It is not illegal to be an asylum seeker

[antelopevalley]

It is legal to cross the channel in a boat and claim asylum when you reach Britain. People who do this are not illegal, they are acting within the law.

Completely. It's such a weird dystopia we are living in when the government can lie about this and other things without caring about the consequences

Agreed. Our Prime Minister lied about this today on Radio 4.

Is your government copying our government in Australia?

We’ve been calling asylum seekers illegal immigrants and putting any asylum seeker arriving by boat into indefinite detention where they are treated inhumanly for a couple of decades now.

I thought the international community (rightly) looked down on us for doing that.

@ImustLearn2Cook Our government does that too. It is terrible.

I thought crossing illegally is illegal.

I listened to someone on Radio 5 today saying that it offended the British sense of fairness for people to be coming here without permission so people were quite ready to believe that asylum seekers were illegal. Depressing.

It's not the crossing that's illegal, it's the arrival.

But, if they arrive seeking asylum, that is not illegal - it's protected by international agreement and we have an obligation to assess each case individually.

Yes we do have that obligation and no one can be defined as here illegally until their claim to asylum is processed and refused, but a lot of people don't want to recognise that.

Indeed. It just reinforces my position that "a lot of people" are wilfully-ignorant idiots.

The government have deliberately closed off safe passages.

The right wing press are colluding with the government to encourage the belief that the act of crossing is illegal.

More putting the Tory party way ahead of the actual country. More distraction. More gaslighting.

Its disgusting and further shames the country.

Nope. If I won the lottery and bought a yacht in France before sailing it back to the UK, I would have no obligation to notify anyone I was crossing until I arrived. If I didn’t check in with customs / immigration, that might be illegal but none of my actions until then would be. The same goes for people who aren’t British. It isn’t (yet) a crime to travel without a visa.

Asylum seekers by definition check in with the authorities to make their claim for asylum so they are not illegal at any time.

If their application for asylum plus any appeals are turned down and they don’t leave (which can take years), then they become illegal immigrants.

Basically, there is no such thing as ‘crossing illegally’, just possible illegal actions on arrival.

So does everyone who crosses claim asylum?

Well, don't they often get picked up and taken straight to a centre where they can claim asylum?

I wish the government would just hurry up and give them all status so they can join the workforce.

Well said op. Here’s the Home Secretary admitting the same - that for the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers, the only way to claim asylum is by arriving on UK soil.

mobile.twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1595362008072863746?s=20&t=DWgeO6h9dqGLajCwn1EXLQ

So Sunak’s announcement today declaring asylum seekers “illegal immigrants” was incorrect and inflammatory. As we’ve come to expect.

Is your government copying our government in Australia?

Probably, I guess the Rwanda policy was inspired by Nauru offshore processing.

That's not quite true under maritime law the classification of vessel that are manly used in these crossing are baned from the shipping lanes and merely entering them let alone travelling through them (which many do) is a crime and as such it is technically an illegal crossing. Basically it's the equivalent of taking a bicycle on a motorway. Whilst I know that using this technicality to call them illegal crossing is not only a massive overstatement but grossly inflammatory, it is however true in the technical way and as such the press and government can get away with it.

Yes, it’s a very convenient ‘ooh look over there’ policy isn’t it?

They are PROBABLY ALL illegal entrants as Immigration law does not allow a person to knowingly enter the UK without leave. If a person is from a country which requires pre clearance (visa) they are entering illegally E.g. Albania.
The fact that they are assumed to be here to lodge a claim for asylum does not remove the fact they have entered illegally until they make the claim.
It is true they cannot claim from abroad.

Why are so many men coming from Albania? Looking at a graphic in BBC website most asylum claims by Albanians in a number of countries are rejected, so I assume they then become illegal immigrants.

There have never been avenues for people to claim asylum from abroad. There have been additional visa regimes implemented which prevent people being able to travel to UK without pre clearance.
What safe passages do you think have been closed?

A lot of trafficking (which the Albanian authorities appear to be somewhat in collusion with) with men/boys being trafficked for forced labour, and women and girls being trafficked for enforced prostitution. (Women and girls are usually trafficked by air which is why they don’t show up so much in the boat numbers.)

Which is why sending them straight back to Albania doesn’t work, as they go straight back into the system. What works better is providing asylum so the criminals running the gangs can be identified and targeted and the trafficking route closed down.

I'm glad you posted this OP.

Can anyone let me know whether I've got this right please?

Claiming Asylum is legal.

People can only claim asylum in the UK once they are physically here.

There are only two ways to reach the UK either to claim asylum or for any other purpose - by plane or by boat.

There is no visa available for the purposes of claiming asylum.

So in order to physically get to the UK for the perfectly legal purpose of claiming asylum people have to either take a flight or boat.

This gives an overview of some of the problems.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_Albania

Punishing the people who are trafficked, rather than the criminal gangs who are trafficking them, will not stop the problem.

And for anyone relying on “safe routes”

Not one person has been accepted and evacuated from Afghanistan under the Home Office’s Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS), launched in January, prompting claims that ministers are showing a “toxic combination of incompetence and indifference”. The scheme was intended to help Afghans who worked for, or were affiliated with, the British government – including its embassy staff and British Council teachers – and all of whom face severe harm at the hands of the Taliban.

(article contains upsetting pictures and story about a child so avoid if you need to)

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/03/revealed-uk-has-failed-to-resettle-afghans-facing-torture-and-death-despite-promise?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other