Ibrahim is a refugee from Dharfur. He is 27 and has been living in a hotel in Newham for almost eight months – seven months and 15 days to be precise.

The fact that Ibrahim (not his real name) is tracking time so carefully is an indictment of how slowly it is passing. He already has a degree in economics and accountancy, and now he desperately wants to take a course in a local college to improve his English.

But like so much else in his life, official bureaucracy is getting in the way.

He shows me three applications to local colleges – all unanswered. In the meantime he spends his days studying English with apps on his phone.

He tells me about his father aged 107 and his mother who is in her sixties and his siblings, two of whom died just after he left home and made the long journey to Newham via Calais.

This is just one of hundreds of stories that Care4Calais hears when it does daily distributions to refugees staying in hotels and dispersal houses in Newham.

In Ibrahim’s hotel there are around 300 mostly young men, but there are also 12 women and five children. We estimate there are 600 in the Borough; all refugees from the world’s danger zones: South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Chad, Senegal, Kurdistan.

At the best of times the bureaucracy involved to start a new life in the UK is onerous and these are certainly not the best of times. Impending new legislation; the Nationalities and Borders Bill, will make it almost impossible for the people we help in Newham to reboot their lives.

The Home Secretary Priti Patel is determined that only those who have left their home nations legally can claim asylum, but remembering the mayhem at Kabul airport last autumn as people scrambled to flee Afghanistan. It is difficult to understand what legality means in such chaos.

The fact is that only a tiny percentage of the world’s refugees or even Europe’s refugees want to come to the UK.

We want to continue our proud tradition of ensuring that Newham is a haven for those fleeing persecution and for those who now face perils of the emerging climate crisis.

For further information and how to support refugees and vulnerable migrants contact care4calais.org .

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