Being gay or a woman isn't reason enough to claim asylum - Suella Braverman

[IwantToRetire]

She will be speaking to the American Enterprise Institute, a centre-right thinktank in Washington DC, to set out her plans to tackle the refugee crisis.
https://news.sky.com/story/home-secretary-suella-braverman-to-question-if-refugee-convention-is-fit-for-our-modern-age-in-us-think-tank-speech-12970029

I cant find a recording of the actual speech but I think this might be it

To paraphrase what I heard earlier today she was going to say, she is arguing that being discriminated against isn't a basis for asylum, but persecution is.

The example given was if you live in a country that culturally opposes same sex attraction you just have to live with it, but if you suffer consequences eg corrective rape of lesbians then you can be an asylum speaker.

I dont see how this distinction would work in relation to state and individual sexism / discrimination against women. Being subjected to violence, rape, lack of schooling and employment.

Or is she saying inequality is acceptable?

What she is saying is how the international refugee system was set up and worked for most of its history. Which was largely set up after the experience of people fleeing because they were likely to be murdered.

It's not just being discriminated against, being unable to find a job, life being kind of shitty, having to follow unfair laws, etc. Much of the world lives that way, when push comes to shove.

To claim refuge status there needs to be a credible threat of that individual being harmed or killed, basically.

There is a point where these two things can rub up against each other, and a decision has to be made. What she is saying is that the approach of opening it up into a more generalized sense of "harm" is not going to work.

What she is saying is that the approach of opening it up into a more generalized sense of "harm" is not going to work.

In fact

What she is saying is that the approach of opening it up into a more generalized sense of "harm" is not working.

ie following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 70s many women were given asylum in the UK on the basis that their human rights would be denied them because of state fundamentalism.

She is saying that those women should not have qualified for asylum as they are just having to live with "discrimination".

At its most extreme what she is saying is that unless you can prove extreme violence you aren't an asylum seeker. But by then you would probably be dead.

Does this mean that minority groups in countries who are denied equal rights in their country of birth to education, employment, religious freedom, shouldn't be considered for asylum.

I heard most of her speach live on the BBC.
My understanding of what she was saying is that the crts have over time reinterpreted the original meaning of a refuge from someone who is at risk of persecution to someone who is discriminated against (or might be) and that we (the west) need to go back to the original meaning. That we should protect and give asylum to people who are sex trafficked by not those who pay people smugglers because they aren't the same (though she claims that the crts insist they are), that someone living in a country that has laws that say they can't adopt due to being gay should not be able to claim asylum whereas someone who could be killed for being gay should. There was more about the way the system is gamed and abused aswell.
So I think that yes she is basically saying that discrimination should not be a reason to claim asylum.

Her speach was clear, well thought out and came across as a logical and reasonable proposal, which Imho was the most terrifying part of it. I can see people nodding along and not realising where this road leads.

Obviously you have to feel for people living in countries where they can't be themselves freely, but while that's "all" it takes a huge % of the world's population must be entitled to claim asylum and that's obviously not practical.

Of course it does because otherwise you could have half the population of a large number of countries seeking to claim asylum - millions and millions of women and their children or who belong to marginalised groups - and what would become of the system then?

We can't save the world, we can try to fight oppression with who we support but all the Afghan women and kids, all the Saudi women, everyone from North Korea, every minority group from China, the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Uyghurs, all the people around the world who can't get the medication they need to stay alive, all the street kids around the world, all the people around the world that currently live in rubbish dumps, everyone who is gay and living in a country where it's not legal, all the women that are currently working as sex workers as they don't have any other choice, all the people barely surviving on less than a dollar a day, we just can't give them all what they deserve and need - there are too many problems in the world and we cannot solve the worlds problems, as unfair as it is that people are living in this way.

I mean, she's right, isn't she? It's not working. The wealthier countries of the west cannot actually take in all the people who would qualify under that kind of system. As much as some people feel it's not right, or that somehow the western nations need to do it as a kind of atonement, it's simply not possible for that to work.

There is already considerable strain in many parts of the west, and where it is being felt, it is creating a really cynical attitude about the whole refugee system, quite possibly endangering it's existence.

I think what @Hoardasurass said is probably closer to the reality, but either she or the newspapers have tried to make out she is tearing up the rule book (as part of a campaign to become PM / Tory Leader)

eg the BBC is saying that her speech is about how multiculturalism has failed which puts a very different slant on wanting to restrict the basis for asylum. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66922119

1. Home Secretary Suella Braverman says multiculturalism has "failed" during a speech on migration in the US
2. She does not outline any new policies but calls for a new international approach to granting asylum and changes to the 1951 Refugee Convention
3. And she says fearing discrimination for being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify for refugee protection
4. But the UN says the Refugee Convention is "as relevant as ever" and has saved "millions of lives"

Which implies it is about re-interpreting the existing Convention.

Help! In the BBC article they have a chart showing a big increase in migration, but only after something they label "change in mentodology" but no footnote to explain what that is. Does anyone know?

@IwantToRetire the change in mentodolgy was when the EU crts changed the meaning of refugee, ie from someone who is persecuted to someone who is discriminated against.
And yes the BBC is doing the usual biased reporting and selective quoting. She did talk about the failure of multiculturalism (ie the salad bowl vs the mixing bowl), however it was a small part of her speach and she spent more time on putin and the wagner group weaponising migration than multiculturalism.

the change in mentodolgy was when the EU crts changed the meaning of refugee, ie from someone who is persecuted to someone who is discriminated against

Do you have a link to that? ie was it the result of a court case or is it something that the ECHR porvided policy on.

Have to say I wasn't aware of a change. For instance dont remember it coming up re Brexit etc..

But maybe I wasn't paying attention.

It was done incrementally through multiple crt cases making new case law. The wording of the act has not changed just the way that those words have been interpreted by judges and thus the way it works and data collection has evolved to keep up so refugee/asylum seeker no longer just means at risk of persecution etc, thus the people who would previously been denighed asylum as they were not eligible to claim asylum now are, can and do, hence the jumps in numbers.

I don’t think it’s to do with a change in refugee status. The chart you’re talking about is on migration, not refugees (refugees are a minority of migrants).

Migration into and out of the UK used to based on the International Passenger Survey - A survey that sampled passengers at major ports and estimated figures from that. But this method has been known to be fairly inaccurate for at least a decade, in particular underestimating numbers migrating out of the UK.

The ONS has been working on using administrative data sets from sources like visa applications and has moved over to that methodology and adjusted the IPS data from some previous years.

the change in mentodolgy was when the EU crts changed the meaning of refugee, ie from someone who is persecuted to someone who is discriminated against

That hasn't happened. SB is just making shit up.

For example, the 1.5% of refugees who claim asylum based on being homsexual come from countries where being gay carries the death penalty (the vast majority from Iran, Saudi or Afganistan).

If discrimination was the criteria then hundreds of countries would be eligable and there would be huge numbers of refugees coming. The small boats crisis wouldn't exist because they could all claim to be discriminated against for being gay.

It was done incrementally through multiple crt cases making new case law.

Which ones? Could you give examples of court cases where someone has been given asylum because they were 'discriminated against'.

In the BBC article they have a chart showing a big increase in migration, but only after something they label "change in mentodology" but no footnote to explain what that is. Does anyone know?

In fairness, even with the methodolgy change there has been a big increase in nett migration in recent years. That has nothing to do with some sudden set of legal changes and everything to do with us appointing a series of shit Home Secretaries.

If only Suella Braverman were in charge of UK borders, doubtless she'd sort it all out. Oh, wait a minute......

There isn’t enough room or money to accept everyone who wants to come so SB’s saying we should take people with the greatest need, ie in physical danger.

Fair enough. I work with ostensibly illegal refugees and plenty fall into this category. (Their peril is not just from crossing the Channel on a lilo.)

I might add ‘boot the Home Office up the bum to process applications faster than five years’. That asylum hotel bill is what stirs resentment, not fugitives fleeing civil
war.

But agree with SB with caution - we should always watch out for Tories creating scapegoats for the poverty they and their rich friends dumped us in.

Leading immigration barrister, Colin Yeo, says Braverman’s speech is nonsense. For example, he points outs no one gets asylum by merely being a woman or being gay as she claims.

Agree @donquixotedelamancha.

“Responding to the speech, the Refugee Council, which works closely with asylum seekers, questioned Braverman’s claim that there was a lower bar to being granted asylum on the grounds of discrimination.

Jon Featonby, the charity’s chief policy analyst, said: “In our work with people in the asylum system, we have seen no evidence that Home Office decision-makers are lowering the threshold for asylum so that a well-founded fear of persecution is replaced with discrimination. The home secretary’s claims do not appear to be grounded in credible evidence.”

Why are basic human rights still not the norm in so many countries? What can we do about that?

Well we all know why she made that speech, there is an election coming. She also thinks this will give her more Brownie points with the far right element of the Conservative Party.

It’s worth noting this relevant facf from the BBC’s website.
“In 2022, there were 1,334 asylum applications lodged in the UK, where sexual orientation was part of the basis for the claim.
This represents 1.5% of 74,751 asylum claims made last year.”
So are we supposed to worry about 1.5% of asylum applications? Or is it all part of their “war on woke” ridiculousness?

Whilst I doubt Suella Braverman's intentions it is curious that the MSM have been so happy to amplify her message, long before she even made it. I go the impression from them that she was going to some UN or global organisation to raise this as an issue.

But in fact it was for a US right wing think tank, and if you see the images from the event it looks like about 12 white men sitting in some sort of club room.

And even if it is her canvasing for support from the even more right wing of the Tory party, if Sunak doesn't say anything to maybe water down her claims presumably we have to accept he / the tory party think this too. You cant have your Home Secretary making comments like this if they are against party policy.

So that is quite worrying.

re. the chart - I was just quoting the BBC. And in fact they quote other stats all about migration, not about refugees or asylum seekers. That's not just sloppy reporting but a complete lack of intergrity in reporting.

So assuming the BBC have at least got it right and the stats really are migration figures, then the change in methodology relates to migration not asylum, and clearly has nothing to do with European Court rulings on asylum claims.

So what with Braverman's kite flying and MSM misreporting we are back where we always are.

Compared to most other countries the UK takes far fewer refuges and asylum seekers, and has one of the worst records in terms of processing claims.

And of course misses the bigger picture which is so long as armed conflicts continue and environmental damage increases, the number of refugees continues to rise. https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics/

Presumably Braverman and others thinks a solution like that offered to Palestinians is the best refugees can accept. And better still allows european countries who created many of the problems not to have to accept the consequence, but other countries are forced to.

Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”

Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
^^
A Palestine refugee camp is defined as a plot of land placed at the disposal of UNRWA by the host government to accommodate Palestine refugees and set up facilities to cater to their needs. Areas not designated as such and are not recognized as camps. However, UNRWA also maintains schools, health centres and distribution centres in areas outside the recognized camps where Palestine refugees are concentrated, such as Yarmouk, near Damascus.

The plots of land on which the recognized camps were set up are either state land or, in most cases, land leased by the host government from local landowners. This means that the refugees in camps do not 'own' the land on which their shelters were built, but have the right to 'use' the land for a residence.

Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers.
https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees

They have to do something. It is getting ridiculous. We are having big country hotels shut down left right and centre here in Midlands. It’s all hush hush and very secretly done. Gov and serco aren’t even following planning and just keep adding accommodation onto the estates. Been a big drama in our town and just last week there’s been talk of another hotel closing down with no notice, no explanation, weddings cancelled, jobs gone, local business like caterers and events screwed over.

I also travel a lot for work and a number of the big chain hotel locations have also been blacklisted as they are no longer safe for lone women.

If they haven’t stopped them coming I don’t see how they ever will so they need to rethink the application process and how they manage the accommodation and notice for hotel closures etc.

They have to do something. It is getting ridiculous.

Yes they have to start being competent. The need for hotels is because they have totally FU the processing system where the back log is growing day by day.

And quite honestly they clearly dont know what they are doing. Even if the barge was suitable if only take a few hundred and we are looking at thousands.

And presumably hotels are "closing" because the Government is offering more money.

Money that could for instance have gone into building secure temporary accommodation.

If the UK could put up hundreds / thousands of prefabs after WWII how come that a current Government cant do the same. https://heritagecalling.com/2018/07/24/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-prefabs/

Which by the way, given the much better standards of minimum housing requirements that were in place at that time, means that many prefabs were of a far higher standard than most of the temporary accommodation current homeless people in the UK endure.

Seriously politicians couldn't organise their way out of a cardboard box. But what they are good at is persuading voters that everybody other than themselves are to blame for the crisis.

I was thinking about this question yesterday afternoon.

I think SB is using what is called a "Straw Man" argument - that is, making points that only appear reasonable because she is deliberately mispresenting the position of what she is arguing against, pretending that it is something more easy to conquer.

In this case - generally people aren't seeking asylum just because they are gay, or a woman. They probably could have lived safely in the country of their birth if they had meekly accepted their lot (embraced their status as a second-class subhuman if a woman, lived permanently "in the closet" and pretended to be heterosexual if gay) but having fought against sich abusive regimes to try to bring about change, they are now in fear for their life. They aren't here because of "discrimination" in the old fashioned british sense of not being selected for promotion at work and not invited to the nice parties, they are in genuine danger of corrective rape and murder, or state executive. SB wants to be able to deport gay people back to countries who will execute them - perhaps only if they fail to remain celibate the rest of their life, but that's a sickening disregard for human life.

We cannot base policy on how many people are being persecuted. On this basis, we would have rejected Jews fleeing the maxi regime, simply because their numbers were too high.
I was listening to some representative for refugees in radio 4. No one receives asylum for being discriminated against. Being gay is sufficient reason for gaining asylum if it means you would otherwise be sent to prison, not if it means you have difficulty being recruited for a job, or renting a flat.
Maybe we should have thought a little harder about abandoning the women of Afghanistan to a persecuting regime, rather than complain afterwards that there were too many women being persecuted for our asylum systems.

I don’t think you quite understand. I don't know the exact number as it’s all very secretive, but assume its got to be nearing or 1000s of hotels already closed across the country. There must be hundred of thousands in hotels. Potentially even nearing half a million.

I travel a bit for work but not that much that I should be bumping into this all the time. That’s why I think the number really is that large. There’s a number of premier inns black listed by my organisation. Personally I have blacklisted a number of service stations I won’t go to because they are not safe as have hotels on site obviously being used for refuge and there’s large groups of men. My sister nearly accidentally walked into a surbiton stabbing incident by a mentally unwell refugee at the Hilton hotel. Thankfully the hotel refugees in my town have had little incident so far - which I am grateful for as my sons nursery is their nearest building and that does make me nervous!

Yes that’s what they are doing re prefabs. Our hotel holds about 500 before the prefabs. They keep adding prefabs onto the estate. There’s a lot of land. But they don’t have planning. We are heading in the direction of 1000 now in one location.

And yes we assume more money. Or similar profit without the stress and the staff.
One minute all is normal next thing there’s a a4 printed sign on the door which says closed permanently turning staff away. No Facebook post. Trickles down to clientele with a wedding next week.

The scale of this issue is astronomical. I don’t think people quite understand.

It makes people angry because they don’t ask. They don’t even tell. They just do without saying what or why they are doing it.

First they know of the hotel it all the cancellations, job loss and confusion. First they know of the prefabs is them being wheeled in and installed. First you know there’s refugees there is when the

Sorry finished too soon…

is when an incident happens