Thread: I regret to inform you that the Home Office is at it again, spreading misleading, and at times just plain false information, while also using refugees as cover to penalise vulnerable asylum seekers. 1/
Straight off the bat, this is blatantly false. There are a multitude of ways that an asylum seeker can, legally under international law, enter the UK on their own in order to apply for asylum. Ways which the government is looking to penalise them for. 2/
No-one is against the prosecution of smugglers or traffickers. They abuse and exploit asylum seekers, but they aren't the only ones being prosecuted and included in these figures. The asylum seekers themselves are, and that doesn't stop the gangs. 3/
Comparing it to the drug trade is actually a pretty good analogy, although not in the way the Home Office intends. How well has the decades long "war on drugs" worked, in large part because the serious players are so far removed they don't get caught? 4/
Asylum seekers are often forced into driving the boats by gangs because the gangs know that if they are caught then they can just force someone else to drive the next one. It has minimal impact on their actual operations. 5/
So how do you crack down on gangs? Well, you remove their "supply" by providing safe and legal routes for asylum seekers. Even here though the Home Office is being more than a little disingenuous with its boast. 6/
First off, resettlement globally accounts for about 4%/5% of refugees, and that number is dropping. In the UK last year there was a 93% drop in resettlement routes, with only 353, being provided resettled. 7/
Resettlement is great, when it is available. Problem is, for a lot of refugees it isn't an option. Either the routes don't exist, or they don't have the opportunity to take advantage of them. When you are fleeing for your life you may not have time to fill in forms and wait. 8/
So what is the solution? People aren't going to stop trying to reach safety. If anything the last year's increase in channel crossings has demonstrated that when other routes are closed people are forced into taking more dangerous ones. 9/
Well, for starters, being able to process applications in France would remove quite a lot of the need for many to rely on smugglers. Opening actual safe and legal routes, not PR stunts, to facilitate the entry of more asylum seekers would likewise have the same effect. 10/
Patel's new plan doesn't do that though. The new routes are hazy at best, and still apparently limited. The plan ignores international law and the drivers for people seeking safety, which may mean France et al aren't for them, and just forces more people into hands of gangs 11/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
THREAD: Much as I personally believe Nigel Farage is a racist and revels in spreading hate, I have some issues with the way people are saying the far-right riots we are seeing right now are the #FarageRiot. It's too simplistic and ignores decades of hostile rhetoric. 1/
Last time I brought this topic up I was accused of "both siding" things, so let's quickly clarify this. Both siding would be if I was trying to say there are "good people' on the far-right. I am not. Sorry, "legitimate concerns" went out the window when violent attacks started 2/
I am not defending, or deflecting, from what Farage has done, The point here is that when you make him the focus you risk ignoring the decades of hostile, and racist, anti-migrant, rhetoric which have embedded this scapegoating of migrants in public consciousness. 3/
Long thread; A lot of the violence we have seen over the last few days has been stoked by years of misinformation about migration, often from many of the politicians condemning it now. So, let's address some of that misinformation. 1/
Crime: In Britain, there is no correlation between higher levels of immigration and increased violent crime. Migrants are statistically, and proportionally, less likely to report crime though, and more likely to face hate crimes. 2/
Now, I know that people have bought into the whole "grooming gangs" line, but, again, this is a myth. It's the "frequency illusion" in action. The reality is that grooming gangs are far more likely to be white, British, men. 3/
. ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/dec/…
Since I wrote this thread on @UKLabour's Asylum and Immigration policies several things have been depressingly clear. First off, things are going to get worse. Cooper's announcement of increased immigration raids, and the blinkered defence of them by some, shows this. 1/
The second is how much harder it is going to be for organisations and individuals fighting for migrants' rights. A lot of support over the last 14 years wasn't "pro-migrants rights". It was "anti-conservative". Obviously this isn't new though. 2/
We saw shades of it after the Brexit referendum. People who claimed to be progressive pushing a "good/bad migrants" narrative dividing EU and non-EU migrants. I saw first hand a lot of the hypocrisy of those individuals then, and see it repeating on an even larger scale now. 3/
Okay, a, very, long thread on @UKLabour's asylum and border policies announced today in the #KingSpeech. The short version to start though is that they are, aside from processing applications and cancelling the Rwanda plan, overwhelmingly harmful. 1/ assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6697ac9c…
First off, this isn't new. Anyone remember the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander for example. Secondly, as explained in the linked thread, and as strange as this may sound, increased border security actually strengthens smuggling gangs. 2/
Look, I get it, people like the sound of "Border Security". Thing is, barring a headline grabbing minority, people crossing the channel are't a threat. If Labour are going to re-use Conservative policies I may as well re-use threads debunking them👇 3/
The stories about "gangs" grab headlines, but the reality is that the majority of convictions for smuggling are of people actually making the crossing themselves. All the evidence shows that harsher border policies force more people into the hands of gangs though. 1/
Globally, most smugglers are small groups or independent operators. For example we were seeing a significant increase in "self- facilitated" crossings in the channel, by groups who arrange things themselves without relying on gangs. 2/
As border controls become more focused on criminalising those seeking safety and using "securitised" language, such as making out channel crossings are a national security threat, it makes it harder for these independent crossings, which forces people into the hands of gangs. 3/
Strawman argument from Hodges here. No-one is pretending that immigration didn't play a part in Reform's wins, just that it was the rhetoric and misinformation about immigration they spread rather than migration itself. 1/
Look at Essex for example, where Reform won two of its five seats. It has substantially lower immigration than the UK average, yet higher than average levels of deprivation in parts. This makes people an easy target for messages which scapegoat migrants. 2/
The key thing here is to differentiate between the reality of migration, which is repeatedly shown to have little to no real world impact on people's lives, and where it does it shown to be predominately positive, and the rhetoric around migration, which is highly negative. 3/