Applicants to host Ukrainian refugees under the Homes for Ukraine program have expressed concern that some refugees are being forced to remain in the conflict zone while UK visas are being processed. A Conservative councilor resigned from the party at the weekend after being shocked by the bureaucracy surrounding the UK visa system in Ukraine, which reflects the government’s “hostile” and “xenophobic” approach to refugees. Samantha Flower applied for sponsorship from a 17-year-old Ukrainian boy to live with her family in Buxton, Derbyshire, but said she was met with delays and bureaucracy. The child was forced to remain in Ukraine while the documents were being processed. “If he does not make it alive, it is because the bureaucracy has prevented it,” he said. Her concern was echoed by statements from the heads of the Refugee Council, the British Red Cross, Save the Children and Oxfam, who warned that the visa system was “causing great distress to the already injured Ukrainians”. “Those wishing to come to the UK must browse through a complex web of bureaucratic documents to obtain a visa, leaving them with long delays without any information on the status of their application,” the charity wrote in a letter. on Monday in the times. “The government urgently needs to reconsider the use of visas and waive them as an immediate short-term measure, as was done by the EU, and seek to introduce a simplified emergency humanitarian visa procedure.” Flower, a councilor in High Peak City Council, has enrolled in the UK Home for Ukraine program, where strangers act as hosts, but has not yet been approved. Only 1,000 of the 25,000 completed applications have been approved so far. The boy and his stepmother and father, both lawyers, fled their home in Kyiv when Russia invaded. They arranged for the teenage girl to travel to the United Kingdom after contacting Flower online, where the councilor had offered her the house. However, the boy has only a Ukrainian national passport and not the international passport required by the UK as part of the visa process. The boy’s family had to stay in Ukraine and wait for the right bureaucracy – a process they were told could take weeks. “They have to wait for the passport to be completed,” Flower said. “They had a shell near their house five or six days ago. “They do not know overnight what will happen.” He said the government’s complicated visa system for Ukrainians reflected its “hostile” approach to all refugees, adding: “We are becoming extremely far-right and it is not the party I joined.” More than 3.9 million refugees left Ukraine last month, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 2.2 million of whom ended up in Poland. The Home Office has issued 21,600 visas to Ukrainians hoping to reunite with relatives in Britain as part of the Ukraine Family Program. The Department for Leveling Up, which runs the parallel Homes for Ukraine program for homeless people in the UK, has not yet released details on the number of visas issued. However, refugee charities say the number of people passing through the program is “small” so far. Lauren Scott, director of the Refugees at Home charity, said: “We have been told jokingly that the delay is largely due to the cumbersome visa application process, which is frustrating for our hosts and must be devastating for visitors. It creates a huge obstacle. “So far we know of only three sponsorship visas issued to potential visitors, all to one family.” A poll released Sunday by Savanta ComRes found that 54% of people in the UK support a visa ban policy and would like to allow an unlimited number of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion to come to the UK.
