AN ASYLUM-SEEKER has told MPs that she was hospitalised several times with stress and her self-confidence “demolished” as a result of her experiences inside Britain’s asylum system. 

Roxanna, who has been in the asylum system for more than five years, said that she was made to feel like a “third-class citizen” by the Home Office. 

“[From] the day I claimed asylum … to the last moment, I was to make myself ashamed of being a asylum-seeker.” 

Speaking to the Commons women and equality select committee about how the asylum process affected her, she said: “At one point it demolished my self-confidence. 

“From being a really active person, someone who was studying and working at the time, I became someone who was less capable of moving around this country.”

Roxanna, who is an ambassador of the British Red Cross’s Voices network, a collective of refugees and asylum-seekers, said the stress of waiting for a decision resulted in her being hospitalised several times. 

Another Voices network ambassador, Annie, who has been waiting for four years for a decision, tearfully said the process had left her “broken” and questioning whether she had done the right thing in her search for protection.

She said that her experience was one of a “system that’s shrouded in mystery, mistrust, lacking in dignity, fear mongering and pretty slow.

“The mistrust is when you go through this interview, the people who are interviewing you they’re making you feel like you’re lying.”

Priscilla Dudhia, from the Women for Refugee Women group, warned MPs that the Nationality and Borders Bill will further entrench this “culture of disbelief” among Home Office decision-makers.

She said that a “culture of protection” was needed instead.