It's impossible to quote up to date figures because asylum applications are being processed so incredibly slowly, but the percentages of those crossing in small boats that are granted asylum are always quoted as being in the high 70s or 80s. If we provide application centres overseas (the French have offered to help with this), it seems obvious that the numbers crossing by illegal means would fall by the same percentages. Further, the small number that would continue to seek to do this when there was no need would pretty obviously be highly unlikely to be granted asylum. The criminal gangs' business model would be broken.
I can’t find so far any fault in what you are proposing, however I would also add that if these “centres of application” were in place, then anyone who tried to get in illegally by any means, should then have their application automatically rejected. I feel that would be fair unless someone could point out to me why it wouldn’t be.
You’re the one who stated it Goldie…not me. I merely asked you to point out the policy…..that you now admit isn’t in place. As I say…..rhetoric set to appeal to the disenfranchised masses.
It was around 70% before the Albanians started piling in. They are now a large percentage of the men coming over The Channel. They wouldn't qualify for asylum, so they'll keep paying the gangs to boat them to the middle of the Channel where they're picked up by our Border Force, put into our hotels from which they then go missing into the rest of the population. The one good idea Labour had under Blunkett was identity cards, which Theresa May stamped on. The Times had an interesting opinion piece that digital identity would not be possible, and indeed is being used by much of Europe, which would make our black economy, no doubt a big pull for illegals, almost impossible to operate because you'd need a digital identity to do anything. For me, this is an excellent idea
I said there wasn't a policy in the first place! You're now asking me to show you the policy that doesn't exist. We're getting into Monty Python-think.
Trafficked women and children, but not many males. The criminal gangs are telling all the able bodied Albanian males to say they were trafficked. They're making a mockery of the system and neither the Tories or Labour have the answer
I guess you just lied on you original post then Goldie…..fair enough. Although an admission of guilt would be enough for me to move on…..I’ll await your apology
Why would they need asylum ? I’ve been to Albania and it’s quite a nice place…..some places are run down and poor but surely that’s not a legitimate reason to claim asylum?
Plenty of violence and gang warfare too I’m led to believe, giving many a legitimate claim despite them being the current Tory flavour of the month.
At the risk of taking on the copy and paste role of our resident antipodean, I thought the below was a good summary of the challenge. Naturally, I enjoyed the irony that our great moment of 'freedom' and 'sovereignty', driven in no small part because of fears about immigration, has left us reliant on those we once had shared sovereignty with, but now have sovereignty over us in this issue. Almost as if the world has become a very complex place, and the idea of national 'sovereignty' is a load of rhetorical codswallop with zero tangible benefit to anyone living in the UK. Project reality to one side, this is clearly a challenge for both major parties, but if I were advising Labour, I'd be telling them not to put out a position yet. Let this get worse and worse for the govt., who haven't solved this despite 12 years in power and 4 election wins, and come out with a strong position (doesn't have to be realistic - 40 new immigration centres?) 6 months out from the election if this is still top of the list of voter concerns. They don't need to get their hands dirty at this point in the election cycle if they can avoid it. --- https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/11/02/why-small-boats-are-a-big-problem-for-britain Why small boats are a big problem for Britain A crisis in the Channel disturbs every part of the political spectrum On saturday October 29th, 990 people set off in 24 dinghies from continental Europe to make the short, dangerous voyage across the English Channel to beaches on Britain’s Kent coast. The day after, another 468 arrived, crammed onto eight boats. That same day a terrorist, who had gorged on far-right memes about the country being overrun by immigrants, threw a series of petrol bombs at a migrant-processing centre in Dover. In Parliament on the day after that, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, labelled the people arriving on British shores an “invasion”, triggering outrage from critics and support from backbench Conservative mps waving dictionary definitions of the term. These were perhaps the most depressing few days in a crisis that has evolved from a curiosity into a political nightmare. Since the start of the year, 38,000 people have made the trip across the world’s busiest shipping lane, the maritime equivalent of sprinting across a motorway. Small boats pose an intractable problem for every part of the political spectrum. They reveal a miserable tale of incompetence, cruelty and complacency. The crisis is most humiliating for the government. Politicians such as Ms Braverman have repeatedly pledged an era of stronger borders, lower immigration and more sovereignty. They have achieved the opposite. As a member of the eu, Britain had the right to deport asylum-seekers if they had previously been registered in another of the bloc’s member states. But Britain left the scheme when it left the club. Instead it tried to recreate a harebrained version, paying Rwanda to accept asylum-seekers on its behalf. The courts have so far stymied this idea. In short, the government replaced a scheme that was practical, moral and legal, with one that is impractical, immoral and probably illegal. In a slapstick version of geopolitics, the Conservative Party’s attempt to boost British sovereignty has instead left the country entirely reliant on its neighbour. When it comes to small boats, Britain is the demandeur. France has to be sweet-talked, cajoled and bribed into helping solve the problem of breaking up sophisticated smuggling networks and, ultimately, of keeping in France people who do not want to remain in France. Rather than being a sovereign, Britain is a supplicant. The small-boats crisis caps off a decade of failure by the Conservatives when it comes to the numbers of immigrants, too. At each of the past four elections, the Tories have promised lower immigration. At each election, a plurality of voters has backed them. Yet immigration has not fallen. Instead, the Tories have ended up mimicking New Labour. Under Tony Blair, Labour combined a liberal immigration policy, welcoming people from eu member states in central Europe and beyond, with performative cruelty designed to deter asylum-seekers. This government has done something similar, liberalising the rules for skilled migrants while cramming 23-year-olds from Afghanistan into crowded facilities. After 12 years in power, the government’s decisions are increasingly treated in the same way as the weather. Rather than an active choice, they are cast as a fact of life. Asylum policy is no exception. That it took 449 days to process an asylum claim in 2020, compared with the 233 days it took in 2018, is discussed in the same way people complain about a tree in their garden being blown over. Britain once aimed to handle such decisions in six months. It scrapped the target in 2019. Since then the backlog has ballooned from under 40,000 to over 100,000. How unfortunate. Oh well. If small boats demonstrate the incompetence and cruelty of the right, they also show up the complacency of the left. For a country of 67m, runs the argument, fewer than 40,000 people turning up on its shores should be little problem. It is a small number in the scheme of things. Except this same line was deployed, almost exactly, when only 539 people made the trip in 2018. That year, the arrival of under 100 people in a few days forced the home secretary at the time back from holiday. It was possible to dismiss the reaction then as hysteria. Now? Not so much. Back then most people were—in a phrase that causes liberals to wince—genuine asylum-seekers. Until this year, about two-thirds of those who arrived on small boats qualified for asylum. But this ratio may be shifting. Dan O’Mahoney, the grandly titled Clandestine Channel Threat Commander responsible for monitoring small boats, estimates that about half of the arrivals now are truly seeking refuge. It is a waste of talent to prevent real asylum-seekers from working while their claims are processed; by the same token it is necessary to skim off those who abuse the rules. Muddled masses Proposed solutions to the crisis abound. Some think-tanks emphasise co-operative ideas. Britain could forge a new agreement with the eu, which would include some sort of deal on responsibility for asylum-seekers. A proper system of identity cards in Britain would meanwhile reduce the allure of the country’s black market for labour, and so stem the flow. Hardliners propose tougher options, in which arrivals are imprisoned on cruise ships, breaking asylum law in the process. Each resembles the old joke about an economist stuck on a desert island with a tin of food but no can-opener. Their solution? “First, assume a can-opener...” Every solution is impractical in its own way. Britain is unwilling to embrace genuinely liberal solutions to mitigate suffering, nor is it inclined to reshape its relationship with Brussels. The government is thwarted from ditching its international obligations, as the failure of the Rwanda scheme attests. The result is paralysis, misery and, inevitably, death. As winter looms the seas will turn choppier. Sometimes 60 people are crammed into a boat designed for a fifth of that number. Last November 27 people drowned in a single incident. Another such tragedy is bound to happen. It will discomfort every wing of British politics. But it will be far worse for those on the boats.
I said "seems" to be and you've taken that very literally. Labour has no policy that I've seen of removing illegal migrants, and they've opposed all the government attempts to move illegals out. So that effectively means we would be open to illegal migration to all-comers from all over the world under Labour. No doubt posters like Watford would welcome that. The government needs to make Rwanda and similar schemes work, even if that means exiting from the European Convention on Human Rights and enacting our own Bill of Rights. They have two years to do this, otherwise, as I've said, the Tories are toast
There’s violence and gang warfare here but can’t see it being a legitimate claim in me seeking asylum in the US
