British Home Secretary Suela Braverman is right when she notes the breakdown of the system. He is wrong about everything else, especially when he deals with the causes of that breakdown. It did not arise because of the influx of migrants and asylum seekers, and certainly not because of their "invasion" of Britain, but rather the result of a policy that both intentionally and accidentally neglected a manageable situation and allowed it to grow into a chronic crisis.
Despite the increased hysteria in society, the number of asylum seekers in Britain is decreasing. The number of people crossing the English Channel by boat has increased dramatically - from 299 in 2018 to a possible 50.000 this year. But greater visibility of asylum seekers is not the same as an increase in their numbers. People cross the Channel by boat because other routes are closed - the Channel Tunnel, ferry and air lines. We know from experience that when one route is closed, migrants and asylum seekers seek other, often more dangerous routes.
However, the total number of these people is still relatively low. According to Oxford University's Migration Observatory, 103.081 people applied for asylum in 2002, and barely half that number - 56.495 - did so last year. (The parliamentary briefing gives slightly lower figures for both years, but points to the same trend.)
What has changed is the amount of pending asylum applications. Until around 2012, the difference between the total number of submitted asylum applications and the number of applications not yet processed was relatively small. That gap has widened over time, especially since 2018. At the end of 2010, there were 5.978 cases for which a first-instance decision had not yet been made; by the end of 2018, there were 27.256 such cases, and by the second quarter of this year, almost 100.000. Over the past decade, the number of pending cases has grown about 15 times faster than the number of asylum applications.
It is clear that we have a capacity problem here. Since 2016, the number of officers making these decisions has dropped significantly. During 2014, almost 80% of requests were resolved within 6 months. Today it is less than 10%.
Politics is also a problem. The basis of British immigration policy, as in most Western countries, is a strategy of deterrence, where life is made difficult for irregular migrants to discourage them from making the journey in the first place. On the one hand, the huge backlog in the processing of asylum applications, as well as overcrowding and terrible conditions in the collection centers represent a policy failure, but on the other hand, they are all means of deterring more asylum seekers. That approach led to the "hostile environment" program enacted by one of our earlier governments. That's why Minister Chris Flip can say that asylum seekers are "a bit cheeky" when they complain about housing conditions.
Deterrence rarely works. The EU's brutally harsh immigration policy, with 25.000 drowned in the Mediterranean since 2014 alone, has not led to an end to irregular migration.
Far from "breaking the business model" of people smugglers, as is often claimed, this policy creates new business opportunities for criminal gangs, the consequences of which we are currently seeing in the English Channel.
This approach implies that when one policy fails, the authorities resort to an even more inhumane model. This led to a deportation scheme in Rwanda. Just 10 years ago, most people would have considered it immoral for Britain to use its economic supremacy to get rid of people it deemed undesirable. It involves mass deportations of asylum seekers before their claims are processed in a much poorer country, in exchange for money. Today, not only is it official government policy, but leading university professors are encouraging the Tories to "strengthen deterrence with even more arrangements like the Rwanda scheme" and to push harder on the culture wars, which is "not nice" but politically necessary.
A language once spoken only by the extreme right is now casually used by mainstream conservatives. There is talk of an "invasion" of migrants, and right-wing commentators routinely lament the "declining white population" and "great replacement."
Hardening rhetoric dehumanizes asylum seekers and incites hostility towards them. British public attitudes on immigration have become increasingly liberal over the past decade, but also more deeply polarized; the burning of an immigration reception center in Kent is a warning of the dangers of fueling such hostility.
At the same time, even harsh rhetoric will not necessarily bring political benefits. It could help strengthen the Tory right and regain some of its lost votes, but such stories create expectations in society that cannot be fulfilled. The former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, promised in 2019 to eliminate migrant crossings across the Channel by next spring. Braverman now promises the same. She won't keep that promise either. Failure will only fuel public cynicism and serve as a vehicle for the far right.
What to do then? First of all, there are solutions only for real and not for imaginary problems like the alleged mass invasion. Second, in order to know what to do we must know what not to do. The red lines should be clear: don't demonize and dehumanize people and implement unconscionable policies like mass deportation in Rwanda.
Third, proper legal pathways for asylum seekers are needed. At the moment, people can only apply for asylum once they are on British soil. But they can only come to Britain with a valid visa. There is no 'asylum visa', meaning it is almost impossible to claim asylum without entering Britain irregularly. It's a catch-22 that the government and apologists for the government's immigration policy pretend doesn't exist.
In addition to the opening of legal routes, adequate capacity to process asylum applications is needed to reduce the artificially created backlog. A welcome change would be the right to work for asylum seekers, which would make them less dependent on state aid.
Finally, it should be recognized that a perfect solution does not exist. Every time someone mentions opening up legal migration routes, questions the policy of deterrence, or challenges the morality of Rwanda's deportation scheme, critics howl about "abolishing borders." It is as if every liberalization of politics leads to the "abolition of borders". The fantasy of closed borders is a big part of the problem. We should accept the fact that a more liberal immigration policy is more humane and more realistic.
(The Guardian; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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