No evidence welfare rates affect where people seeking asylum end up, researchers say

The government is reevaluating the rate of weekly payments for asylum seekers, reported national media on 12 May.

Taoiseach Simon Harris, of Fine Gael, had ordered a sharpish review to bring the current €38.80 weekly payment in line with other European countries, the reports said.

The government was concerned that welfare aid for asylum seekers was too generous and access to jobs too easy, reported the Irish Independent, quoting anonymous government sources.

But is Ireland offering more to asylum seekers than other European countries? Comparing rates across countries is far from straightforward.

When comparing across countries, it’s necessary to take into account differences in cost of living, says Liam Thornton, associate professor of law at University College Dublin (UCD).

Also, “in other countries, there may be additional services that the persons have that may justify a lower level of payment”, he said by phone last Wednesday.

Thornton says that all this debate is underpinned by an assumption that a higher rate would make a country more attractive to a person seeking asylum. But that notion is detached from the realities of those fleeing.

Those who need visas for European countries, but couldn’t get them, can turn to unsafe and irregular routes to travel with no particular destination in mind, Thornton says.

Welfare rates play little role in determining where people end up, was also the upshot of recent research by a social scientist at Humboldt University of Berlin, which modelled flows between 160 countries worldwide.

“It’s not like refugees, you know, go shopping around like picking the best payoff,” said Tim S. Müller, a social scientist and the study’s author.

Spokespeople for the Department of Taoiseach and the Department of Children and Equality have not yet responded to queries about the review of Ireland’s payments for asylum seekers, sent last Wednesday.

Trends and benefits

The Humboldt University research examined migration flows between 160 countries but couldn’t overall substantiate the “welfare magnet hypothesis” that it had set out to test.

It says that when factoring in things like visa restriction, geographic distance, democracy levels, and language, social benefits don’t appear to be a major draw.

“We find insufficient evidence to maintain the idea that welfare spending has a meaningful impact on migration flows,” it says.

Müller, the study’s author, says although his research does not distinguish between different kinds of immigrants, patterns of forced migration suggest his findings are relevant in the context of asylum.

Take Ukrainian refugees, he said on a Zoom call on Monday. “Poland has the highest share of Ukrainian refugees per capita.”

Poland is not known for being super generous with welfare aid, Müller said. “But it’s close [to Ukraine].”

For Ireland, asylum rules may play a much bigger role in the movement of asylum seekers, he said. Factors such as the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and process cases remotely can be a much bigger motivator, he said.

Reducing the payment won’t stop people from coming, said Müller. “But would make the conditions worse for asylum seekers.”

Freedom of choice

Vitaly Shahin Chakaveh says he didn’t know he’d end up in Ireland when he left Iran. “Couldn’t show you Ireland on a map,” he said in a voice memo in Persian recently.

He became unwell on the way out. When he got here, he was bleeding, he says.

“All I wanted was to get out of my dirty clothes and a pillow to put my head on,” said Chakaveh.

He had heard from friends that public transport was free in some places in France, which sounded appealing, he says. But he didn’t end up there.

Asylum seekers who need visas to enter Europe have said in the past that where they end up sometimes depends on where a smuggler has contacts.

Sometimes, authoritarian regimes try to stop political activists from leaving the country by confiscating their passports, forcing them to travel unsafe and irregular routes without much planning as to destination.

On 13 May, Mohammad Rasoulof, a prominent Iranian filmmaker – who had been critical of Iran’s regime in his films and was facing an eight-year prison sentence for that – posted a short clip on his Instagram account showing a field surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

He wrote that he’d escaped Iran after “a long and complicated journey”.

“Seven years ago, you raided my home and took away my passport yet again,” he wrote.

“Last year, my lawyer and I tried to get it back, turning to different departments, but you said I don’t have the right to have a passport.”

His post thanks those who helped smuggle him out of the country. “Sometimes, they risked their own lives so I could reach safety. I live to tell,” he wrote.

When asylum seekers move from one country to another to try to find a place they feel comfortable living in, they can be demonised or punished.

In February 2020, the Department of Justice was readying to deport a Somalian doctor to send her back to Hungary, where she had refugee status. That’s where those who had smuggled her into Europe had left her.

But in Hungary, she had faced xenophobic hate, was assaulted, was unable to speak the language, and felt out of place.

In a judgment overturning the deportation order, Ms Justice Tara Burns said: “It seems to me that the founding architects of the system of international protection which is in place in Europe today, would be of the view that we, as a people, have badly failed the Applicant in this case.”

High cost of living

Chakaveh, the Iranian asylum seeker, lives in a shelter in Bray and studies in Dublin. He says the commute and medication costs swallow all of his weekly allowance.

Thornton, the UCD lecturer, says it’s important to note that the medical card doesn’t cover the cost of all medicines.

“Medicines like Disprin, Aspirin, paracetamol. None of them are on the medical card schemes,” he said.

They’re hard to avoid, says Thorton. Everyone can get a headache.

Asylum seekers are not entitled to any other social welfare benefits beyond the weekly payment. “Which is already at paltry levels,” says Thornton.

Trimming down the payment would also impact people’s mental health because poverty can be isolating, he said.

Spokespeople for the Department of Taoiseach and the Department of Children and Equality did not respond to a query sent last Wednesday asking if they have considered the broader mental-health toll of a potential pay cut on asylum seekers.

Chakaveh says his friends had told him that the government might boost the payment. A potential pay cut is news to him, he said. “I fall short as it is.”

If they’re able, some asylum seekers can apply for permission to work to help make ends meet.

They can apply for a work permit five months after lodging their asylum claim. But processing delays keep people in poverty for longer.

The current official processing time for asylum work permits is around five months,according to the Department of Justice’s Irish Immigration website.

And not all asylum seekers can even really apply for permission to work.

Those seeking asylum from countries deemed to be “safe” effectively miss out on the right to work and are left to live in poverty.

On 12 May, the Irish Independent reported that the government was planning a “crackdown” on people here seeking asylum who are working illegally.

“The Government believes there is an increasing number of asylum-seekers working illegally in various sectors, including construction and hospitality,” it said.

The reality of now

Thornton, the UCD law professor, says that the rhetoric around a potential cut in the asylum allowance is another nail in the coffin of the government’s 2021 white paper on ending the direct provision system.

“The white paper is dead,” said Thornton.

The government didn’t meet the document’s deadline for ending the direct provision system. Conditions have only worsened since its publication.

In February 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to come to Ireland. The number of asylum seekers from elsewhere has also grown.

Since 2023, waves of homelessness have engulfed men seeking asylum. As the government ran out of beds, getting into a direct provision centre became harder and harder, and people stayed in substandard emergency shelters for long stretches.

As of 17 May, almost 1,855 people seeking asylum were unaccommodated, according to official figures.

The white paper  – which was drawn up by the Department of Children and Equality based on the recommendations of an expert group for making reception conditions humane – says that adopting a “human rights based” to allowance payments is key, “so that the risk of applicants falling into poverty is mitigated”.

Rates should depend on whether the applicant is in phase one – living in reception centres – or phase two – accommodated in communities – of the asylum process, it says. But that envisioned two-stage process didn’t happen.

Thornton says what vexes him the most is how asylum seekers are dehumanised in the spiralling debates about taking away their rights so that they won’t come here. “These are, for fuck’s sake, people,” he said.