@marmaladeo I’ve commented on the speech below. Hopefully it helps
He [the prime minister] said anyone entering this country illegally, will be detained and swiftly removed. No half measures.
Because detaining and removing people with legal representation or due process breaks all human rights and refugee resettlement conventions - it’s basically illegal
The Illegal Migration Bill will fulfil that promise.
There’s no such thing as illegal migration. It’s ludicrous to expect people who are trafficked or fleeing war to have visas and paperwork. These are refugees and protected by international law
It will allow us to stop the boats that are bringing tens of thousands to our shores in flagrant breach of both our laws and the will of the British people.
Nazis used terms like ‘swarm’ and invasion and called anyone who challenged their rhetoric unpatriotic. The language used here evokes very similar imagery.
The United Kingdom must always support the world’s most vulnerable. Since 2015 we’ve given sanctuary to nearly half a million people through family resettlement and global safe and legal routes. These include 150,000 people from Hong Kong escaping autocracy, 160,000 Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s war, and 25,000 Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Indeed my own parents did, decades ago found security and opportunity in this country, something for which my family is eternally grateful.
Half a million people in nearly 8 years is a laughably small number. Braverman’s personal history is being used as a manipulation tactic - she’s suggesting she can’t possibly be ‘anti immigration as the child of immigrant’
Crucially, these are decisions supported by the British people precisely because they were decisions made by the British people, through their elected representatives - not by the people smugglers and other criminals breaking into Britain daily.
Translation - you voted in a Tory government so we can do what we like and assume you support it because you elected us in. Dissent means you’re aligned with smugglers and criminals
The small boats problem is part of a larger global migration crisis.
In the coming years, developed countries will face unprecedented pressures levels from ever greater numbers of people leaving the developing world for places like the UK.
Unless we act today, the problem will be worse tomorrow. And the problem is already unsustainable.
Actually we have significantly fewer migrants entering the UK than 20 years ago, but why let data stand in the way of fear-mongering to generate antipathy towards a vulnerable group.
People are dying in the Channel. The volume of illegal arrivals has overwhelmed our asylum system.
The backlog has ballooned to over 160,000.
Primarily due to people trafficking and the reduction in asylum application processing - this legislation does nothing to address either of those issues (and contravenes international human rights law)
The asylum system now costs the British taxpayer £3 billion a year. Since 2018, some 85,000 people illegally entered the UK by small boat - 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. All travelled through multiple safe countries in which they could and should have claimed asylum. Many came from safe countries, like Albania. Almost all passed through France.
More scaremongering and a deliberate misrepresentation of international law. There’s no requirement for a refugee to stay in the first safe country - if there was then we could only accept French or Irish refugees which would mean we’d contribute nothing to the global refugee crisis, and all of the world’s Syrian, Iraqis and Afghan refugees entering Europe would have to stay in Turkey - clearly unsustainable and ludicrous.
The vast majority – 74% in 2021 – were adult males under the age of 40, rich enough to pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds for passage.
Of course they were. If you can only afford a single passage then it’s sensible the man makes the dangerous journey first - would any mothers reading this genuinely go to seek asylum in another country leaving their children behind? Or send a single child alone? Doubtful. But what is a sensible practical decision made in extremis is being used to imply that healthy men seeking safety, work and a life for their families is sinister. It’s more rhetoric aimed at inciting hatred for a vulnerable group.
Upon arrival, most are accommodated in hotels across the country, costing the British taxpayer around £6 million a day.The risk remains that these individuals just disappear.
And when we try to remove them, they turn our generous asylum laws against us to prevent removal.
Yes they need to be housed whilst their cases are assessed. Asylum accommodation is often dangerous, it’s not something most people will choose. There are documented cases of people traffickers abducting vulnerable migrants from government accommodation. So yes they may just disappear - due to the inadequate services provided by the Tory government.
People arriving in boats can only use our laws if they have a legal case to apply them to. Surely this is the purpose of having laws? Instead, the Home Secretary is literally suggesting that we remove any legal process or protection for asylum claims and just deport people who arrive in boats regardless of their refugee or human trafficking status.