People facing a fear of discrimination should not be able to claim refugee status apparently.

[cakeorwine]

Women fleeing countries where they could be stoned to death, treated as second class citizens. For example, women from Afghanistan.

LGBT people who live in countries where you can be arrested and face the death penalty for being LGBT.

I'm surprised that this Government allow Ukrainian refugees in. Their country has only been invaded but I guess that's their tough luck

"Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, Ms Braverman is expected to say: “I think most members of the public would recognise those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, as in need of protection.
“However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’.
“And a similar shift away from a ‘well-founded fear’ toward a ‘credible’ or ‘plausible fear’.
“The practical consequence of which has been to expand the number of those who may qualify for asylum, and to lower the threshold for doing so.

“Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.

“Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.
“But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.”

So you have to wait until you actually get persecuted, till you get arrested, tortured etc before you can flee a country.

Oh - and apparently she has an issue with coming through safe countries?

Does she know how many refugees actually come to the UK compared to the rest of the world?

We take very few.

https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics

Turkey has 3 million
Germany has 2 million
1 in 5 refugees are Syrians fleeing the war there.

And where are we going to get housing to home all these extra people? Extra school places, extra doctors, nurses to cover any population boost?

The same place we got them before thousands of EU workers went home after Brexit. Funny that there were enough school places and the NHS was better then, isn’t it?

I think you may find that she would not be alone in supporting a change on these rules. Europe has had enough and it is a concern for Americans too. How much more are we expected to help before we are as poor? People are on their knees with expenses and endless taxes ideas.

Changes in law/refugee status or claims are irrelevant.

What you and everyone else on here is not recognising, is the fact that unless force is used, people will keep coming to Europe.

So we reject 85% of claims under Bravermans new world order, then what? what are you going to do with this 85% ?

Very few countries will accept migrant returns...

There are already 1m (approx) here the UK with out any right to be here and that doesn't include the 1000s in hotels.

As for "we haven't enough houses/schools/hospitals etc etc" better ask Braverman and Sunak why they have invited in (up to) 5m HK Chinese to the UK.... HK may not be the most democratic of places but its hardly Sudan or Kabul either.

How many are there?

She knows she's not going to get any kind of change through parliament before the Tories are flushed out in a general election. She's pitching her stall to be leader or influential in the aftermath.

Climate change is going to produce volumes of refugees that will dwarf current figures. If the Tories cared about the future of the nation and planet, they'd not be trying to rip up Net Zero.

They know they're in the dustbin, this is desperate posturing.

There weren't enough school places around here.

According to a discussion on Radio 4 the French interpret the law differently to us which is why they do little to stop people launching from their shores in small boats.
Surely they could sabotage the lorry loads of plastic inflatables crossing their country, arrest people smugglers etc etc etc

Totally agree but if she thinks she has any hope of the leadership she’s deluded. Or at least if they ever want to be in power again.

Half the job is to explain to people the procedures and options available, I had root canal treatment and it was very costly and took several visits, I think speaking English was certainly a requirement.

@SueDonnym Surely the reason the French interpret the law whatever way they like is because they want to get rid of the migrants and make them the UK's problem?

The French are in Schengen so they can't really stop anyone entering France from adjoining EU countries.
As to why they don't stop the boats - same reason we wouldn't bother too much if people were jumping into to boats in Dover to try to get to France.

France said no to taking arrivals from Lampedusa the other day. And offered up Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal as places to take people

Germany has also switched views and retreated

We won’t buck the trend for long. Why would we. It’ll cause as much strain here as there

Not really true, France does a great deal to remove the attractiveness of Northern France for migrants, they don't want 10s of '000s of people heading to Calais constantly.

But transporting/selling dinghies isn't illegal and the French coast line is huge and often very remote, what do you expect 2 Gendarmes to do against a determined group of 50+ migrants?

The UK also removed itself from Europol and other EU criminal databases, so our input into the traffickers is limited plus we don't go after the UK end of the gangs either.... we could do but migration is used as a means to attack Labour with.

I don't mean that they want them camped out across north France! They're aware that they have no intention of stopping the migrants getting in to France, so of course their only option is to allow them to keep moving back out of it again. Of course they could stop them if they wanted to, as could every other country.

Labour and the Tories, and every other mainstream political party in all western countries, have implemented historically unprecedented mass immigration policies for decades. This isn't a party political issue, or a UK issue. They have lots of reasons for it, but I suggest the primary one is the demand for cheap and easily exploited labour, high property prices and bank profits.

It's changing now, of course, as the problems spin out of control, as long predicted. Now people like Macron have to pretend to want to change course. Just like Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel all declaring about 12 years ago that multiculturalism was a failed policy. Memory-holed of course. Just a sop to gullible voters.

Ms. Braverman is a poor excuse for an human being.

France and Germany essentially run the EU. They wrote Schengen and they could change it in a heartbeat if they wanted to. Or simply ignore it. Or indeed 'temporarily suspend' it perfectly legally for any one of half a dozen good legal reasons, as has been done before. They choose to allow it.

did we engage in a war in their countries where one of the stated aims was the protection of the rights of the women? and then did we just abandon them to their fates?

“”! They're aware that they have no intention of stopping the migrants getting in to France, so of course their only option is to allow them to keep moving back out of it again. Of course they could stop them if they wanted to, as could every other country.””

No I’m sure you can’t pick someone up and ship them to where they don’t want to be as they have human rights. It would be abduction, physical attack, unjustified arrest or something a well paid lawyer can drum up to result in reparation paid to immigrant.

What she is actually being quoted as going to say is:

"I think most members of the public would recognise those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, as in need of protection.However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’ …
Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.
Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.
But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection."

In other words "being potentially stoned to death, being hung for being LGBT" would still be covered. How this would play out in practice is of course a different question.

"It's not very Christian, is it?* She's Buddhist, isn't she? She took her oath of allegiance as an MP on the Buddhist Dhammapada

Under international law you can offer a safe place that is not the country they’ve arrived in

Which is why Aus have done it whilst still part of UNHCR

I agree with Suella Braverman. Being gay in a country which executes people for being gay shouldn't automatically lead to asylum. You should have to provide evidence of the fact you have actually been executed to be considered.

Every country on earth has behaved badly to other countries in some form or another at some point in their history. Many have genocided each other, often more than once. It doesn't follow that they should then abolish their state and their borders, which you claim to be the logical moral consequence. By that logic all states and all borders should be abolished.

Apart from anything else, it's not particularly sane to bomb, invade or colonize a country and then invite people from that country to come live in yours. Some of them are, how should I put this, a little pissed off with you about the whole bombing, invasion and occupation business.

Beyond that, the actual people of Britain have no real say in its foreign policy any more than they do in its immigration policies. Most of them are kept completely ignorant of anything that matters, so they'll swallow any old propaganda and nod along to invading whatever country the government has decided to invade today. (Imagine believing you could turn Afghanistan into a western liberal democracy - future historians will come up with complex conspiracy theories to try to understand such mass delusion.) The people of western countries don't deserve to have their borders abolished and their enemies invited to live beside them as a result of decisions they had no genuine say in.

Re imposing border controls would a: be incredibly damaging to trade and b; the end of the EU.

Nor would it stop migration, people in Libya aren't bothered that they'll be stopped crossing into France from Italy, we (the UK) aren't in Schengen, have border controls and a bloody great bit of sea to cross... doesn't stop anyone.

No i m afraid the only way, if you wish to stop migration, is force, both in the channel and in the Med but no one wants to face this simply truth...

I think within a year or two, we could see deliberately sinking boats as an acceptable deterrent.

Laws, including human rights laws, are written by people. They change all the time. The reason the laws are the way they currently are is because those in power want them that way.

The majority of people in western countries (and actually everywhere) do not want to grant their fellow humans a right to asylum in the country of their choice. That's why they will never be asked if they want to change the laws to reflect their wishes.