, and they can identify who are those respected leaders and elders who will be listened to, as they are in their home countries.
The leaflets are at least a recognition of the problem, but they are not even the first step into ensuring that the people we take in respect our culture and the people who live here. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.
Laura Weldon is a Conservative Party activist and was Parliamentary Candidate for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley at the 2024 general election.
The Home Office has some new leaflets.
They are supposed to address the problem of asylum seekers’ attitudes to women and sex, but I don’t think they will even scratch the surface of the problem – and I know, because a few years ago I was a Welfare Manager for one of the Home Office’s major asylum contractors. I was the person who had to hand out those pamphlets, and in my experience they usually end up unread in the bin.
62 per cent of asylum seekers are adult men, with the majority of those being both young and single. Of the roughly 350 asylum seekers on my books, there were around 10 who had been charged with a sexual offence, compared to national statistics of 3.5 sexual offenders for every 1000 people.
We know people are coming from cultures where women are oppressed, but just telling them that rape is illegal when they’re already here won’t fix the problem. What the Home Office gets wrong isn’t what these men think or fail to understand: it’s how they get their information and when they get it.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from – the importance you place on information is a function of the esteem you hold for the person who gave it to you.
For the average Brit, trustworthy information has well-established sources. We inherently trust that written information published by our democratically elected government is (broadly) reliable. We have a culture of widely-circulated written and broadcast media. Few homes have no TV or radio access at all. Most people have at some point read a newspaper – and we know which ones are about Princess Diana conspiracy theories and which ones contain reputable reportage.
Myths can be quickly debunked because we can easily share information that is understood to be authoritative. When someone sends you a link to fake news, you can reply with a link to gov.uk, or The Times or the BBC telling you in black and white that it’s not true.
For many asylum seekers, that’s not their system, and it makes very little sense to them.
The very people who need it spelled out that rape is illegal are not largely from sophisticated urban centres – those people pass through the system without much issue. The problems come from men from communities that are rural, impoverished or marginalised by tribal or caste dynamics. If their country has experienced war or political turmoil, they don’t have any concept of stable governance with a functioning state. Economic instability may mean they don’t have regular access to broadcast or print media. Authoritarian regimes put out propaganda, not facts. Add low levels of literacy and education into that equation and you are left with an information vacuum. Even for those who can read, they live in a society where the written word is a ‘nice to have’, rather than the norm.
But these communities have their own trusted sources: tribal leaders, family elders, religious leaders – and the people that they, in turn, endorse.
On many occasions I asked an asylum seeker on my lists where they heard a particular piece of information. The response was often “my uncle”, “the head of my village”, or “my friend”. Their veracity is based on their personal reputation, not necessarily provable evidence. This means that the most trusted source of information for asylum seekers is the WhatsApp Rumour Mill, which cranks out more asylum information than every Home Office pamphlet I’ve ever seen, and was virtually impossible for me as a blonde, white, British woman to contradict to their satisfaction.
All over the developing world, even where people don’t have reliable mains electricity or running water, they increasingly have mobile phones with internet access. As well as WhatsApp there’s also video and social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The ‘likes’ system to someone with no culture of official verification gives a false sense of reliability – if my friend sent me this video, and 100,000 people liked it, then it must surely be true?
Within these apps, would-be asylum seekers are watching content in their native language (or a close dialect). There aren’t many everyday portrayals of UK life available in Amharic, Pashto, or Kurdish Sorani, so what they know about us is filtered through some often iffy lenses. Which brings us neatly to more or less the only western-produced media content that many of these men will have ever seen: hardcore pornography.
If you’ve never seen Eastenders, but you’ve watched hours and hours of naked western women engaging in every act imaginable with seemingly unabashed glee, while women you know are covered head to toe and guarded as the property of their fathers and husbands, you may have a hard time being convinced that women in the UK are not simply a sexual buffet that’s there for the taking.
Where access to women is limited by complex marriage negotiations based on your social status or wealth, it’s difficult for them to comprehend that men here are expected to control sexual urges independently without the guarantee of violence from male relatives, while women can make free choices about their sexual behaviour with little social reprisal.
So, if a leaflet won’t cut it, what should we do?
We need to target these men where they are culturally at.
For many years I’ve advocated for campaigns over social media platforms, using native speakers and influencers – to reach them before they get in a boat. This communicates the message far more effectively than the Home Office’s staff are able to do by handing over a pamphlet, but we also need to toughen up on consequences for stepping out of line.
On multiple occasions, male asylum seekers threatened or verbally abused me because as a woman I wouldn’t clean up after them, or I told them to obey the rules, or – and I swear that this is true – I wouldn’t help them to get a girlfriend. There’s a cursory form to fill in to report this behaviour, but consistent reports of aggressive and unapologetic misogyny need to be taken into account when making asylum decisions.
The final piece in the puzzle is the asylum and migration charities. They’re mostly staffed by good-natured people, but unfortunately, they don’t often want to entertain even the most sober discussion about how some asylum seekers are dangerous people. They have as much, if not more, access to asylum seekers as the Home Office does, and while they’re giving out bus passes and running art classes, they could use their position to broadcast the message that you will be far more readily accepted in Britain if you respect our culture and abide by societal rules of respect for women and sex being exclusively an act between consenting adults.
The ‘community’ of asylum seekers in Britain centres around these organisations, and they can identify who are those respected leaders and elders who will be listened to, as they are in their home countries.
The leaflets are at least a recognition of the problem, but they are not even the first step into ensuring that the people we take in respect our culture and the people who live here. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.