The main point I want to make it that observing all this, from a distance, I notice that the debate seems to fall into two camps. On the one hand there are people who clearly live in a phantasy land and continue to writing articles in the press about how all asylum seekers to the UK are traumatised refugees who are fleeing war and persecution. (This is one example; no questions about anyone’s story, no questions about whether anyone was really fleeing war and persecution, no questions about whether they could not have arranged their lives differently in their home country and avoided conflict with the authorities, if that was the problem, acceptance of the ridiculous idea that France is not a safe country at face value, no questions asked about why people don’t apply for asylum in Italy, or Greece, or France – if the answer is ‘because the UK is better’, that is understandable, but ‘better’ is not ‘fleeing war and persecution’). And, on the other hand, an incredible, debased, performative cruelty. The last government had some vile plan to send asylum seekers, I assume by force, though, strangely, the media was not clear on that point, half-way round the world to a country they had no connection with and had never planned to go to. The present government has been outlining plans which include making grants of refugee status reviewable after 2 1/2 years, after which people could be sent home if their country is now deemed safe. This is odd; while a country may be assessed as ‘safe’ or not, individuals may have particular circumstances relating to persecution, so how would this work? More to the point; this proposes to allow people to settle in the UK for 3+ years, (including the ridiculous length of time it takes to process an asylum application), and then kick them out. How is anyone supposed to settle on this basis? Other plans include removing financial support from those who don’t play by the rules; ok, but what will happen to these people, people in the UK without any support; are we ready to let people die on the streets? Presumably (?) not; in which case the taxpayer will end up picking up the pieces anyway. Purely performative. And, to cap it all; there is a plan to take ‘high value items’ off asylum seekers. One government Minister even talked about jewellery. Do these people have no awareness of history? Should we take their gold fillings as well? In short; it seems that we are capable either of wishy-washy sentiment; painting everyone who arrives illegally in the UK seeking asylum as a genuine refugee, when it is clear that the majority, (often in their own words *), are simply people looking for a better life, perhaps because of some deep need to express something that looks like compassion, which we project onto the asylum seekers. Or; of pointless, performative, cruelty which is reminiscent of the Nazis. It is really strange. Politicians just seem incapable of producing a robust but humane policy. (Yes; I am, basically, thinking of detaining asylum seekers on arrival in secure facilities, processing their claims within one month, ruling that arriving from France does not qualify as fleeing war and persecution, and returning 90+% of asylum seekers to France. If this means a diplomatic fight with France and exiting various treaties which were written for another era before the Internet and global communications, such as the Refugee Convention, so be it. I am not talking about; stealing people’s jewellery, letting them stay, but in a multi-years long limbo state, sending them to Rwanda, putting them on floating boats (prison hulks), and keeping them in cheap hotels for months on end, unable to work).
On other points on the wider immigration front. I’ve noticed the Guardian has started a concerted propaganda campaign against the Reform Party. (Today’s effort is a rehash of the story about his alleged racism as a schoolboy. I can find some of the allegations potentially, (theoretically), plausible. For example; at my Public School, in the 1980s there was a boy of Pakistani origin and some boys just called him ‘Paki’ – as his nickname. I was pretty horrified. Nonetheless; I am not sure about using tales from what someone may have got up to at school to discredit them years later as an adult politician). Another story caught my eye. GB News, which is pretty right-wing, and I am sure I would find it distasteful if I watched it, is in trouble over a news piece they did where they went to several Crown Courts and totted up “non British sounding names” of people accused of sex crimes. They, apparently, found a much higher than would be expected based on the general population at large correlation to “foreign sounding names”. A Liberal party MP and spokesperson has complained to Ofcom. On the face of it, this is rather nasty research. But; it appears, based on the article, that the TV station was moved to do the research because they have not been able to obtain the figures for nationality of defendants in sex trials from the government. The Liberal MP complains that: “GB News peddled unverified and frankly racist statistics to thousands grounded in dodgy methods .. Turning up to court and counting people with names that don’t sound British to you is no way to engage with the complex and sensitive topic of immigration”. [1] Which would be fine, if the government wasn’t, apparently, not being open about the data. And this is why Reform are popular at the moment. Getting on a moral high horse about “peddling unverified statistics” loses its moral weight completely, when you note that the government has refused to release the verified statistics. It is this imposition of an untenable ideology on people, that fuels support for Reform.
The Labour Party’s attempt to grab the cruel high ground for purely party political reasons leads them to produced proposed reforms which are performative and unworkable. They appear to be unaware of the Nazi associations to grabbing the jewellery of refugees. This is what happens when policies are determined purely for their media value by people with no principles beyond getting elected and continuing their lush careers. It is as if they are so out of touch that they think “oh, what people want is us to be really vile and nasty to refugees. Well; if that is what we need to do to stay in power then let’s do it”. But, I don’t think that is the real driver, in the main, for demand for policies which control immigration and stop abuse of the asylum system. I think people are just fed up with elites importing foreign labour to undercut them and with being told that if they don’t swallow the most unlikely of stories about immigration, then they are racists. There is of course also a cultural aspect to this as well, which is more fraught. But, I can, to be honest, understand why, for example, a working class Brit might not be thrilled that at his child’s Primary School the majority language is not English.
It just says something about the UK today that the political class can only veer between false compassion and abysmal cruelty on the question of asylum seekers.
* – I have a set of links of asylum seekers being interviewed by the media outside of an immigration tribunal context and freely talking about the real reasons they trying to claim asylum in the UK or EU. The theme of no economic opportunities in their homeland is the predominant one. There may be cases of people fleeing persecution as well, of course. But then, other reasonable questions arise. For example; if your country looks on Christianity unfavourably maybe you should, if you are a Christian, keep a very low profile. Many countries are indeed highly conservative and intolerant. But, it seems to me, purely a liberal ideology to think that anyone whose beliefs or lifestyle causes them problems in these countries should automatically be able to migrate to the UK. And, of course, the main problem – that France is, last time I checked, a safe country.
Notes