Being gay or a woman isn't reason enough to claim asylum - Suella Braverman

So instead of spending millions on hotels etc., they could use that money to employ and train people to work through the back log.

yes totally! This is exactly what they need to do.

She is saying we can't rescue the world, that there are limits in what we can do.
She is also saying that we should not try to impose our cultural values elsewhere.

Sorry finished too soon…

is when an incident happens

I don’t think you quite understand. I don't know the exact number as it’s all very secretive, but assume its got to be nearing or 1000s of hotels already closed across the country. There must be hundred of thousands in hotels. Potentially even nearing half a million.

I travel a bit for work but not that much that I should be bumping into this all the time. That’s why I think the number really is that large. There’s a number of premier inns black listed by my organisation. Personally I have blacklisted a number of service stations I won’t go to because they are not safe as have hotels on site obviously being used for refuge and there’s large groups of men. My sister nearly accidentally walked into a surbiton stabbing incident by a mentally unwell refugee at the Hilton hotel. Thankfully the hotel refugees in my town have had little incident so far - which I am grateful for as my sons nursery is their nearest building and that does make me nervous!

Yes that’s what they are doing re prefabs. Our hotel holds about 500 before the prefabs. They keep adding prefabs onto the estate. There’s a lot of land. But they don’t have planning. We are heading in the direction of 1000 now in one location.

And yes we assume more money. Or similar profit without the stress and the staff.
One minute all is normal next thing there’s a a4 printed sign on the door which says closed permanently turning staff away. No Facebook post. Trickles down to clientele with a wedding next week.

The scale of this issue is astronomical. I don’t think people quite understand.

It makes people angry because they don’t ask. They don’t even tell. They just do without saying what or why they are doing it.

First they know of the hotel it all the cancellations, job loss and confusion. First they know of the prefabs is them being wheeled in and installed. First you know there’s refugees there is when the

We cannot base policy on how many people are being persecuted. On this basis, we would have rejected Jews fleeing the maxi regime, simply because their numbers were too high.
I was listening to some representative for refugees in radio 4. No one receives asylum for being discriminated against. Being gay is sufficient reason for gaining asylum if it means you would otherwise be sent to prison, not if it means you have difficulty being recruited for a job, or renting a flat.
Maybe we should have thought a little harder about abandoning the women of Afghanistan to a persecuting regime, rather than complain afterwards that there were too many women being persecuted for our asylum systems.

I was thinking about this question yesterday afternoon.

I think SB is using what is called a "Straw Man" argument - that is, making points that only appear reasonable because she is deliberately mispresenting the position of what she is arguing against, pretending that it is something more easy to conquer.

In this case - generally people aren't seeking asylum just because they are gay, or a woman. They probably could have lived safely in the country of their birth if they had meekly accepted their lot (embraced their status as a second-class subhuman if a woman, lived permanently "in the closet" and pretended to be heterosexual if gay) but having fought against sich abusive regimes to try to bring about change, they are now in fear for their life. They aren't here because of "discrimination" in the old fashioned british sense of not being selected for promotion at work and not invited to the nice parties, they are in genuine danger of corrective rape and murder, or state executive. SB wants to be able to deport gay people back to countries who will execute them - perhaps only if they fail to remain celibate the rest of their life, but that's a sickening disregard for human life.

They have to do something. It is getting ridiculous. We are having big country hotels shut down left right and centre here in Midlands. It’s all hush hush and very secretly done. Gov and serco aren’t even following planning and just keep adding accommodation onto the estates. Been a big drama in our town and just last week there’s been talk of another hotel closing down with no notice, no explanation, weddings cancelled, jobs gone, local business like caterers and events screwed over.

I also travel a lot for work and a number of the big chain hotel locations have also been blacklisted as they are no longer safe for lone women.

If they haven’t stopped them coming I don’t see how they ever will so they need to rethink the application process and how they manage the accommodation and notice for hotel closures etc.

Well we all know why she made that speech, there is an election coming. She also thinks this will give her more Brownie points with the far right element of the Conservative Party.

It’s worth noting this relevant facf from the BBC’s website.
“In 2022, there were 1,334 asylum applications lodged in the UK, where sexual orientation was part of the basis for the claim.
This represents 1.5% of 74,751 asylum claims made last year.”
So are we supposed to worry about 1.5% of asylum applications? Or is it all part of their “war on woke” ridiculousness?

Why are basic human rights still not the norm in so many countries? What can we do about that?

Agree @donquixotedelamancha.

“Responding to the speech, the Refugee Council, which works closely with asylum seekers, questioned Braverman’s claim that there was a lower bar to being granted asylum on the grounds of discrimination.

Jon Featonby, the charity’s chief policy analyst, said: “In our work with people in the asylum system, we have seen no evidence that Home Office decision-makers are lowering the threshold for asylum so that a well-founded fear of persecution is replaced with discrimination. The home secretary’s claims do not appear to be grounded in credible evidence.”

Leading immigration barrister, Colin Yeo, says Braverman’s speech is nonsense. For example, he points outs no one gets asylum by merely being a woman or being gay as she claims.

There isn’t enough room or money to accept everyone who wants to come so SB’s saying we should take people with the greatest need, ie in physical danger.

Fair enough. I work with ostensibly illegal refugees and plenty fall into this category. (Their peril is not just from crossing the Channel on a lilo.)

I might add ‘boot the Home Office up the bum to process applications faster than five years’. That asylum hotel bill is what stirs resentment, not fugitives fleeing civil
war.

But agree with SB with caution - we should always watch out for Tories creating scapegoats for the poverty they and their rich friends dumped us in.

In the BBC article they have a chart showing a big increase in migration, but only after something they label "change in mentodology" but no footnote to explain what that is. Does anyone know?

In fairness, even with the methodolgy change there has been a big increase in nett migration in recent years. That has nothing to do with some sudden set of legal changes and everything to do with us appointing a series of shit Home Secretaries.

If only Suella Braverman were in charge of UK borders, doubtless she'd sort it all out. Oh, wait a minute......

the change in mentodolgy was when the EU crts changed the meaning of refugee, ie from someone who is persecuted to someone who is discriminated against

That hasn't happened. SB is just making shit up.

For example, the 1.5% of refugees who claim asylum based on being homsexual come from countries where being gay carries the death penalty (the vast majority from Iran, Saudi or Afganistan).

If discrimination was the criteria then hundreds of countries would be eligable and there would be huge numbers of refugees coming. The small boats crisis wouldn't exist because they could all claim to be discriminated against for being gay.

It was done incrementally through multiple crt cases making new case law.

Which ones? Could you give examples of court cases where someone has been given asylum because they were 'discriminated against'.

I don’t think it’s to do with a change in refugee status. The chart you’re talking about is on migration, not refugees (refugees are a minority of migrants).

Migration into and out of the UK used to based on the International Passenger Survey - A survey that sampled passengers at major ports and estimated figures from that. But this method has been known to be fairly inaccurate for at least a decade, in particular underestimating numbers migrating out of the UK.

The ONS has been working on using administrative data sets from sources like visa applications and has moved over to that methodology and adjusted the IPS data from some previous years.

It was done incrementally through multiple crt cases making new case law. The wording of the act has not changed just the way that those words have been interpreted by judges and thus the way it works and data collection has evolved to keep up so refugee/asylum seeker no longer just means at risk of persecution etc, thus the people who would previously been denighed asylum as they were not eligible to claim asylum now are, can and do, hence the jumps in numbers.

@IwantToRetire the change in mentodolgy was when the EU crts changed the meaning of refugee, ie from someone who is persecuted to someone who is discriminated against.
And yes the BBC is doing the usual biased reporting and selective quoting. She did talk about the failure of multiculturalism (ie the salad bowl vs the mixing bowl), however it was a small part of her speach and she spent more time on putin and the wagner group weaponising migration than multiculturalism.

I mean, she's right, isn't she? It's not working. The wealthier countries of the west cannot actually take in all the people who would qualify under that kind of system. As much as some people feel it's not right, or that somehow the western nations need to do it as a kind of atonement, it's simply not possible for that to work.

There is already considerable strain in many parts of the west, and where it is being felt, it is creating a really cynical attitude about the whole refugee system, quite possibly endangering it's existence.