by Hyo Eun Shin from the CAS Strong Communities team.

This article was first published in the Herald on 25 July 2026.

Here’s a few snapshots from an ordinary day in Citizens Advice Bureaux across Scotland: Mary, a mediation specialist, is supporting a group of neighbours to find a workable solution to their long-running dispute; Ada, an adviser with a legal background is supporting a family at risk of being evicted from their home; Sunil is running a training session for debt advisers across the CAB network; while Mo is greeting people coming into the waiting room of her CAB with her usual warm, reassuring smile.  

CABs are places where people empower others to access the support they need and navigate times of crisis; where people build positive, trusting relationships and find solutions to wider problems together. They are places of connection that are rooted in communities, where people support and learn from each other.       

These are the quiet, everyday moments and ways in which Mary, a migrant from the US, Ada, a Nigerian citizen, Sunil, who was born in Scotland to South Asian parents, and Mo, who is from North Africa, are busily working alongside their colleagues to support anyone who comes to the CAB for support.  

In 2024/25, around 10% of our more than 1,750 volunteers across Scotland identified as belonging to a Black and Minority Ethnic group. Migrants and children of migrants are giving their time, knowledge and skills to their local communities, day in, day out. Similarly, many paid staff across our network, from accountants to energy advisers, IT staff to project workers, have come to the UK from elsewhere.   

And yet, all too often, these acts of everyday kindness that powerfully weave our diverse communities together remain invisible. Positive encounters growing from curiosity and mutual respect as well as relationships built on shared values of fairness, human dignity and equal participation are drowned out by a cacophony of anti-immigration misinformation which increasingly shapes our headlines, politics and the public imagination.  

Now more than ever we need to make these many invisible moments visible; remind people that these everyday positive connections are the norm, not an exception.  

Because in the last year, rhetoric around migration, housing and social security has become increasingly divisive and demonising. When all of the evidence – and our network sees this first-hand in communities all across Scotland – points towards deepening poverty and hardship.    

It is in this climate that the UK government is bringing in far-reaching changes to immigration and asylum rules. As one of the biggest providers of immigration advice in Scotland, we are alarmed by the significant rights regressions proposed by the Home Office. 

From reducing refugee protection in the UK to short periods of 30-months, to much-contested plans to make settlement in this country a more difficult process for most people without a British passport, to further restricting peoples’ access to the essentials that we all need to live well together. 

While the Home Office demands migrants ‘integrate’ and ‘contribute’, our network provides innumerable examples of migrants like Mary, Ada and Mo already actively participating and supporting others in their communities. 

Across our CAB network, we know that communities are stronger when everyone's rights are upheld and people are treated with respect. We need politicians to understand that too.