Home Office ‘refuses to believe Kenyan asylum seeker is a lesbian’

17 comments

1. the guidelines for protection visas in instances like this are incredibly vague and does nobody any favours. if you don’t curb it, in theory, you could have anyone from a theological based shithole country claiming they’re gay and need to come to the UK. real tough stuff. glad it’s not my job to differentiate.

2. The Lesbian with daughters she left behind when she left the country.

3. Begs the question of how does someone prove that they’re gay?

   Especially from a country like Kenya, where we’re the ones who initially made the laws imprisoning people for the crime of daring to like someone of the same gender, we should suck it up and give them the benefit of the doubt.

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6. Ngl I find it a bit strange how I’ve heard lots of stories of men claiming they’re bisexual or gay and they’re believed and granted asylum, yet this is the first time I’ve heard of a woman claiming to be a lesbian – and what a surprise she’s refused. Another reminder that no matter the process, no matter the culture, women are always put second.

7. Isn’t it pretty irresponsible to plaster her face and name all over the media?

   If she’s got to go back, at least give her a chance!

8. No one should be given asylum for their sexually. Otherwise you’re essentially inviting 1 tenth of everyone that lives in a crappy country in, and that’s before you factor in the fakes.

9. Yeah, the well run and trusted Home Office. Probably some broken AI software saves them doing any actual work.

10. Just get one of the hundreds of solicitors all over the country that will help you ‘play’ abuse the system. Many have ‘asylum applications done here’ all over there windows.

11. False title. The decision is not based on whether she is a lesbian, but whether she would be safe in other parts of Kenya.

12. I wonder if we’ll see a swing towards right wingers denying gay and lesbian existence as a way to deny sexuality based asylum claims, like they already have with transgender existence to refuse them healthcare.

13. My mate used to work for the home office for years and worked his way a little up the ranks.He leans left and is generally in favour of taking in persecuted peoples like I am, but he was always adamant the questioning for this kind of stuff is pretty robust so they must have good reason to believe it’s the case.

    Edit… Downvoted for sharing a fairly innocuous view on an internet forum. Lame.

14. Why the fuck are we offering asylum to people based on sexuality? It’s an unprovable claim and half the world if not more has laws discriminating against same sex relationships so the number of potential applicants would be staggering.

15. I do feel absolutely awful for this poor woman, nobody should be subject to violence for who they love or what they believe in.

16. My mother was involved in running and organising an LGBT Christians group. Asylum seekers would come, attend for a while, ask for a letter to support that they’d been a member of the group, then never be seen again as soon as they got asylum granted. Not saying everyone does that but it definitely happens.

17. This is a tricky subject. You can’t just say “turn up, say you’re gay and you can stay”, otherwise it’s just a back door way of immigrating. And in this case, the woman has been married and is saying that she has a discreet partner that she conveniently didn’t record anything incriminating about – understandable, but also exactly what a chancer would say.

    I’m not sure we should even be accepting sexuality as a reason to offer asylum, though, to be honest. There are tens or hundreds of millions of gay people in Commonwealth countries (if we’re even limiting it to them), many of which have seriously anti-gay cultures. Even without the question of people faking it, it’s still not reasonable to say any of those could move here permanently. Isn’t it the responsibility of people within a country to move society forward and make it more accepting, like people in this country have had to do in the last 50 years?

    This woman was (apparently) attacked for being gay. That’s a crime, yes. But is every victim of a crime, even a hate crime, anywhere in the world to be offered asylum in the UK if they choose? That doesn’t seem sustainable.

    Edit: And I’m not convinced that being gay in Kenya is *that* bad that it should be a valid asylum anyway, even under the existing rules. People get beaten up for being gay in European countries, hell it probably still happens even here in the UK. That doesn’t mean it’s so unsafe to live there that you need asylum in another country, especially not one half the world away.

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