IMMIGRATION Minister Kevin Foster invoked rocker Meatloaf yesterday as he accused Scottish authorities of not doing enough to support asylum seekers.
Control of immigration and asylum rests with Foster's Home Office department, despite repeated calls by the Scottish Government to hand over powers.
Outwith the dedicated programme for Syrian refugees, who have been sent to live across the country, all other asylum seekers in Scotland go to Glasgow.
Councils group Cosla has said more local authorities would be willing to take in those fleeing conflict and persecution, but the Home Office needs to provide cash for the services needed to help with language, health and other issues - something the department has refused.
Yesterday Scots MPs Steven Bonnar and Anne McLaughlin criticised the UK's "hostile environment" approach and told a Westminster Hall debate the continued use of hotels accommodation for asylum seekers was causing mental health problems and other harms.
An estimated 400 people remain in Glasgow hotels one year after Home Office contractor Mears moved them out of private flats in a shift attributed to the pandemic.
READ MORE: Fury as Home Office blames councils for rise in asylum seekers in Glasgow hotels
Referencing the 1993 hit by US rocker Meatloaf, I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That), Foster said: "It's interesting to hear in this type of debate that Scotland's members are desperate to do more. Here's an option: become a dispersal area in your constituency.
"Let's not have a Meatloaf-style 'we'll do anything to support refugees but we won't do that'."
During the debate, Glasgow North East MP McLaughlin condemned the Home Office over the dawn raid that saw a 67-year-old asylum seeker taken to hospital in an ambulance.
Yesterday The National revealed how the man collapsed after being woken from his bed in the Glasgow home he shares with his wife and daughter when immigration officials came to take him to detention with no notice.
He has underlying heart problems and was left alone in hospital with no money or transport home and is now "very afraid" of the officials returning.
McLaughlin condemned the raid, calling the practice "shameful". She told MPs: "For many years now there have been no dawn raids in Scotland.
READ MORE: 'We are very afraid': Father, 67, taken to hospital after Home Office dawn raid
"Unbeknownst to most people, dawn raids may have been happening in Glasgow since January but to families who had nobody to reach out to."
Vowing to resist the practice, which was thought to have ended more than a decade ago, McLaughlin warned the UK Government: "Do not go down this route again. We will not stand by."
In dawn raids, officials make sudden and unannounced removals of people who have been refused the right to stay in the UK, giving them minutes to pack and go to a secure facility, pending deportation.
The Home Office says risk and vulnerability checks are carried out before the operations begin, but The National understands that each member of the household has diagnosed health problems and that the 67-year-old has not exhausted the legal process of claiming asylum and is in fact in the process of making a fresh submission to authorities through his solicitor.
The family came to Scotland from Pakistan after receiving death threats amidst a forced marriage plot against the daughter. The dad, who asked not to be named, said: "This is a peaceful country, I thought they will protect her, and we’ll never get any problems here.
"We are very afraid."
READ MORE: New Home Office plans for refugees are an unprecedented political attack
The debate on asylum dispersal was called by Labour MP Neil Coyle and comes as an estimated 400 people remain in hotel accommodation in Glasgow amidst a chronic shortage of suitable homes.
Home Office contractor Mears moved asylum seekers from flats to the hostelries last spring as the pandemic hit but says it is struggling to arrange suitable rentals to move them out again.
Foster urged "all local authorities" to work with the Home Office but said the system is "broken" and suggested the department's proposed New Plan for Immigration will fix it.
Coyle said ministers have "no ambition" to "work better with councils" and should be "fixing the existing problems within the system before creating new ones in a new plan which is a mess before it's even begun".
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