2 days ago
10
It’s been a busy week for asylum-seeker bashing. Had it not been for the forensic scrutiny of the deputy prime minister’s tax affairs, the onslaught against people seeking sanctuary would have been even more intense.
Monday’s bombshell was an announcement from the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, about the suspension of refugee family reunion until next spring. Until now, for families who have been through hell due to war and conflict in their home country, the prospect of finally being reunited in a safe country after one member has been granted refugee status has kept them going. That hope has been snatched away, as the government officially stopped taking applications for the programme on Thursday at 3pm.
Further bad news spewed out. Appeals (often against flawed initial government decisions on asylum claims) will now be handled by people with less expertise than the highly qualified judges who currently hear these cases. Trained members of the public – no further details provided – will make these life and death decisions.
Asylum accommodation is a Premier League-level political football. Warehouses are being considered, the home secretary declared, when asked for the millionth time why asylum seekers are still luxuriating at taxpayers’ expense in hotels.
Threatening “we’ll send you home” messages sent to 130,000 overseas students followed, failing to mention that students from war zones who claim asylum can’t be returned there at present. And new life has been breathed into the old chestnut of ID cards, along with intensified raids on workplaces to root out illegals wherever they might be concealing themselves and scamming us, no mention that those working illegally are probably being exploited and paid a pittance. Government also omitted to mention that there are already options online for employers to confirm whether or not their employees have the legal right to work in the UK.
But this week’s announcements are unlikely to be the end of it. It seems that no punishment is harsh enough for asylum seekers. The government is determined to compete with the rhetoric of Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, and the shadow justice minister, Robert Jenrick, who in turn are competing with each other to see which one can “out-nasty” their political rival. In an interview in the Spectator, Jenrick said Farage was not going far enough with his proposal for cabins with a fence round them to accommodate asylum seekers, and is calling for “a decade of net emigration”.
Asylum seekers, especially those who are newly arrived in the country, have often not grasped the complexities of UK politics, and are unaware of how politicians from mainstream parties are scapegoating them to score points and gain votes. They are much more likely to listen to the news about the latest developments in their home country than what is going on here, anxiously checking to see if the area their family lives in has been bombed overnight.
Most want to work hard, pay taxes and contribute. The resourcefulness, resilience and energy required to make their difficult journeys are qualities many employers look for in their staff.
They are often unaware of the tropes around luxury hotels, especially when they spend their days scrubbing mould off the walls of their rooms, trying to trap rodents and avoid bits of crumbling ceiling falling on their heads. They are also unaware of the images of grinning young men on a dinghy sailing on a sea as smooth as glass, used over and over again by some sections of the media, sending a message to the British public that they are chancers having a laugh at our expense.
In reality, it is more likely that a dinghy crossing the Channel will be overstuffed with people screaming and crying, frantically trying to bale out water, crushed and bruised because of the severe overcrowding and convinced they will not make it on to dry land.
The mismatch between the realities of asylum seekers’ lives and the increasingly hateful rhetoric of shouty politicians, amplified by large sections of the media and social media, has never been greater. It is steering government policy in a disastrous direction and causing deep fissures in our society.
The prime minister is quick to show empathy for those who oppose migrants, saying he understands their frustration about small boat crossings and hotels in their communities, but he is silent on the other side of the story. Maybe he has forgotten this case in 2003, and others where he passionately defended the rights of asylum seekers.
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Government is engaged in a race to the bottom in the futile hope of competing with the populist rhetoric of the right. But ministers will never be able to satisfy the likes of Farage and Jenrick, however low they go. An increasing number of asylum seekers are being accommodated at a bleak former military base, Wethersfield, in Essex. Local residents compare it to “a stalag”. Nobody can claim people are living in luxury there. Yet a national demonstration has been organised in nearby Colchester later this month to protest about asylum seekers being accommodated at the base with the words: “None in, all out.”
Meanwhile, far-right influencers are calling for remigration – ethnic cleansing and mass deportation of people who aren’t white.
It starts with asylum seekers, but unless the government replaces its current rhetoric with one about community cohesion and all humans having equal value, it won’t end there.
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Diane Taylor writes on human rights, racism and civil liberties
