Setting aside for a moment just how few asylum seekers come to UK in grand scheme of things, particularly compared to France, or the good reasons why those who cross the channel do so, the UK's whole proposal hinges on "you take more so we take less". 1/
thetimes.co.uk/article/e16b55…
thetimes.co.uk/article/e16b55…
That's a pretty hard sell to any country. The UK government has simultaneously politicised immigration and asylum in an attempt to play to its base and demonstrated a repeated tendency to forget that other countries' governments have to factor in their voters. 2/
The irony of this is that, in the UK at least, for the vast majority of voters immigration and asylum are actually pretty low on their list of concerns. The government tries to use it to deflect from other issues though. 3/
For all of its grand standing over the #BordersBill, in practice a lot of its proposals, e.g. returns and offshoring, relies on agreements with other countries, countries which also don't want to take more asylum seekers as they have their own voters to think of. 4/
What is needed is for UK, and to be fair many other countries, including across the EU, to stop focusing their asylum policies on deterrence, exclusion and externalisation, and to start focusing on inclusion. It not only costs less, but it's more practical, as well as humane. 5/
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