Thread by @ZoeJardiniere

After Ukraine, there will be others. There will always be refugees denied protection as long as the borders of the rich, safe world are closed.

We must keep in sight a world that is different, where movement is free.

https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1497586511411245058

There’s plenty of people happy to shout about their straw man interpretation of what this means. I’d be delighted to have conversations about the serious, long-term & achievable global vision outlined in the piece. Not with loons raging about “millions of Africans” thanks. 😑😌

One interesting thing about Ukraine is, since 2014, 10s of thousands of refugees have already entered Poland.

Just they did so visa-free & were immediately able to work & didn’t have to leave their rights behind at the border. That system has worked. It could exist world wide.

They didn’t have to go through the nightmare of applying for asylum and being demonised as “irregular economic migrants” across the press. They could move freely to a neighbouring state where they had connections & safely get on with their lives. This is a good model.

Most migration, globally & historically, happens inside countries and then regionally. Most people migrate in local circular patterns that benefit sending & receiving countries.
Trend of long term & long distance migration from global south to north is created by border policies.

When we stop viewing migration as purely something that “happens to us” that we must limit & contain, and view it instead as a natural global human behaviour, we see ways we can stop driving suffering and limiting opportunity for mobility around the world.

Even just the UK stops finding border enforcement, walls, detention centres, surveillance equipment & patrols on borders around the world, & instead encouraged & supported regional trans-national rights to emerge, we could make an enormous difference to human freedom & equality.

*funding, not finding. We don’t find deadly border systems operating around the world, we actively fund and direct such activities.