BINKY – as the Sunday National has agreed to call her to protect her identity – came to the UK fleeing the threat of violence in Pakistan almost 10 years ago.
A former science teacher, she and her husband decided the best legal route to escaping their dangerous situation was for her to apply to study. But when the situation had not improved after she completed her postgraduate diploma in business management, the couple applied for asylum. Since then they have had two children and are still appealing their case in Glasgow, where they were placed by the Home Office.
When she first came to the UK, while still on a student visa, she had a vote as a Commonwealth citizen. Now that is not the case. “I find it depressing,” she says. “I am in a country I have lived in for nearly 10 years, where my children were born and I have no right to cast a vote – we cannot have our opinions heard.
“As asylum seekers there are so many issues we want to raise like our call to have the right to work, but if we cannot vote how can we do this?” Politicians, she claims, will never devote proper attention to the concerns of those who cannot vote for them.
“It feels that we do not have any status here,” she says. “Yet a lot of us are highly educated and have a lot to contribute. I feel like my skills here are wasted, all those years, all that energy. But there is nothing I can do about it.”
The issue of voting has been raised by several members of the Maryhill Integration Network (MIN) Voices group, of which Binky is a member. Group facilitator Pinar Aksu says: “We’ve been talking a lot about the concerns of members like their call for asylum seekers to have the right to work, and for an end to indefinite detention. They also raised the right to vote.
“Some of them have been here for many years and yet have never had the chance to have a voice in elections that have a huge impact on them.
“They want to integrate and be part of the country but how is that really possible if you don’t have the democratic right to vote?”
READ MORE: We're the people who can't vote: EU citizens and migrants
READ MORE: We're the people who can't vote: Young people
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