By Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour Member
The BBC’s Panorama programme last Monday looked at the issue of so-called ‘illegal’ migration and the Tories’ fixation with reducing the numbers crossing the channel. The programme’s investigative reporter, Jane Corbin, asks whether the Tories plan would succeed.
According to the programme, that around 30,000 have entered the UK on small boats or dinghies so far this year, more than the whole of last year. The English Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world and fraught with danger. Twenty-seven people died when a boat sank last year.
The Tory plan is to fly migrants to Rwanda, where their request for asylum will be processed. The Tories believe that this would deter people from making the hazardous journey across the Channel but currently, no one has been deported to Africa because the European Court of human rights has ruled against this practice. The Government are appealing against this judgment and there are even suggestions that the Government may pull out of the human rights convention, despite the fact that Britain was one of the founders of that international court. The courts will decide on the British Government’s appeal in the autumn.
Corbin interviewed the Tory MP for South Thanet, Craig Mackinlay, who reckons that constituents voted for control of our borders but they have been thwarted by outside bodies. He goes on to assert that those risking their lives in dinghies are largely young males who have nice clothes, hair cuts, new mobile phones and money in their pockets. In a nutshell, they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers. He puts the blame on people smugglers, that profit from the dangerous crossings and argued that migrants put pressure on existing services for his constituents. The Government have said that it costs £5mn a day to place the migrants in hotels.
Desperate people fleeing war, hunger and persecution
But the image I have of migrants is entirely different from Mackinlay’s. They are desperate people, who are often fleeing persecution, wars and hunger. They are people from Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East who are seeking a better life. Contrary to Mackinlay’s view, the programme said that 80% of migrants were asylum seekers and 20% were economic migrants. And in both cases, there are no ‘legal’ means of travelling to the UK and so they risk their lives.
As far as public services are concerned, the main reason for pressure on them is that Tory austerity measures have cut them to the bone. Many services throughout the UK, not just near the Channel, are on their knees thanks to Tory policies. Local Authorities have had their budgets cut by over 40% since 2010. It is Mackinlay and his Tory colleagues who are responsible for the lack of housing and social care, not asylum seekers or migrants in general.
What was not mentioned in this programme, is that asylum seekers are not allowed to work during their application process and instead of becoming active participants in the economy, as most of them would be, they have live on a pittance. Yet the NHs and many other services are suffering from massive staff shortages and logic would suggest that some of these migrants could help plug the gap. It is the Government’s declared ‘hostile environment’ policy towards immigrants in general that prevents this.
Even refugees from Ukraine face bureaucratic hurdles
The Government took a different approach to the refugee crisis in Ukraine. A wave of public sympathy and political expedience gave Ukrainians a legal route for asylum. But even in this case Home Office Immigration processes put up so many hurdles and hoops to jump through that many of refugees gave up. In several cases permission to come to the UK was given to a whole family…except for one child. It looked – as usual for Home Office Immigration – that behind what was supposed ‘public policy’ was an obstructive system that negated the policy. Socialists should support the provision of effective and simply legal channels for anyone who seeks asylum in Britain.
The programme presenter travelled to Turkey where there somewhere between five and ten million migrants, the largest numbers in the world. She spoke to a trafficker who claimed that he treated migrants with respect. He said that migrants were required to sign a ‘consent form’ and he charged them $17,000 for travel to the UK. Most migrants apply for asylum in European states. They would travel on boats across the Mediterranean to Italy or Greece.
Jane Corbin spoke to a man who worked in a bakery. He is an illegal migrant from Afghanistan who left because of hunger and he needed to provide for his family. She spoke to a representative of a group called Care 4 Calais, who give advice to migrants and is one of the agencies that took legal action against the Government. They argued that deportation to Rwanda was cruel and expensive.
Corbin noted that the facility in Rwanda can only deal with 200 asylum seekers at a time, at a cost of around £120 million. There are also question marks about Rwanda’s human rights record. She was herself unable to visit Rwanda because of threats made to her, she thought because of her reports on the genocide that took place over 28 years ago.
Most of the contributors in this programme believed that the policy of deportation will fail. The provision of safe, legal routes for asylum seekers is the only means of putting people traffickers out of business and that should be the basis of Labour policy. Safe migration and improved services for all – that would also put the likes of Mackinlay out of business. Amen to that.
The programme is still available on BBC i-player, here. [Pictures from the programme]
