UK Policy: A War on Refugees?

Hostility towards asylum seekers and refugees within the UK has been growing exponentially for years, hidden in amongst general hate crime statistics. Recently however, government action and policy in relation to asylum seekers and refugees in the UK has reached new levels of disturbing regarding the risk they pose towards these people's human rights and safety in their own communities.

Even before these vulnerable people arrive on the shores of the UK, the government has discussed multiple tactics of lethal deterrence, including employing anti-boat wave machines, and physical blockades to stop the apparent invasion that they seem to believe this issue is. People, however, will not simply stop chasing a chance of safety when there are still dangerous environments and risk of persecution to flee from. Evidence shows that the more forceful and harsh restrictions imposed by border controls are, the more business for people smugglers, and higher risk to life there is. Boris Johnson offered his condolences after a sinking of a boat near Dunkirk this past month which led to four confirmed deaths of children and adults, saying "We...will do all we can to crack down on the ruthless criminal gangs who prey on vulnerable people by facilitating these dangerous journeys." Yet, the involved authorities are undeniably the primary facilitators in instances like this, as detailed within a 2019 report by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee it is warned that introducing "a policy that focuses exclusively on closing borders will drive migrants to take more dangerous routes, and push them into the hands of criminal groups."

Essentially, it appears that if there was a safe and legal route to apply for asylum within the UK then business for people traffickers would cease directly, and subsequently the deaths of children under the watch of UK border control would cease also.

Whilst it is true that a record of 7,000 people crossed the channel between January 2020 - October 2020, more than three times the number seen across the whole year of 2019 this is a reflection of a global rise in forcibly displaced persons figures, seeing a record 45.7 million displaced persons of whom 26 million hold official refugee status. In addition to this, the UK still falls far behind a number of other European countries such as Germany and France when it comes to the total number of refugees living in the UK. which is approximately only 126,720 refugees, 45,244 pending asylum cases and 125 stateless persons.

This makes the government's reaction to people searching for safety entirely unfounded when compared with the fact that other countries sustain hundreds of thousands more, without threatening lives as a method of deterrent.

In addition, the risk to human rights posed by the UK's handling and treatment of asylum seekers and refugees is not a subtle one; denial of access to the NHS, a financial support of merely £5.66 per day per person for families, the hard-to-let nearly uninhabitable houses they are assigned, and the refusal of right to work to those seeking asylum show this.

This system, i.e. support and costs annually going towards asylum seekers and refugees, on average amounts to £1 billion per year, a lot of money without any doubt. However, in comparison to the average of £25 billion the UK loses from tax avoidance it seems dubious as to why so many misleading facts appear surrounding this subject, with claims of a financial burden being put on the state by refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. This information also poses the danger of hostility in local communities towards asylum seekers and refugees.

Boris Johnson was cited as saying "This is a very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal thing to do" and that the people dying and risking death every year in an attempt to reach something resembling safety and opportunity were "blatantly coming here illegally." Comments such as these are not only factually incorrect but subsequently entirely misleading. According to the 1951 Refugee Convention and including EU law, not only does every individual have the right to seek asylum in whichever country they please, but there is no requirement for a refugee to claim asylum in one country over another, including no rule requiring refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they enter. An EU run system called the Dublin Regulations does allow an EU country to request another claims responsibility for an asylum claim, but only in certain conditions.

When bearing in mind the rhetoric that has been heard repeatedly, and increasingly loudly since Brexit especially, the environment that such inaccurate language by the Prime Minister causes is all too evident. When you consider that hate crimes after Brexit increased by up to 50% in some areas of the country, and looking specifically at instances such as the 2017 case where an unaccompanied 17-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker was brutally beaten by a group of approximately 30 men and women, the backlash from such lies and omissions is severe.

With the recent passing of a bill that increases family reunification rights only scraping through after a defeat of parliament by the House of Lords, and increased reports emerging of the treatment of individuals in detainment centres in the UK being prison like, with 'excessive use of handcuffing', it seems evident that the brutality the UK government is treating asylum seekers and refugees with is akin to a war-like mentality. There appears to be an enemy, and a procedure and treatment in place designed to punish this enemy for attempting to achieve safety.