Dan Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Director of Stand For All. Specialist in refugee protection, human rights & immigration. Also tweeting about autism and LGBTQI+. Personal account. My views only

Dec 7, 2021, 13 tweets

THREAD: Okay, time for a fun game of "True, False or Disingenuous nonsense". Sharing the original video so you can all play along at home. Isn't this fun? probably not actually. 1/

Going to call disingenuous nonsense on this one, but I'll allow that it is debatable. You could argue that there is a "global migration crisis", highly debatable though. You can't claim a piece of domestic legislation tackles anything on a global scale though. 2/

Definitely disingenuous. Conflict is just one cause for people migrating. For refugees it is often thought as the only cause, but reality is that persecution is actually the main cause, and that does not require conflict. 3/

True, currently we are seeing a record number of being people officially recognised as displaced or refugees. Disingenuous, there are not 80 million refugees, majority of displaced individuals are actually displaced within their own countries. 4/

False. Not "playing out across Europe. Only one country in the top five hosting countries is fully in Europe, although Turkey is partially its main area for hosting refugees is not, and 85% of refugees are in developing nations outside of Europe. 5/

True, so so true. Without combating global poverty, conflict, persecution, climate change etc, there is no "easy fix" to forced displacement. Note "forced displacement". When you term it as "migration" without specifying you kind of muddy the debate. 6/

Skipping straight to gangs is definitely disingenuous. While gangs are undoubtedly involved, there is not only a difference between smugglers and traffickers to factor in, but also that many crossings are self-facilitated without the use of gangs. 7/

Disingenuous. Unfailing, studies show that the two main "pull factors" for the actually relatively small number of people seeking asylum in UK are language and family ties. Nothing in this bill changes that, and therefore as zero influence upon them. 8/

False: The #BordersBill will actually increase costs to the taxpayer, by a sizeable amount, for use on enforcement, deterrence and detention. So, that means less money to focus on other areas and resources. 9/

False, during much of the pandemic many resettlement routes have been closed, with drastic drops in numbers taken where they have operated. The Afghan resettlement, even all these months on, is still no closer to be setting up. 10/

Disingenuous at best. UK ranks about 17th per head of population for the number of asylum seekers it actually takes, but uses resettlement routes, which globally only account for about 4% of all asylum seekers, to claim it does more. 11/

False, even senior police officers have warned that the #BordersBill puts the victims of trafficking at more risk, and in so doing benefits the gangs who prey on them. 12

Bill violates international law and human rights. Rather than preventing trafficking it's liable to actually increase the power of gangs, at a far increased cost to the taxpayer, plus it creates a two-tier system for refugees, denying them safety. That's definitely not "fair" 13/

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling