Jude Mckechnie and Arthur Townend talked to migrants housed in hotels about what life is really like living in temporary accommodation
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Sunday 21 September 2025
There are no luxury in migrant hotels (Photo: Wikimedia commons)
The far right claims that refugees live in luxury while working class Brits are left to suffer. Mainstream politicians talk about refugees as a burden, a problem to be solved by mass deportations and detentions.
Politicians and mainstream journalists talk endlessly about refugees—but they never talk to them or give a platform to their stories.
Socialist Worker spoke to refugees about the cruelty of the asylum process and the rotten conditions they are forced to endure.
‘The hotel was like a punishment’
Nafeesa is from Sudan. She is just one of the thousands of people who have risked their lives fleeing war to reach Britain. And she had to leave without her children.
Nafeesa said that getting here “was one of the hardest journeys you can imagine”.
“When you arrive, they make you give a statement about why you have come. This is very hard. Each time you have to talk about it, it’s like an injury that you are forced to press on.”
Nafeesa explained, “I have two children that I had to leave behind. They were 11 and 16 years old at the time.”
She said that “being an asylum seeker in the hotels was a whole new burden. You can’t go anywhere because you have no money. If you are living in hotels you are expected to live on less than £10 a week. You just wait there, waiting to see if you will be allowed to stay in the country.
“The hotel was a disaster for me. There are so many rules about what you can and can’t do. I complained every day about not being able to open the window in my room. They said that it’s a health and safety issue. But I just wanted fresh air.
“The place felt like a prison. Living in the hotel, I sometimes felt that I had been sent a punishment.
“I also have a sleeping issue because of what I’ve been through. I was worried about my kids, they were not in a safe country. They were not with me. My mental health was so bad.”
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Once inside the hotels, people are often forced to share rooms with complete strangers. “I was sharing with a 21 year old girl who had her own issues, that did not help my sleeping because there was no privacy,” she explained.
Nafeesa has recently been granted settled status. And her two children are with her now. “I wake up during the night and just go and look at them. I hug and kiss them.” But Nafeesa is still waiting to be reunited with her husband. This is because the British government suspended new applications for the Refugee Family Reunion route in September.
This means Nafeesa’s family, and thousands of others, are banned from joining their loved ones.
“It is very hard. My sons want to know if their dad will be here soon. And I just don’t know.”
‘We are kids in a new country, we are afraid’
Most asylum seekers have already endured terrible suffering before they arrive. Khaled came to Britain on a small boat across the Channel when he was just 21 years old.
He travelled from Syria, a journey that took almost a year.
“When I arrived in Dover, I was interviewed by the Home Office. They check what documents you have and take photos and fingerprints.
“I was put on a bus and moved to a hotel. They take you to a place that the Home Office chooses. I wasn’t told where I was going. I woke up and I was in Dumfries, Scotland.
“The hotel was very basic, it’s not luxurious like they say. There’s nothing in the rooms, just a bed. I was sleeping on the floor because the bed was so tough that I preferred that.”
Khalid thinks that misinformation is fuelling the protests and the hateful prejudice against asylum seekers.
“When I search online, there are so many lies about us,” he said. “These people who are saying these things, they will ignore the truth because they have their own agendas. Reform, the media, that GB News, they do not tell people of everything we go through.
“People in the area started saying that we were criminals. Because we walk around together, they said that we were in a gang. But we are just kids in a new country, we are afraid. We don’t know what to do or where to go, we are just sticking together. We are not doing anything wrong.
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“Now, when I walk around I try not to go near schools. I look up the streets on Google Maps to make sure I don’t pass any. I am scared someone will film me and say I am doing something bad.
“People say ‘why didn’t you come by the legal routes, are you a criminal?’ I say, there are no legal routes.
“They say ‘how can you leave your family, your mother and sister?’ I say that I wouldn’t put my mother in a boat. It took me months to get here. Many people die trying to get here.
“They say that we have the homeless in this country, but the government could house all of us if they wanted to. It’s not us or them.”
‘The scars will remain with me’
Caleb, an asylum seeker now living in London, said his experience had “been nothing short of traumatic”.
“It has brought me deep pain, and I know these scars will remain with me for life.”
Caleb explained, “I cannot say I am surprised. Given what I already knew about the immigration system, and especially after learning about the Windrush scandal, I expected a system marked by hostility and injustice. The asylum process is not designed to be fair or humane, particularly for those of us who are not white.
“The questions, the procedures, and the sheer incompetence of Home Office staff often appear deliberately structured to retraumatise and discredit us. As an asylum seeker, every word you speak is assumed to be a lie in the eyes of the authorities.”
When he first arrived in Britain he stayed in a hotel for almost two months. He said that “the contractors hired by the Home Office to manage the hotels were among the most disrespectful people I have ever encountered. They hold significant power because they report directly to the Home Office, and that creates a climate of fear and intimidation.
“I witnessed women being sexually harassed by contractors. Some wanted to report it, but most were too afraid that doing so would negatively affect their asylum claims.”
Caleb said that “migrants are targeted in Britain because we are easy to target”.
“We lack a voice in the public sphere, and when we do speak, our words are treated with suspicion. Everyone knows the system is stacked against us, which means those who abuse or exploit migrants rarely face serious consequences. In that sense, asylum seekers are the most vulnerable members of society, easy scapegoats in times of political and social tension.”
‘The children were suffering’
Fatima is still going through the asylum process. She lives in a group bedsit and volunteers at the new arrivals hotel. She spent several months living in the hotel when she first claimed asylum in Britain.
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“Being in the hotel, it is not an easy thing,” Fatima explained.
“Cleaners only came in once a week. I asked Mears for some cleaning things so I could do it. They said there were rules and I had to wait for the cleaners. But the place was so dirty. The floor in my room had not been hoovered for more than one month.
“I wanted to cook but they said no. The food we were given was so horrible, you could not eat it. And when we complained about it, they said it’s not up to us, take it up with the managers. When we spoke about food, we became the enemy.
“The people there who had children, they were suffering, seeing their children living this way.”
Fatima said that during the winter the central heating would not be kept on at night. “I would wake up in the night freezing because they’d turned off the central heating while we were sleeping.
“I am asthmatic so I had to go to the nurse. The cold had started to affect my breathing. It was only when the nurse went and spoke to the manager that the heating stayed on overnight, not when I had been asking for weeks. Not until I became sick did they actually listen.”
Other people got sick in Fatima’s hotel. She remembered when two girls living there were forced to quarantine together. “One of the girls was sick with something contagious. The other girl wanted to be moved so she didn’t catch it. They didn’t let her.
“Even the cleaners didn’t go in because they didn’t want to get sick. Over a month, those girls were in there with illness.
“When I’m hearing people now saying things about the hotels, saying that it’s five stars, that we have swimming pools and get everything for free. I just can’t believe how wrong they are.
“I used to say to myself that if I stay here, I’m going to go crazy,” Fatima said.
Nafeesa, Khalid, Caleb and Fatima are just four of the thousands of people driven from their homes by war and catastrophe. Refugees are people with lives, families and hopes. They have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, to live free from fear and persecution.
They deserve our compassion—but more importantly our solidarity.
Refugees have a history, they have agency, and, given a chance, they can shape their own futures. We have more in common with Nafeesa, Khalid, Caleb and Fatima than we do with Nigel Farage, the royal parasites or any of the British ruling class.
Refugees are members of a global working class. And that class has power to resist the system only if we overcome racist divisions and stand united.
All names have been changed