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.

I don't disagree @tobee. However in The Commons today Starmer used the same language as the Conservatives and appeared to agree with their sentiments WRT asylum seekers and 'legality'. Of course, he disagreed with their proposals etc., but it struck me that even the Labour Party Leader failed to take the opportunity point out the flaws and unfairness in the whole system and the nonsensical use of the word 'illegal'.

I agree it is wrong to call asylum seekers illegal. It’s factually incorrect and it promotes discrimination. It encourages people to turn a blind eye to the way these people are treated. People justify the mistreatment of asylum seekers because they view them as illegal immigrants who shouldn’t break the law. It’s defamatory.

I know that the below is from Australia rather than the UK but I think it could still be relevant.

Why calling people ‘illegal’ is wrong

There are many reasons why it is wrong to call people seeking asylum ‘illegal’. It wrongly suggests these people are criminals. It fosters prejudice towards outsiders. It also suggests these people do not have rights.’

www.refugeecouncil.org.au/illegals/

Suella Braverman was questioned in a really interesting way in a select committee about this issue. It’s a 2 minute video but the takeaway is that there are no safe and legal routes to arrive in the UK to claim asylum unless you are from Syria, Ukraine or Afghanistan. So if you are impacted by any other persecution, war etc then its small boats for you.

Video link!

No has to take a small boat to the UK to claim asylum - you're supposed to claim asylum in the first safe country you arrive in.

Which is why some countries e.g Lebanon really are overwhelmed with refugees/asylum seeke and wealthy countries like the UK need to set up safe routes for applications from abroad. if you think the UK is dealing with a lot glad you don't live somewhere like Uganda.

I completely agree with this. But I take issue with the suggestion that anyone has to take a small boat to the UK. Why not claim asylum in France or whichever other safe country they travelled through?

However even if safe routes to the UK were provided for more nationalities, realistically it still wouldn't include Albanians as it's.not a warzone and the vast majority of their asylum applications are refused.

Yes this is correct.

There is never any “legal route” to claim asylum except in the sort of exceptional circumstances where a country effectively opens its border to refugees (such as we saw with Ukrainians earlier this year).

The issue that successive Home Secretaries raise - and I’m not commenting on the moral rightness of this - is that if a person is genuinely fleeing for their life/to avoid human rights abuses or some other reason which means they absolutely cannot stay in their own country, you would expect them to claim asylum in the first safe country they arrive in. If you are Albanian for example you could easily cross over into Greece or Italy but to get to the UK by boat they have to first pass through a number of countries that would be considered safe.

Basically Suella Braverman would say if you are genuinely in need of asylum and you are in France - a safe country - why are you not claiming asylum there instead of staying there illegally and trying to get to the UK?

The question in the video was about someone wanting to reach the UK due to family connections. Some people will want to settle in the UK, others will want to settle elsewhere, for very good reasons. When people face war or disaster, they don’t lose their humanity. People want to settle where they have support and the chance to continue their lives. Usually they won’t be able to go home anytime soon, if ever. The world has benefitted greatly from this movement of people and it is one of the only good things to come out of the terrible situations that people and countries are actively involved in precipitating around the world, including the UK unfortunately.

Well that's awfully convenient for those of a xenophobic inclination. As the UK is an island, what you are basically saying is that the UK has no obligation to refugees ever, unless there is some humanitarian catastrophe in the Republic of Ireland.

Why should France take them, they are very unlikely to have landed on the French coast. Should Greece and Italy take the entire burden for Europe? Or should we push it back to Turkey and Lebanon who already have refugees make up a significant part of their population?

Focusing on the asylum seekers themselves distracts from the enormous problem of the people trafficking industry that means groups of young men (predominantly, because the conditions are so unsafe that more vulnerable people are left behind) are attempting unsafe boat passage between France and the UK. Enormous harm is done by all the intermediaries who make money from this.

Arguably this focus on the asylum seekers and whether there is space for them suits the government. The alternative would be governments working together to design systems that enabled refugees to claim asylum and travel safely to countries providing it without having to get involved with people traffickers.

This. I have very recently had the same conversation with someone I thought was amenable to facts.

I was wrong!

However, there does need to be an honest, open, fact based discussion about the global shifting of large cohorts of people. An effectively open door is not a sustainable policy and a wholly closed on is in no way sensible or humane.

But the British Isles have long been the last stopping place in Westerly migrations, for blindingly obvious reasons.

For those claiming people have to claim in first safe country, have a read

Thread: With protests taking place against asylum seekers today, and being the eternal optimist that I am, let's try and fully address this whole thing about "first safe country" and why it has no basis in either law or reality, along with a couple of other things

twitter.com/stand_for_all/status/1302290335373176833?t=sG8nbjA7i0CO4qc2kaXl3w&s=19

Ideally they'd claim asylum in the first safe country they entered but then there would be an agreement by EU countries and UK to house their fair share, taking into account family connections/ preferences where possible.

Somehow there's got to be a disincentive to pay smugglers thousands of pounds to risk such an unsafe crossing. It's not that easy though.

ad infiitum?
Where does it stop?

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

This isn’t the intended purpose of asylum tho?

A lot of them are economic migrants though, they are not coming here and claiming asylum because they are persecuted.

Incidentally, Uganda's treatment of refugees (of which there are very many) is one of the few things the government does well.
But then I imagine we would treat asylum seekers differently if they were from France. It's not random that Ukrainians are the only group that get special treatment.

If so, the answer is to have an efficient processing system for asylum claims so that non-genuine claimants can be sent back to their country of origin without delay. The answer is obviously NOT to call every asylum seeker illegal.

Last month or so, ITV News did a report on Albania and asylum seekers ( young men)crossing the Channel in boats. They talked to a young man who wished to come over to the UK. They went into his house which was small, but nicely furnished, set in a well kept garden in a small town. It looked like a lovely place to live. What could he have been told he would get if he entered the UK and claimed asylum?
A mansion with servants?

Exactly, it doesn't stop.

I want the UK to do its bit and welcome those in need. But I also want the NHS to cope, the welfare system to cope, housing, schools, etc etc. And I don't want criminal gangs with small boats to make money taking people across the channel.

Most of those coming on small boats now are Albanians who are primarily economic migrants not eligible for resettlement and unlikely to be offered asylum so how do we stop them making the journey?

Economic reasons are a valid/understandable reason to want to migrate but realistically we can't just have an open borders policy to anyone who wants to settle here - very few countries do.

Somehow there's got to be a disincentive to pay smugglers thousands of pounds to risk such an unsafe crossing. It's not that easy though.

It is easy. The government could resolve that problem relatively easily by offering safe crossings combined with an efficient asylum processing system. The current system whereby asylum claims can take years to process incentivises false claims.

It's not generally known that we have a large backlog of immigration tribunal appeals whilst immigration judges are twiddling their thumbs doing nothing because the government won't fund the system properly. If Sunak diverted the money he is putting into some stupid Channel small boat force into clearing that backlog it would make much more sense.

The highest number of people crossing the Channel and claiming Asylum are actually from Iran.