U.K. pledges to expedite visas for refugees fleeing Ukraine

3 yıl önce

Britain’s process to accept refugees from Ukraine should be quicker, and the country can and will do more to help people fleeing the country, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Tuesday in an interview with the BBC.

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Wallace said the number of refugees that Britain is able to accept is “very generous,” and he pledged to help the home minister in balancing the security of the United Kingdom when letting people in. He said that establishing people’s identities should be done quickly and noted that it was done “very quickly in Afghanistan.”

“We could do more to make that processing much, much quicker,” he said.

Wallace said 17,000 people have started the visa process under a plan launched Friday for refugees to reunite with family members in Britain. Five hundred Ukrainian refugees have been granted visas so far under this plan, Immigration Minister Kevin Foster said in Parliament on Tuesday.

However, that’s a small fraction of the number of people who have fled Ukraine so far. More than 2 million refugees have left the country since the beginning of the invasion, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. Half of them are children, according to UNICEF. Most of those fleeing Ukraine have gone to Poland, which has received 1.2 million refugees so far.

In historic crisis, 2 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of Russian invasion, U.N. says

About 600 refugees are stuck in the French city of Calais trying to enter Britain, and some of them have been told they need to travel to Paris to process their visas. Many said they were turned away for lack of paperwork, the BBC reported.

The European Union is allowing Ukrainian refugees in for up to three years without a visa. Britain, no longer part of the E.U., has instituted entry controls, drawing criticism from other countries.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote a letter to the British home minister, Priti Patel, calling on the U.K. government to set up a consular service in Calais.He said London’s response so far showed a “lack of humanity” toward refugees and was “completely unsuitable,” according to the Guardian newspaper.

Speaking Tuesday to the British Parliament via video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recounted events since Russia invaded, reiterated calls for a no-fly zone and asked for tougher sanctions against Russia.