Thread by @danbarker

The Independent uncovered the 'UK Government' had set up a website 'On the Move', posing as a non-government site, to dissuade migrants from coming to the UK (independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…)

Here is a short investigation to figure out what may be going on behind the scenes:

(The Independent article is by @LizzieDearden. She talks about it here:

https://twitter.com/lizziedearden/status/1421381544510361602

)

The website address - 'migrantsonthemove.org' - was registered on the 16th April last year (remember 'April'), a few weeks after lockdown began.

It was actually spotted months ago by @josephinegoube, in December last year, as being run by the 'UK Home Office', but there were no replies to her tweet highlighting it.

The Independent say a freedom of information request from Clare Moseley uncovered the site, when it was found £23,200 had been spent advertising it via Facebook & Instagram.

The Facebook content has been hidden, but if you look at the code of the site you can see where it *was*

You'll note the Facebook address there is 'TheMigrantProject'.

As I say, that Facebook content has now been hidden, so you can't see it, but you can find traces of it dotted around.

Here are some old cached images, from Google Images (take a look: google.com/search?q=faceb…)

You can see one of the images there - a still from a video - says "Our mission is to help migrants understand the risks they might face during their migration journey and the realities of their destination country"

ie, this is info to dissuade people from migration 'risks'.

You can see other images include photos of people on boats, with quotes in pidgin/other languages.

Here, it is in local language, advising people not to try and migrate.

Now an oddity you may have noticed from the Facebook URL, and from the images above, is that they do not say 'OnTheMove', as the UK government website said. They say 'The Migrant Project'.

As said, 'Facebook[.]com/TheMigrantProject' has been taken down, but you can see traces.

And, as people who use Facebook a lot will know, international pages often have multiple URLs for different regions.

Some of those are still visible. For example, here is a 'The Migrant Project: Kurdistan' page that is still live - facebook.com/TheMigrantProj…

That page was created in April 2018, and is managed by people in Austria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Spain, and Turkey.

This is slightly strange, for a Kurdistan version of a FB entity that published another URL spending £23k on behalf of the UK government.

Delving deeper, this page is still very actively running ads. Here are 3 that

There is also a very actively managed Instagram account associated with that. A decent amount of that relates to the UK (open up this image & you can see UK border control, a Union flag, etc), but it also talks about Germany, Lithuania, and other countries.

Ie:
1- There is a network of international social sites under the banner 'The Migrant Project'.
2- Their main facebook URL was referenced as publisher of the website the Independent reports as being UK gov controlled, having spent £23k of public money on ads.

3- The central page has been hidden now
4- Other elements of the network are still live, are still running ads, and have content that warns people in various countries on the risks of migration to countries including the UK

Now - all of that is billed as being part of 'The Migration Project'. The UK gov site was called 'On The Move', albeit referenced 'TheMigrantProject' in its code.

It turns out The Migrant Project's central website is still live too. themigrantproject.org

If you look at the screengrab above, you'll see all of the news ticker items are news articles about migrants being deported, or arrested.

The site bills itself more neutrally though - the info line positions it as helping people to make an 'informed decision' about migration.

If you dig deeper still, you find the site is basically a sales pitch of reasons people should *not* attempt to migrate to Europe.

Here is the section on the UK.

"If you’re currently considering migrating irregularly to the UK, contact us on our hotline today to find out more about legal alternatives and the realities of life in the UK."

The site also has things like Resources for Teachers. For example a 'Teachers Handbook' - a lesson plan for teachers to tell 13-18 year old students about the 'realities' of irregular migration.

(note this is an 'unlisted' video, so cannot be found via regular YouTube search)

One other element to note here is that the privacy policy of 'The Migrant Project' site almost exactly matches the policy of 'On The Move' (the site the Independent notes spent £23k on Facebook ads, which references TheMigrantProject as its Facebook publisher).

Neither of these sites explains who is behind them.
Neither of these sites references control or sponsorship of UK/European governments.

So who is behind them & what is the relationship?

TheMigrantProject.org is much more comprehensive, with 8,000+ pages referenced by Google.

The current owner is hidden, but looking back at older whois entries for the domain, we can see that in 2016 it was originally registered under the name Jacob Townsend.

Someone under that name used to use Twitter in the past, on a similar topic (note the specific phrase 'irregular migration' which appears across all the sites).

If you open up that image, you'll also see a reference to 'SeeFar'.

Oddly, Jacob is not mentioned on the 'Immigration Project' website, or on 'OnTheMove', *or* on 'SeeFar'.

His public LinkedIn profile clearly references him as the founder/director though.

In the past he worked for Australian Immigration, & as a UN Trafficking expert.

(nb: you may have to click a small 'view more tweets' link in this thread in a moment)

SeeFar seems also to have been called FarSight at some point, and was assisted by Christel Oomen at that point, a US Dept of State Refugee coordinator, and now a Washington DC Diplomat...

So now we know:
1. 'On the Move' (the 'UK Gov' site) is published by 'The Migrant Project', or at least linked to it closely.
2. 'The Migrant Project' was originally registered by a former UN migration expert called Jacob.
3. Jacob also runs something called 'SeeFar'.

SeeFar now focuses on various themes, including migration. They reference that they work with the UK. Among their supporters, they display the UK Gov logo, among many others.

If we trawl the site looking for the phrase 'On the Move' (the project the Independent reference as having £23k of ads spent on it by the UK government), we find that it *is* in fact referenced:

And there it is: An article explaining the details of the 'On The Move' project.

At the start of the thread I'd said to remember that the domain was registered in April, shortly after the start of the pandemic. You can see here the project ran from 'April to December 2020'.

"Social media outreach and lead generation advertising was also effective in reinforcing messages promoted during consultations and driving over 3,400 migrants to call the remote hotline service."

They also say it reached 16 million people via Facebook.

Elsewhere, knowing 'Seefar' seem to have run this, we can look at Gov websites & see that (though the 'on the move' ref here is coincidental) it references Seefar working with the Foreign Office.

(nb: you may have to click 'show replies' here to continue the thread here...)

So there we go.

It looks like this is likely what happened: Jacob and Seefar pitched the UK Government (perhaps others) for a campaign called 'On the Move'. That campaign consisted of a website, social ads, a hotline, targeted at potential 'irregular migrants' on this route.

That campaign resulted in 16 million being reached, and 3,400 calling a hotline to receive a 'consultation' on risks of migration (presumably not knowing this had anything to do with any government).

The aim was to get them to make 'safer and more informed migration decisions'.

The campaign seems to be very similar to an ongoing project, 'TheMigrantProject', which was also referenced as publisher of the 'On the Move' website.

Confusingly, Jacob is not referenced on any of these websites, neither is 'TheMigrantProject' referenced on SeeFar...

We know 'TMP' is run from multiple countries, from Facebook info. We also know Jacob seems to have set that up at in the beginning.

It may be that 'On the Move' is a targeted version of 'The Migrant Project', which SeeFar offer as a service to specific governments/supporters.

In Summary:

'On the Move', a project run by SeeFar, founded by Jacob Townsend, a former UN expert, ran Facebook ads reaching '16 million' people, which got '3,400' potential irregular migrants to call a hotline for a 'consultation' about potential irregular migration.

Overall, that was at least in part (according to the Independent) funded by the UK government (& perhaps other supporters of SeeFar).

It resulted in "one third of transit migrants making safer and more informed migration decisions", perhaps without realising this was gov funded.