#uk immigration and asylum

[thoughtlessarse]

Last month, the US blocked a British Indian Overseas Territory (BIOT) court from entering the British territory of Diego Garcia—part of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, and prevented a group of Tamil migrants—stranded on the island since 2021, from presenting their case that they were being unlawfully detained. This has left the Tamils living in what amounts to a concentration camp, locked in a legal limbo and held in virtual incommunicado 1,000 miles away from the nearest landmass in India. Tessa Gregory, a lawyer at Leigh Day solicitors representing the asylum seekers, said, “That the British Indian Ocean Territory supreme court has been prevented from sitting in its own territory on Crown land is an extraordinary affront to the rule of law.” She appealed to the incoming Labour government foreign secretary to do everything he could “to ensure that the hearing goes ahead as soon as possible.” In 2021, 89 Tamils, including 16 children, who had fled torture and racist persecution in Sri Lanka, had been trying to reach Canada when their fishing boat ran into trouble. They were rescued by Royal Navy ships and brought to Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean territories, where they have remained ever since, trying to seek asylum in Britain. In 2022, four more boats carrying asylum seekers reached the island, some of whom were allowed to leave and succeeded in reaching the French territory of Reunion. The conditions in the camp are so dire that a number returned. Others were deported back to Sri Lanka. While some of the migrants were sent to Rwanda for medical treatment, they were later returned to Diego Garcia. It is believed that there are at least 60 asylum seekers still on the island, awaiting decisions on their claims or appeals of earlier rulings that are being processed in the UK. Their plight is compounded by the fact that access to Diego Garcia is restricted to those with connections to the military or BIOT’s administration. There are no commercial flights to the island and access for yachts is only for safe passage through the outer Chagos Islands. They live in rat-infested, communal tents and are confined to a small fenced-in area, no bigger than a football pitch, under the watchful eyes of G4S, a security firm who “are treating us like prisoners,” according to anonymous statements by two of the asylum seekers. The BBC says there have been “multiple suicide attempts” and “reports of sexual harassment and assaults.” Lawyers say that there have been hunger strikes, including by children. In November last year, the UN’s High Commission for Refugees visited the island, and wrote a damning report about the camp. It concluded that “conditions there amounted to arbitrary detention” and called for the Tamils’ “immediate relocation.” Even the British Foreign Office, which administers the BIOT from its office in London, admitted the conditions were not suitable. Britain’s control over the BIOT has been deemed illegal. Britain’s Labour government separated Diego Garcia and the 60-plus Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 before it became independent in 1968 and subsequently incorporated the Islands into the specially created British Indian Ocean Territories. This violated the 1960 United Nations Resolution 1514 banning the breakup of colonies before independence. It forcibly expelled Diego Garcia’s 2,000 indigenous people—the Chagossians—who were exiled to slums in Mauritius and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and eventually the UK, where, denied support and compensation and subject to racial discrimination at the hands of officialdom, they have lived in impoverished conditions ever since. The British government has repeatedly rejected their demands to return their homeland.

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Brexiteers on EU: Sovereignty blah blah blah control our borders blah blah blah our rules blah blah blah

Brexiteers on US presence in what they see as British territory: *crickets*

[ceevee5]

[tweetingukpolitics]

[lost-carcosa]

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

Dozens of residents staged a protest at a site which is to be used to house unaccompanied asylum-seeking (UAS) children in Kent. Kent County Council (KCC) recently approved plans for the reception centre at Edward Moore House, Trinity Road, Gravesend. The protesters said they were frustrated with the lack of consultation from KCC and that the centre was in the wrong location. The council said it was legally obligated to accommodate UAS children. Baljinder Singh said: "It could have been slightly out of town. "We're not saying don’t accommodate them, this just isn’t the area." Edward Moore House was previously a home for elderly people. Increasing capacity Jarnail Powar criticised consultation from the council. He said: "We feel strongly about this because we weren’t asked, we were told." Another resident Janice Bass added: "We knew nothing about this at all until all the security fences went up." Many UAS children have fled war and persecution from other countries and have often risked their lives to enter the UK. Sarah Hammond, KCC's director of integrated children’s services, said the council had been in "regular communication with local residents" and "will continue to update them on progress". She said that the High Court ruled in July 2023 that KCC must increase its capacity to accommodate those arriving in the country. 'Unsustainable burden' Ms Hammond added that the arrival of UAS children "dramatically increased" following the ruling. She said the council had "asserted the need" that the children were "transferred out of Kent swiftly and safely" to other local authorities to ensure services were not overwhelmed. The centre, which will house children under 16, was the only viable solution to the "unfair and unsustainable burden" on Kent Children’s Services, she added. Under the council's proposal, it will provide temporary accommodation for up to 36 children.

This country is beyond fucked.

The nerve of people to protest a centre housing (detaining) children under 16 year old, not because you think it's wrong to treat literal fucking children like terrorist threats but because you think it will ruin your town.

[ladymazzy]

Holocaust survivor confronted Suella Braverman to say: your hateful language has consequences

Braverman and the Tory govt are beyond shameless

A woman who survived the Holocaust took Braverman to task for the inflammatory and dehumanising language she (and the right wing media) chooses to use when describing asylum seekers trying to reach the UK via the Channel. The same sort of language that has consistently preceeded genocides everywhere, including the Holocaust.

Terms like 'swarm' and 'invasion' along with gross misrepresentations of the people trying to get here, and boneheaded, cruel indifference to the realities of trying to obtain 'proper documentation' if you're fleeing for your life

Braverman was adamant that she would 'not apologise' for the language.

The tories are demanding that the charity which shared the video - Freedom from Torture - take it down, claiming that it was edited out of context. This is the unedited version

For what it's worth, the edited version did not remove any fucking context. It only removed Braverman's babbling about being the child of immigrants (her dad sought asylum after being kicked out of Kenya, and her mum recruited from Mauritius to work in the NHS), and being so grateful for Britain's 'kindness' and 'sense of fair play'

Sense of fair play...

She's a fascist who is determined to continue dehumanising desperate people

As Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are *believe them*

[nando161mando]

[Margate, UK]

Activists in Margate have also been resisting attempts to move asylum seekers from a local hotel to the Bibby Stockholm.

On Thursday it emerged that 15 of 22 people facing removal had received letters from the Home Office saying they could stay.

[darkeyedghost]

At least Suella Braverman's been sacked. At least Suella Braverman's been sacked. At lea-

[hjohn3]

An Honest Conversation

It’s Time to Tell the Truth About U.K. Migration

Source: Briefings for Britain

By Honest John

A NEW government should provide the opportunity for new narratives, particularly after the waste and poison of the Tory years. Perhaps most toxic messaging of the seemingly limitless populist nastiness that the Conservative Party tried to promote in its end years in government was that of the intrinsic evil of immigration, aided every step of the way by the knowing racist cynics of Reform U.K., the Daily Mail, GB News, plus numerous “influencers” and far right commentators filling their social media platforms with faux anger, othering and outright hatred. In fact Richard Tice in the aftermath of the mob law masquerading as patriotic protest last month, urged Keir Starmer to have an “honest conversation” about immigration with the British people. For probably the first time, I find myself agreeing with former leader of Reform: it is high time that the government led an adult conversation about both immigration and asylum seeking with the U.K. population, but not from the perspective of Tice’s fake news: rather from the standpoint of fact.

It is frequently said - not least by commentators on the left - that governments should not try to “educate” the electorate on issues of policy - such an approach is held to be condescending and bound to fail. But if the role of government is not to lead debate, but simply to follow it, despite the fact public opinion maybe characterised by half-truths, false logic, prejudice and conspiracy theory, then what is the role of democratic government at all?

The Right have no such qualms. Whether it is the openly fascist social media activists, the childish provocateurs of GB News, the raging reactionaries of the Mail and the Telegraph, the opportunistic culture warriors of Reform or the sad shambles of the pre-election Tory government, the right wing in this country has majored in lies, deception, false narratives, bogus causations and thinly disguised racism when it comes to discussing immigration and asylum seeking. If a social democratic government, with four years of its term to run and a huge majority, cannot take on the mendacity of the Right in this area, then who can?

Any such counter-narrative should deconstruct the three most obvious and artless propositions of the Right. First, the deliberate and cynical conflation of asylum seeking with general immigration, which are, in fact, very different phenomena; the claim made continually by Nigel Farage during the General Election campaign that the U.K. is experiencing a “population explosion” driven entirely by immigration and the truism, accepted by both Conservatives and Labour and a majority of the population, that migration is “too high”. Although all three contentions are widely repeated, often without challenge by the mainstream media, the third claim is the most widely accepted by people at large, to the extent it is now treated as indisputable fact.

Let’s start with asylum seeking. The general view is that asylum seekers are illegal, disproportionately male and bogus. Also asylum seekers are feather-bedded by a weak system that puts them up in hotels, grants them benefits and does little to control their movements. Other, more extreme tropes follow, promoted by the Right, asserting that they are criminal, terroristic, leeching and generally undesirable. If they are Muslim, then they constitute an existential threat to British values.

Although it is often stated that in a world of conspiracy theory, echo chambers and alternative facts, there is little point is attempting to point out the truth to combat such toxic assertions, in actuality, stating the facts of a disputed issue can be remarkably effective. It is true that many asylum seekers, particularly those making the crossing from France in the notorious “small boats” are illegal. This of course is inevitable, since the Conservatives shut down all legitimate routes into the country except for refugees from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Western withdrawal. No other refugees, despite their rights under international law to apply for asylum anywhere, can enter the U.K. legally. In other words, the “problem” of illegal asylum seekers is entirely the creation of the British government, when under international law, “illegal” asylum seeking does not exist. Secondly, the numbers of asylum seekers entering the country remains remarkably small: between 75,000 and 80,000 people claim asylum in the U.K. annually, set against a total migration figure of 1.2 million foreign entrants in 2023 and of a national U.K. population of 67 million people. Despite the deliberate slow down in processing claims instituted by the Tories, partly due to austerity funding reducing capacity to do so, Brexit ending the ability to process claims in France and the then government’s populist urge to keep the issue bubbling, nearly 60% of claimants end up having their claims for humanitarian protection under international law granted; the rest are deported. Interestingly, despite the populist trope to the contrary, the gender balance of those successfully claiming asylum in the U.K. is approximately 50/50 (failed claimants are much more likely to be male). As at 2022, asylum seekers in the U.K., including those waiting for claims to be processed, comprised 0.6% of the total population.

The countries asylum seekers come from include Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan - all countries that are either authoritarian, have poor human rights records or are actively involved in political, cultural, religious or ethnic oppression. Britain’s obligations in this sphere date back to the 1951 Refugee Convention and are not disputed. By constantly creating hurdles to asylum claims and deliberately making such claims illegal, Britain itself is arguably in breach of international law.

Therefore in terms of numbers and legitimacy, the issue of illegal asylum seeking is largely confected. The scandal is not the uncontrolled arrival of bogus claimants, but the wholly deliberate disruption of the UK’s existing systems in a search for populist votes by a Conservative Party that lost what remained of its moral compass. But Labour’s record is hardly noble: the Blair government also did its utmost to stigmatise some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. What can the Starmer government do to make amends, change the narrative and draw the poison from this dead-end “debate”?

The first action is so obvious as to barely need stating. Although Labour feel more comfortable spouting tough rhetoric about “smashing the criminal gangs”, when the U.K. now barely has a cross-border anti-organised criminal groups agreement thanks to the feebleness of Boris Johnson’s Brexit “deal”, its energies would be more productively directed if the government simply restored safe and legal routes into the country for asylum seekers. The entirely invented “problem” of “illegal” entry would vanish overnight, along with the traffickers’ business model, and the small boats. What refugee would prefer to hand over their life savings to a criminal gang member in return for a leaky dingy than to buy a cross-Channel ticket by plane or ferry in order to secure entry to the U.K. ? It amazes me that Labour have yet to do this and I can only assume it is running scared of Farage as usual. However, without the daily sight of “small boats” arriving on British shores on people’s TV screens, populist antipathy may dissipate, and the long process of humanising the asylum seeker may begin.

Labour is absolutely right to highlight the deliberate and incompetent permitting of claimant backlog to grow by the previous government. Increased funding and workforce to process claims within a fortnight, which was the norm before Cameron’s witless austerity (waits can currently last over a year), would soon see the closure of hotels to house those awaiting their claims to be dealt with, and successful claimants admitted to British society, and unsuccessful ones sent back to their countries of origin. Very quickly the issue that has driven hatred and lynch mobs would cease even to be visible and Britain will have rejoined the community of civilised nations, helping those in greatest need.

Immigration has only a tangental relationship to asylum seeking. Immigration is fundamentally an economic phenomenon: people emigrate in order to find work, not claim benefits, certainly not from Britain’s labyrinthine and punitive welfare system. There is barely a country in the developed world that does not rely on migrant labour to keep aspects of its industrial or service economy going. The fact of low unemployment and unfilled vacancies in the U.K. and the associated fact that sectors such as health and care, deliveries and supply, agriculture and hospitality would simply collapse if all immigration ceased tomorrow, seems to pass many anti-migration bigmouths by. Even when forced by the sheer facts of economic reality to conceded that some migration is required to keep the country’s lights on, these non-experts will still opine that immigration is “too high”. This contention is decades old and so regularly repeated, that this evidence-free assertion has squeezed out any countervailing view. When the politicians and media sagely agree that immigration is too high, by what criteria is the assertion justified? By the number of vacancies in the country proportionate to the workforce available to fill such vacancies? By the relative importance of the various sectors that employ migrants to the overall health of the economy? By the level of verified pressure on public services in those areas where migrants settle? By the level of social strain brought about by the arrival of migrants from different cultures? The short answer is none of the above. To ask such questions would complicate the facile acceptance that migration must be reduced, regardless of truth or implications. The failure of the U.K. to have a mature or factual conversation about what immigration actually is, let alone its required numbers, is one of the biggest indictments of the British political class. It is simply easier to indulge ignorance, prejudice or rank racism than to challenge popular assumptions and state clearly what levels of immigration the country needs and how the phenomenon needs to be managed.

Similarly, the Farageist trope that the country is “full” or that the U.K. is experiencing a population explosion is similarly left unchallenged. In fact, the British population usually increases by about 0.33% a year. That is an annual increase of approximately 210,000 people a year - a gradual rise, not an “explosion”. Even this figure needs to be treated with caution given the government’s bizarre inclusion of foreign students in the calculations, the majority of whom return home after their studies. This zero sum game has resulted in ridiculous promises by (usually Tory) governments to reduce immigration, regardless of the impact of the economy by so doing. The Thatcherite model endured by the U.K. for nearly 40 years has been predicated on low wage, non-unionised and mobile workforces, most easily filled by foreign migration. If the country seriously wants to reduce the number of foreign migrants in the country, perhaps it needs to stop blaming people who are responding to demand and rather re-think its economic model.

Labour needs to end this circular and destructive non-debate, which at best feeds the lack of trust in politicians and at worse results in ethno-nationalist violence on the streets. A blunt and fact-based conversation needs to led by government, pointing out that every advanced economy requires a minimum level of migration to keep industries and services going and that this will never change. There can be a debate about numbers and geographical location of migrants, but simplistic slogans about “reducing” migration are as fatuous as they are impractical. Release of proper research and explanations as to what migration numbers should be on the basis of workforce requirements by sector and geography, public infrastructure, cultural assimilation, and the needs of national economic strategy, should comprise part of the “re-set” Keir Starmer has promised the nation.

Labour still seems gripped by fear of the issue, believing that to be seen as being “soft” on immigration is political suicide. Instead, it should study the results of the 2024 General Election - for all Farage’s megaphone politics on the issue and the divisive populism of a desperate Conservative Party, over 57% of the electorate voted against this toxicity. As the spontaneous response to the summer riots demonstrated, there is a clear majority in this country that recognise the inevitability and desirability of migration and the moral imperative to admit those seeking asylum from death or oppression. After all, Labour has been here before: in the 1960s, Harold Wilson’s government legislated for racial, gender and sexuality justice, in the teeth of ferocious popular and right-wing opposition. It nonetheless led a debate that, over time, produced societal tolerance and a measure of equality for non-white citizens, women and gays. The cul-de-sac the immigration wars have led the country into have fostered ignorance and racism and enabled street fascism and the politics of the pogrom. The survival of British democracy and its values of inclusivity and social justice demand an end to the stupidity and lies of the current contentions concerning migration. Keir Starmer’s government is in a unique position to help the country forge a different path.

The question is: does our new Prime Minister have the stomach for the fight?

2nd September 2024.

[ceevee5]

Benali is a councillor in London and the Green Party spokesperson for refugees and migrants.

[tearsofrefugees]

Up to 60,000 migrants set for Rwanda could be granted asylum under Labour

[lost-carcosa]

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

Source

Why the actual fuck am I still having to tell people that the Rwanda act will not help anyone? That it's not a good thing, that it won't help the people desperate enough to risk their lives crossing the channel in cheap inflatable boats, that it won't even help the uk job market or economy like they keep claiming.

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

I want to apologize on behalf of my country. This is horrific. I've just read about what they're planning to do with asylum seekers - essentially storage container prison "housing", where they'll be kept under guard and only let out for exercise for limited periods. Homelessness is being made illegal. No one can afford to live. Refugees are being persecuted. And I hate it because I know what happens next, I know what's coming, I've studied the Nazis. There have already been terror attacks aimed at refugees, the other day a man was set on fire for being a Muslim, hate crimes are soaring just as much as the rent is, and yet still people say that the Tories are the "better option". Nothing could be worse than this. I never thought it would get this far. I never thought that the predictions in Turn Left would come true, but that's how this country is going - fascist, Nazi-esque dictatorship. I'm terrified for all those people already being hurt and killed and persecuted by this vile regime, and I'm terrified that next they'll come for me and the people I love. If you're affected by what this government is doing, I'm so sorry. I wish I could help.

We need to change this. We need to fight and most importantly, we need to vote. I can't vote yet, I'm too young still, but our generation is the least likely generation to vote in an election, and we need as many votes as we can get to get rid of these fascists. We need to fight for these people, fight for our country, because otherwise we will be next. Right now they're focusing on "foreigners", but who will be next? Trans people are already suffering. How long before it's all LGB people too? Disabled people? Anyone who isn't a Christian? Please, for the good of our lives and theirs, we need to change things. We need to take back our country, tear down the remnants of the Empire and the damage it left, and make it safe.

[head-post]

Rwanda Bill to become law after months of debate

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s migration plan to send migrants to Rwanda finally won parliamentary approval on Tuesday, hours after he promised deportation flights would begin in July, The London Economic reports.

A parliamentary logjam that had stalled the bill for two months was finally broken just after midnight when the unelected House of Lords “recognised the supremacy” of the elected House of Commons and rescinded the last of its proposed amendments, giving the green light for passage.

The House of Lords had fought a long battle over the Rwanda Security (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, sending it back to the Commons five times in an attempt to secure changes.

The unelected House broke the deadlock after MPs rejected a requirement that Rwanda could not be considered safe until the Secretary of State, in consultation with an independent monitoring body, made a statement to Parliament to that effect.

Read more HERE