The UK Home Secretary is trying to “get tough on asylum seekers” – following reports of record numbers arriving across the channel. She has said, quoted from the Guardian:
One of the things I have always been keen to do is to have a system of fast-track decisions and appeals. If people arrive from predominantly ‘safe’ countries, they should not be sitting in the asylum system for a long time at all. [1]
The problem they have is that following the predictable total failure of their “smash the gangs” plan they are now losing electoral ground to the “Reform” party. So, they are panicking, and have to do something. What the Home Secretary is suggesting is speeding up the system somewhat for people claiming asylum for countries deemed to be safe, for example Pakistan. This too will mostly fail. People will find ways round it; for example claiming to be from other countries. (Apparently, a lot of Albanians claim to be from Kosovo). And, many people who are refused asylum do not leave and are not forced to leave. In 2022 just 10% of refused asylum cases were returned. [2] Some returns take a long time, which explains this figure: “Around 41% of those who submitted an asylum application between 2010 and 2020, and were refused, had been removed from the UK by June 2022”. [2] Some of these will have been staying in the UK for years following the refusal of their asylum case, before being removed. In addition, there will be legal challenges.
The problem is a very nice example of the trouble you get into when policy is made purely for the headlines it will create! “Smash the people-smuggling gangs” sounds great. It even illiterates. But, anyone could have told you, (and I did somewhere), that this won’t work. A “people-smuggling gang” in terms of the Channel, is just a few men with mobile phones and the capital to buy a semi-rigid inflatable. Take one out, (if that were to happen; I don’t seem to have seen many cases reported), and another team will just step into place. Anyway; most of the “gangs” operate in Europe, outside of UK jurisdiction – so how was Starmer going to “smash the gangs”? It sounded great but resulted in nothing. This new policy is also primarily about headlines; “fast-track”, “safe-countries”. It seems to be marginally more practical than “Smash the gangs” but also looks like it has not really been thought through.
For me this whole episode with immigrants sailing across the channel and claiming asylum in the UK is an extraordinary sign of how the government – all parties, that is the political class – has not got any grip on anything. The majority of asylum seekers crossing the channel are almost certainly economic migrants. Time and time again, when interviewed by journalists, (not, one imagines, Home Office officials), people making these journeys speak completely openly about how the motivation is economic. I frequently see mention in the press of sums of thousands of dollars being paid to the organisers of the journeys. These people are not destitute; they are, typically, coming from areas which lack economic opportunities and are making an investment in their future. In 2023, the top five most common countries of nationality for people who applied for asylum from inside the UK were Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. [3] None of these countries has a war on. Even, when people did originally start their journeys from countries where there is a war on or they were facing unavoidable persecution then the fact is they could stop in France. The Refugee Convention does not, true, say that asylum must be claimed in the first safe country – but the convention was drawn up in 1951 before the modern era of global communications. Now someone in a village in Pakistan can see how life is better in the UK, how he can get a free university education (based on a loan), subsidised housing and so on. And the journey while dangerous and arduous is possible. Semantically; someone “fleeing war or persecution” is actually running. These people, stopped fleeing when they reached the first safe country.
It is a simple fact that the asylum system is being massively abused and exploited as a backdoor to immigration. The political class facilitates this because a) they have a general orientation to facilitate mass immigration because it expands the labour pool and thus keeps wages down and profits up and b) it seems, in particular in relation to asylum seekers, they simply can’t bring themselves to take authoritarian measures, such as detaining and returning everyone who is not fleeing persecution. (This would mean renegotiating or exiting the Refugee Convention).
I feel it necessary to add one point, in case I am misunderstood. The last government had a scheme by which asylum seekers would be forcibly sent to Rwanda. I find it hard to believe that in the 21st century people can propose that. It is a manifestly cruel idea; someone who has travelled half-way round the world would be sent by force to a country where they have no connections. It is akin to transportation in the 18th century. It shocks me that apparently humane and civilised people cannot see that and that this idea of the “Rwanda scheme” can be part of normal political discourse.
On the other hand; if someone is trying to bypass the immigration system by exploiting the asylum seeker route it is not cruel, just to say no, and to point them back to the last step off point. But our political class are terrified, I presume, of appearing to be authoritarian. Cruel yes, but authoritarian and in control, no.
Another thought occurs to me. While, (I would assert) the majority of asylum seekers are really economic migrants this does not mean that what they are doing is not understandable. There are massive economic inequalities in the world. People in the UK can, if they wish, not work and gorge themselves to death sitting on the sofa watching satellite TV, on social security, while, in other parts of the word, educated and intelligent people with a lot to offer cannot get a better job than hand-to-mouth work in the local market. Perhaps it is easier for the political class in the UK to connive in taking the pressure out of the system by allowing large-scale immigration, than it would be not to. If they completely blocked this unofficial immigration route perhaps then the massive global inequalities would come into focus. And, one imagines, they very definitely don’t want that.
Notes