Asylum seekers to the UK sent to Rwanda

[Dodie66]

What do you think about the governments plan to send all asylum seekers that come to the UK to Rwanda to be processed. I think this is inhumane. A lot of them have come from places like Syria, Iran etc and travelled across the channel with all the associated risks only to be sent 6000 mile to be processed. What about the cost to do this? I think it’s a big mistake

What on earth are you on about now @saraclara ? You’ve added 2 & 2 and got 5
at least apply some logic if you want to jump to conclusions

Wasn't it better than a tent in Calais though

3 yummy square meals for asylum seekers?

““Congealed” pasta, cold chicken burgers and boxes of cereal without bowls to eat from are provided by caterers on a Home Office budget reported to be £6
per person, per day. Fresh fruit and vegetables appear scarce.”

“providers gave neither children nor adults – including pregnant and breastfeeding mothers – fresh vegetables at any point during the week.”

“Children from asylum seeking families often go without breakfast because providers do not serve it until after they leave for school, MacInnes told The Big Issue. A free school meal is the only hot food many of these children will eat in a day, she said.”

And an interesting side note on how £5 per person per day isn’t “luxury”.

“”We met a guy in a hotel in Slough and he had a Home Office appointment at 8.30am in Croydon [40 miles away]. But he only had £8 for the week.
“How is he meant to get there? If you don’t go to these appointments they can cancel your claim.
“It’s certainly a hostile environment. There is no provision for people that meets the barest minimum, not even to cover travel to meet your solicitor.”
MacInnes said some asylum seekers were being asked to provide a “good reason” if they wanted to leave the hotels they were staying in. Clearsprings has denied this, she added.”

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/people-are-losing-weight-asylum-seekers-reveal-shocking-meals-in-lockdown/

It’s interesting that the last article I quoted was from The Big Issue, who most definitely aren’t saying “homeless people would be lucky to be treated like this!” and find it abhorrent. Quite telling.

(Although I do absolutely agree with you that homeless people are treated terribly and should have better access to mental health care and housing.)

I meant somewhere to sleep and washing facilities.

Yes the food sounds awful

Remember the free school meals fiasco in lockdown which was very poor

Yep @woodhill that was shocking wasn’t it, and so similar - another government contract with inadequate food provided by a private company that makes someone rich and harms people in poverty/need.

So if the numbers dropped dramatically this weekend then it’s job done and policy is working .

Depends on your definition of job done. Job done Australia style?

““Australia’s abusive offshore processing policy has caused immeasurable suffering for thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers,” said Sophie McNeill, Australia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The cruelty of these camps, in which seven people have committed suicide and children have been terribly traumatized, should not be replicated elsewhere.”
Since July 19, 2013, the Australian government has forcibly transferred more than 3,000 asylum seekers who sought to reach Australia by boat to offshore processing camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Individuals and families with children spent years living in substandard conditions in these centers, where they suffered severe abuse, inhumane treatment, and medical neglect.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/15/australia-8-years-abusive-offshore-asylum-processing

“Experts are saying that the people transferred to Nauru by Australia are among the most traumatised they have seen, even more traumatised than those in war zones or in refugee camps around the world. Despite repeated calls by the United Nations, medical bodies, hundreds of charities and community groups, both major political parties in Australia continue to believe that it is politically necessary to punish a small number of highly vulnerable people at extraordinary cost. Those costs are borne not only by those people, but also by Australian taxpayers and to Australia’s democracy and sense of itself as a humane, decent country.”

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/nauru-report/

Or job done Israel style?

“All interviewees testified that upon landing in Rwanda the travel document produced by Israel, the only identity document in their possession, was taken away. They were transferred to a guarded hotel and were prevented, under threat, from leaving. None of them were given the opportunity to apply for asylum. Lacking identity documents and exposed to robberies and threats they were forced to embark on dangerous journeys.”

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2018/10/moving-under

And, for balance, a Daily Mail article 😦
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10718481/amp/How-Rwandas-migrant-deal-ended-escapees-claims-slavery.html

including this rather psychopathic nugget
“Simon Hart, the Secretary of State for Wales, said the plan was focused on single young men, as they are considered to be more likely to be economic migrants. But a government source said anyone was eligible, regardless of sex.”

I didn’t say adequate @BewareTheLibrarians , I said three meals a day , and they are probably not the best
het your facts straight

@UpYourBumHun please continue to aggressively agree with me😆

If we’re getting our facts straight, let’s go back to our initial rather confusing conversation, where I replied to someone else that it was the home office choosing the hotels, and you replied to me that they’d set fire to their barracks. (Still not sure how that makes the home office choosing hotels “not hold any water” as again, it is the actions of two completely different groups of people.)

I replied with details of how the Napier barracks were inadequate and unsafe, which could explain how people were driven to that situation. So dry, yes, possibly, but not “safe”. Which is the part I was replying to.

It’s also unclear whether “probably not the best” was referring to the housing or the food, so apologies if I’ve confused the situation by referring to the food.

Australia’s abusive offshore processing policy has caused immeasurable suffering for thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers

Well there's no immeasurable suffering now @BewareTheLibrarians because the numbers seeking asylum have dropped to almost 0.

@SScoobiedoo Just because they’re not going to Australia doesn’t mean they’re suddenly fine. They’re not going to Australia for a holiday, they’re asylum seekers. That means their life is in danger in their home country, where “immeasurable suffering” is also happening.

So, sure, they’re not suffering in Australia but that doesn’t mean they just vanish into thin air. They’re either still in danger in their home country or while being smuggled to other countries (like the UK) instead. But I guess the goal is that all the suffering is happening where you can’t see it, therefore doesn’t matter?

If they were genuine asylum seekers then surely they would get permission to enter and live in Australia.
If the can't prove they are asylum seekers - well you could say that about any immigrant

That's the goal of many on this thread of course. All the people saying "why don't they stay in the first safe country they come to" safe in the knowledge that geography precludes that being ours. And of course if ours was the first safe country, they'd be screaming the opposite, that they country should take their share and help us out.

NIMNYism, but about people.

My post above was to @BewareTheLibrarians . For some reason the quoting feature didn't work.

I get that the asylum seekers should be welcomed BUT the population of poorer countries is just too vast now to let anyone open their doors to all.
Pop of Aus is about 30million, Afghanistan 32 m, Philippines 109 million, Vietnam 98 million, India 1.5billion.
What number should Aus or anyone else let in --- half a million? 10 million? Even that's a tiny drop in the Ocean of total poor world population.
Anyway it's not the poorest street dwellers who are leaving, it's the middle classes who can bribe the traffickers.
It's sad but imv insolvable.

But how @SScoobiedoo ? There are very few safe routes or resettlement schemes that asylum seekers can access. The UK resettles some Afghan translators, but not all - some are still left in Afghanistan despite being targeted by the Taliban for their work with the UK.

And countries like Afghanistan and Eritrea don’t have a functioning embassy that you can go to and ask for asylum.

I’ve already linked something relevant upthread, but I guess it needs posting again.

From Amnesty International, quoting government policy.

“There are no safe and legal routes for people seeking asylum. The immigration rules make no provision for any person to come (or apply to come) to the UK for the purpose of making an asylum claim.

While there is no provision in the rules for permitting a person to come to the UK for the purpose of seeking asylum, Home Office policy is explicit that no claim for asylum in the UK will be considered unless made by a person who is already in the UK.

The Home Office Afghan Locally Engaged Staff policy in conjunction with the immigration rules concerning ‘relevant Afghan citizens’ constitutes something of an exception to this insofar as it permits relocation to the UK of Afghan nationals currently or formerly employed in Afghanistan by the UK “where there is a significant and imminent threat to safety” which cannot be ‘mitigated’ by other means. The way by which the majority of people provided refugee protection in the UK are able to secure that protection is, nonetheless, by making an asylum claim in the UK.

Notwithstanding the position of refugees sur place, most of the relatively modest contribution the UK makes to refugee protection is dependent on routes that are not ‘safe and legal’. Rhetoric and policy that denigrates or penalises women, men and children from seeking asylum by routes that are not ‘safe and legal’ is generally irresponsible and illegitimate. This is even more especially so in circumstances, such as those in the UK, where no such routes exist.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2021-01/Amnesty%20International%20UK%20-%20Safe%20and%20Legal%20Routes%20Briefing_0.pdf

The amnesty link is relevant to the UK of course. I don’t know about the asylum system in Australia but Google tells me

“I am currently outside Australia but wish to seek asylum. Can UNHCR assist me?
If you are outside Australia and wish to seek asylum, you should contact the UNHCR office in the country you are in.
Contact details for UNHCR offices around the world can be found on the UNHCR website.”

At least it’s slightly more humane than the UK system of not being able to claim asylum until you’re in the UK, which again just increases problems like people smuggling and dangerous boat crossings.

Just read that the first legal claims are being made against Priti Patel for failure to disclose the criteria for taking people to Rwanda without their consent and agreement. They will argue that that the removal of individuals from the UK to Rwanda under the proposed scheme would be unlawful as the policy penalises asylum seekers on the grounds of their irregular entry,

.

In the last 9 days no new migrants have crossed the channel perhaps showing the plan is working and they might find France a better place to call home.

Yes there needs to be a deterrent or a way of applying without crossing in a boat

Relevant for @Xenia is this 16 year old’s experience:

“Sometimes we stayed in a refugee camp but the conditions were inhuman, with 50 of us cramped in a room and the food was so bad we could barely eat it.”
Ahmad managed to make his way across Europe and after an unhappy spell in the “jungle” camps of Calais in France, where he was regularly attacked, he took a smuggler’s boat across the English Channel to Dover.”

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/yemen-refugee-grateful-new-life-26796353

If there’s anyone on this thread who thinks a child should stay in France and risk being attacked and beaten, rather than be safe in the UK I hope they are at least too ashamed to say that out loud.