Thread by @RefugeeAction

COSTILITY: the cost of hostility. The public money wasted by governments on being hostile to refugees and people seeking asylum.

Billions of pounds is being thrown away on deterrents that both don't work and are indefensibly cruel.

We call this costility. 🧵...

The biggest cost of hostile policies is the damage done to people seeking safety, but the cost in terms of the public money wasted is huge as well.

Here are some examples of costility and why it's such a terrible approach.

Every year, the government makes available a personal tax summary showing what your tax contributions were spent on.

We’ve made our own version for costility. Here are some of the ways that the government is choosing to waste your money on punishing refugees.

That's £6.83 billion that could be spent on schools and hospitals.

Costility means billions redirected from anything constructive to punishing people who ask for the UK’s help.

You can read about costility and what this wasted money is spent on in more detail on our website.

refugee-action.org.uk/costility/

Don’t get us wrong, cruelty would not be ok if it came cheaper. Nor would trying to deter refugees be morally acceptable if it were easier.

But costility, the prevailing approach for decades, is the worst of all worlds. Ineffective, immoral and expensive – it combines all three!

The costly deterrents fail, and refugees are forced into danger when they travel and abuse when they arrive. Then the public foots the bill…

…EVERYBODY LOSES.

But money invested in welcoming and supporting refugees is well spent.

Safe routes, appropriate support and funding for communities that welcome refugees - this approach would safe lives and enrich British society…

…EVERYBODY WINS.

While costility is as bad as it gets in terms of an overall approach, there’s always scope within it to spend even more and punish refugees even more severely.

That’s exactly what the government is planning to do with the #RefugeeBanBill.

We laid out above the cost of detention that the ‘lock them all up’ measures in this Bill involve for one year (£2.8 billion).

But these costs are estimated by @refugeecouncil to rise to between £8.7 billion and £9.6 billion three years after the legislation comes into force.

Most of these costs are publicly available, others are disputed by the Home Office. But the government refuses to publish its own estimates of what its new plans for the mass detention of refugees will cost.

This refusal speaks volumes. The government fears that the public will see what a colossal rip off costility is. And eventually, the public will.

When they do, it’s important that people also see that there is another way.

This is our vision for the asylum system, based on the four key principles of anti-racism, equality, accountability, and welcome.

refugee-action.org.uk/our-vision/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…