Thread by @stevesymondsAI

#NationalityAndBordersBill

Tomorrow & Wednesday will be last two days for MPs to scrutinise & vote on this Bill. To how much of following can they possibly give proper scrutiny, let alone meaningfully vote upon given Government will ‘whip’ to require its majority wins out? 1/15

Clause 9 will empower Home Secretary to strip British citizens of their citizenship in secret.

Stripping people of their citizenship is already a draconian power. Seeking power to do so secretly shows contempt for British citizenship & the rights of every British person. 2/15

Clause 10 will empower Home Sec to refuse to register right of a stateless child, born in UK & lived here at least five years, to British citizenship.

Leaving kids born & growing up here without British citizenship & stateless shows contempt for children & their rights. 3/15

Clause 11 will empower Home Sec to withhold basic rights from many refugees in UK because she provides no #safepassage & forces them to come by other means.

Penalising someone because they exercise their rights (to seek asylum) by only means you’ve left them is cruel. 4/15

Clause 15 will empower Home Sec to leave refugees in limbo while she begs other countries already receiving more refugees than UK to take our responsibilities too.

Wrecking asylum system by building bigger backlogs & calling this fixing is as hypocritical as it is stupid. 5/15

Clause 25 will create conditions in which asylum decision-makers are directed to give little weight to evidence however conclusive that evidence may be.

Directing decision-makers to do anything but honestly appraise evidence before them shows contempt for them & their role. 6/15

Clause 26 will empower Home Secretary to again lock up people seeking asylum & rush their appeals at breakneck speed.

Not only has this been shown to be hopelessly unjust, it’s led to people whose appeals were rushed ahead still languishing in detention for months after. 7/15

Clause 28 is intended to empower Home Sec to expel people seeking asylum to other countries while their claims are considered.

Australia has spent billions trying & failing to deter people seeking asylum by inflicting enormous cruelty on some few people by this same policy. 8/15

Clause 29 seeks to unilaterally redefine & confine the meaning of an international agreement to aid Ministers in shirking their asylum responsibilities.

Ripping up an international agreement while expecting others to adhere to it is reckless & contemptuous. 9/15

Clause 39 will make most refugees arriving in UK liable to prosecution with possible 4 years in prison.

Criminalising & imprisoning people for exercising their rights (to seek asylum) is tyranny. Since it may persuade people to hide from authorities, it’s also reckless. 10/15

Clause 40 includes power to prosecute people who for no gain at all assist someone to reach UK to seek asylum with possible life imprisonment.

This Bill positively aids people smugglers while threatening people seeking asylum & any Good Samaritan who may come to their aid. 11/15

Clause 44 seeks to enable reckless manoeuvres at sea to attempt to push people seeking asylum away from UK.

More than 120 women, men & children have lost their lives seeking to cross Channel since 2017. Government seems determined to add to this shocking death toll. 12/15

And that’s not to mention many measures such as to increase barriers to victims of modern slavery receiving their due protection, to increase likelihood that children are wrongly treated as adults & to refuse visas to people because of their nationality. 13/15

Nor to mention important backbench & opposition amendments such as to end scandalous profit-making from children’s rights to British citizenship, to do some justice to #Chagossians & permit people seeking asylum to work. 14/15

How much of this will, even can, Parliament properly consider before it may be passed into law?

Is this parliamentary sovereignty or elective dictatorship?

And what will be made, if anything, of fact that its victims will disproportionately be black & brown people? 15/15