(This piece was written for this website: https://enddirectprovision-demitalks.squarespace.com/ Please check it out for an insight to this system)
Coronavirus has changed a lot of our lifestyles over the past few months. Because of the government-ordered lockdown, many of us have had to adapt to a new way of life – even if only temporarily. Now imagine lockdown lasting two years. You’re not allowed to work, you’re not receiving adequate pay and your movement is restricted. For two years. Except, there is more. Instead of the Covid-19 income support scheme, you are given €38.80 a week. Yes, you are given less than 4 hours of minimum wage pay to last you one week. Food is provided to you though! But the food is bland, the portions aren’t great, the meals lack variety, and those who serve you this food are often mean and lack compassionate towards you. You could just fix this by cooking yourself up a meal, but you do not have this option, because there are no self-catering facilities in your home. When you want to sleep, you enter your confined bedroom that you share with 8 other strangers. These kinds of living conditions have really played a role in worsening your mental health, and you have now made a 9th roommate – depression. Now stop imagining. It’s nice, right? It’s nice that you have the power to stop imagining that. But some people don’t. What is described above is the lived reality of thousands of people in this very country living in Direct Provision. They cannot escape from it by switching an ‘imagination button’ off in their brain. That’s their every-day life, with no choice about the matter. This is how your fellow human beings, a couple kilometres away from you, are living. You shouldn’t feel comfortable knowing that.
People in direct provision centres come to this country seeking a better life. They escape from the troubles they are experiencing in their home country and, full of hope, come to Ireland with the earnest expectation that they may have greater opportunities here. Only for them to be met with more misery. There are over 7,500 people currently living in direct provision centres in Ireland. When the scheme was originally set up, asylum seekers were only meant to be in these centres for six months max upon arriving. However, the average stay has been said to be two years, whilst hundreds have lived in these centres for over 5 years. I have a friend who lived within a centre for 10 years. I asked you to imagine the above narrative for only 2 years. Now add an extra 8 years of that experience and ask yourself just how miserable you would feel.
It is absolutely terrible that people have to find themselves living like this. It is completely unacceptable. Thousands within these centres are children. Imagine your childhood being confined to a place that is likened to an ‘open prison’, and the government dare telling you that you should be grateful for such. How shameful. It is racism and discrimination that fuels the government to comfortably subject people to these inhumane living conditions. It is the belief that these people are of such low worth that they should be thankful for being treated with such contempt. If these government officials would see these people as people who have the same level of dignity and respect as they themselves do, there is no way that they would allow them to live like this. If you would not volunteer yourself to living in that sort of way, why create that for somebody else?
As a people, we need to stand up against direction provision for no reason other than to fulfil our duty of practising basic humanity. Whether or not the people in these centres look like you, you should have enough compassion to care that they receive better. There are children in these places and no child should have to go through that. We need to start facilitating more conversations surrounding refugees and asylum seekers. We need to start listening more carefully to their voices. We need to stop viewing them as strangers and realise that any of us, if born under other circumstances, could find ourselves in that position. And we need to act. Be an ally to asylum seekers. Find out any organisations that push for the abolition of direct provision, one that I know of is Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI). Read about alternatives that have been proposed to replace direct provision. Do what you can to educate yourself. The more people talking about it, the more chances we have of being listened to. So play your part. Imagine again what I told you to imagine at the beginning of this piece. Now do what you can to make sure that it, too, can become merely an imagination for others.