Thread by @ZoeJardiniere

It's a week old, but I've been recovering from the vaccine for the last couple of days, so forgive me, but...
We need to talk about the Times view on Channel Crossings. 🧵🧵👇👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ti…

First para, of course we hear of "Britain's overstretched asylum and immigration services" but by what measure are they over stretched?

As my followers will be bored of hearing, numbers of asylum seekers dropped dramatically in the last year. They were stable & low before that.

If our asylum system is indeed overstretched, while France, Germany, Italy, etc all receive many more asylum seekers than we do, why is that?

The Times is not curious to ask. The blame is clearly allocated already, no need to inquire.

Why the government's current approach of criminalisation/throwing money at FR to contain a problem that is neither their responsibility, nor possible, to contain isn't expected to work by anyone.
It's not about FR "getting rid of them" though, a few WANT to leave FR & come to UK.

There's a bit next which really makes me laugh about how SOMETHING MUST BE DONE FAST LEST THE RIGHT WINGERS WHO DONT HAVE COMPASSION start to intervene in the conversation...............................................................

While the Times on the other hand, demonstrates its humanitarian concerns by pointing out how impractical and expensive it would be to do like Australia and introduce offshore processing for asylum seekers. Oh the humanity.

Right we're at the meat of it. This is just straight-forwardly wrong.

"economic migrants" by-which the Times means "not refugees" do not make up the majority of those crossing the Channel. Far from it. Even the Home Office admits this fgs freemovement.org.uk/channel-boat-p…

Onwards, here we really see that someone with no idea has written this article.
The simplest thing is just to set up our asylum system in France, right? That's smart. France TOTALLY wont mind. Asylum seekers can just hang out & eat baguette while they wait for assessment?

The reality is that the UK asylum system, properly funded and reformed, is the only appropriate or possible place for applications.

A travel visa for APPLICANTS would provide an alternative to using smugglers for many, but there's no substitute for a system that works in the UK.

The article ends admitting there's no panacea, here I can agree.
Until we have vastly more open and flexible borders, open to asylum seekers AND migrants, we will have those desperately trying to cross where they are closed.
This creates the smugglers' market. It's simple enough.

It's interesting and important that the Times have weighed in with a proposal that admits Patel's plans wont work & why, & gets close to understanding that it is safe, open travel from France that will protect refugees from smugglers.

They have a way to go on the detail, though.

Basic factual errors are concerning, claim that the majority of Channel crossers aren't refugees is wrong, easily verifiable, repeating people's prejudice back to them.

Any expert they could have consulted could have told them why asylum processing in France wont work either.

If I were "The Times" and I were going to write my newspaper's official opinion on the issue leading the national conversation (again) over the whole Summer, I'd consider basic fact-checking and a minimum of research to make it robust.

But I guess that's why I'm not.