A few problems with this. 1. The PBS has nothing to do with asylum or refugees 2. The scale is not ‘huge’ it is a few thousand refugees, many who would previously have come on lorries anyway 3. It isn’t illegal to break immigration law if you are a genuine refugee (cont...)
4. The gangs aren’t traffickers, as far as we know, they are smugglers - there’s a BIG difference 5. UK does have an obligation under Refugee Convention even to a refugee who travels through a safe third country 6. Leaving EU makes it harder not easier to return them to France...
7. Human rights lawyers are accountable - to their clients and their regulators 8. ‘Country’s best interests’ is not one of the things lawyers are allowed to think about when representing a client nor should it be 9. We’re not some sort of Fifth Column though, thanks...
10. WTF does she expect the navy to do? Blow them up? Invade French waters with them in tow? Physically blockage the Channel? Or help land vulnerable, desperate refugees in the UK? 11. They are actually refugees given as many as 75% ultimately get asylum.
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1. Abandoning the Rwanda scheme would be a massive win for the Home Office. The department has limited budget, staff, time and energy. For years that has been frittered away on developing and implementing ideas that are not just impractical but actually make the situation worse.
2. The latest version of the Rwanda scheme involves declaring all asylum claims 'inadmissible' and a legal ban on refugee status being granted. Unless tens of thousands of asylum seekers can be removed to Rwanda then it creates a perma-backlog of asylum claims.
3. There are direct and indirect costs. We hear a lot about direct costs but the indirect ones are very important too. The direct cost is the perma-backlog, which is hugely expensive in money, staffing, management, barges, etc. As well as the terrible politics of asylum hotels.
🧵 1. The Illegal Migration Act prohibits any person arriving illegally after 7 March 2023 from being granted asylum or legal status. One of three things can happen to them: (a) be removed to a third country, (b) voluntarily depart to their own country or (c) stay in the UK with no legal status.
2. Voluntary departures likely to be tiny. So unless no. of removals to Rwanda is equal to or greater than number of new arrivals, there will be an ever-growing perma-backlog of asylum seekers who can never be granted status. More people will enter the backlog than leave it.
3. No-one thinks more than a couple of thousand of people a year can ever be removed to Rwanda, if that. So new arrivals have to reduce from c.70-80k per year to around c.2k per year or less.
1. I don’t think preventing care workers bringing their family will cause a shortage of care workers. I agree with @alanmanning4 and @robfordmancs on this. Plenty will still want to come here without family.
2. It is possible the average profile of care workers might change from women with partners and children to women or men without dependent children or partners. Not likely though.
3. The countries of origin may change. Some countries from which care workers traditionally originate have a long tradition of emigration for work and sending remittances home to families.
1. I don’t know about you but I’m totally exhausted. Doesn’t help that I’ve been bed-ridden for most of the last week, admittedly. The recent government “climbdown” on the minimum income rule for spouses and partners is a good illustration of why I’m so, so tired of it all.
2. The pattern is a deliberately or incompetently over-egged govt announcement which is so stupid or outrageous it will have a calamitous effect. Outcry and reality intervene. The government “compromises”. But the new plan is still a terrible one.
3. It looks to the media like a government climbdown and a victory for the campaigners. That’s the story. They move on. All the energy goes out of the campaign. We’re stuck with the compromise, no matter how terrible it is.
1. When Braverman (and many others) claims that refugees who passed through safe countries aren’t real refugees, she is arguing those safe countries should do more than they do already. Think about it in the real world for a moment.
2. In the UK we receive VERY few refugees compared to, say, France and Germany. Never mind Poland or Turkey or further away. Are we seriously telling those countries to “step up” or whatever, while we do so little?
3. And what are those countries supposed to do anyway? Detain refugees to prevent their onward movement? Accept transfer from us even though they already receive far, far more refugees than us?