Migrant boat crossings

[nezumi]

I attended a course on asylum and refugee seekers and it was most enlightening. Most do have mobile phones and keep all their important papers in hand, like you and I do. They also do have a bit of spare cash floating around as well. Asylum and refugee seekers who are broadly middle class have been doing this for centuries.

My experience teaching ESOL ties in with this as well.

[Woodchopper]

I've seen examples of people who can do all this still being denied visas because they are mistakenly thought to be at risk of overstaying. So if you're from Syria and claim you just want to come to the UK on holiday with your family I really can't imagine anyone believing you (even if it was true).

In 2019 I attended an academic conference in the UK which was about research on African countries. About a third of the invited African academics were denied UK visas, even though they had return tickets, a letter of invitation and decent jobs to go home to. There's similar problems with getting a Shengen visa.

Thanks both. It just occurred to me that people with the means to pay for criminals to take them across in dinghies (very large costs are frequently bandied about) then they ought to be able to at least meet some sort of financial criteria for visas.

I doubt that very much. I know people who've applied for a tourist visa and they had to prove regular employment with a monthly salary that would be enough to support them in the UK.

That's a big difference from being able to, say, borrow £5 000 to finance going from Syria to Britain.

So the solution looks like a change of leadership at the home office, a little less rhetoric, and some fairly small technical changes that Farage etc won't be able to whip people up over (because they'll be too boring) and at least the problem of drowning and small boats could be addressed. Thanks for that.

Probably won't be that easy.

[Millennie Al]

The people crossing the channel are asylum seekers, refugees.

They are not migrants.

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/infor ... ut-asylum/

They almost certainly are migrants. A migrant is someone who moves their place of residence. Someone who decides to take a gap year working in Australia is a (temporary) migrant. Someone who emigrates to Canada is a migrant. Someone who retires to Spain is a migrant. In principle, someone who moves from London to Hatfield is a migrant, but there's an implicit qualification in news reports that they are talking about international migrants.

A refuge is a safe place. An asylum is a safe place. "Refugee" and "asylum seeker" mean the same thing - someone trying to reach a safe place. People who have travelled internationally in search of safety are refugees and asylum seekers. Unless their needs are very short term, they're also migrants. I think it is very unhelpful for organisations to try to change the meaning of ordinary English words, effectively making them into technical terms in some limited domain. This merely encourages misunderstanding and provides opponents with things they can prove wrong, undermining everything.

From https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/infor ... ut-asylum/

In the UK, a person becomes a refugee when government agrees ...

That is completely wrong. The government may recognise that someone is a refugee, or they may be fooled into thinking that someone is a refugee when they are not, but whether or not a person is a refugee depends only on whether that person is trying to reach a safe place.

[Millennie Al]

It just occurred to me that people with the means to pay for criminals to take them across in dinghies (very large costs are frequently bandied about) then they ought to be able to at least meet some sort of financial criteria for visas.

It is very unlikely that such people would get visas. Merely having money (probably anything less than a million pounds as that is the level where someone could plausibly claim to be a successful entrepreneur) is inadequate and may even harm a visa application. Here is an example:
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questi ... ds-parking
It shows that having an unexplained sum of money in your bank account may be taken by the entry clearance officer as "funds parking" which is where you get a loan in an attempt to pretend you are more wealthy than you are to evade the visa requirement that you will be self-sufficient.

Note that one of the criteria for issuing a visa is that the officer should be satisfied that you will leave before your visa expires. An asylum seeker is, obviously, very unlikely to be able to show that.

So the solution looks like a change of leadership at the home office, a little less rhetoric, and some fairly small technical changes that Farage etc won't be able to whip people up over (because they'll be too boring) and at least the problem of drowning and small boats could be addressed. Thanks for that.

That'll work as well as a vote on Brexit worked to stop politicians blaming everything on the EU.

[Bird on a Fire]

I attended a course on asylum and refugee seekers and it was most enlightening. Most do have mobile phones and keep all their important papers in hand, like you and I do. They also do have a bit of spare cash floating around as well. Asylum and refugee seekers who are broadly middle class have been doing this for centuries.

My experience teaching ESOL ties in with this as well.

Everyone has a mobile phone these days. Everyone. Penniless illiterate farmers and their mums. They're incredibly useful and can be acquired/used without any participation in the formal economy.

Keeping "important papers" to hand is great, but not exactly useful if you don't have the exact important papers you need to enter a country via some other means than as an asylum seeker. "Here's my birth certificate" "Do you have a work permit? No? Well f.ck off then."

[plodder]

It just occurred to me that people with the means to pay for criminals to take them across in dinghies (very large costs are frequently bandied about) then they ought to be able to at least meet some sort of financial criteria for visas.

It is very unlikely that such people would get visas. Merely having money (probably anything less than a million pounds as that is the level where someone could plausibly claim to be a successful entrepreneur) is inadequate and may even harm a visa application. Here is an example:
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questi ... ds-parking
It shows that having an unexplained sum of money in your bank account may be taken by the entry clearance officer as "funds parking" which is where you get a loan in an attempt to pretend you are more wealthy than you are to evade the visa requirement that you will be self-sufficient.

Note that one of the criteria for issuing a visa is that the officer should be satisfied that you will leave before your visa expires. An asylum seeker is, obviously, very unlikely to be able to show that.

Sorry, should have been clearer. I was thinking about mini-fixes to the system which would allow slightly easier holiday visas (which then means people can make asylum claims without needing to drown, suffocate, hang under lorries etc).

Worth remembering these drownings aren't the first mass deaths to occur to refugees to the UK in recent years.

[Fishnut]

This is a good piece, "debunking key myths" about the asylum system. This part caught my eye,

In the EU, most people claiming asylum come from Syria and Afghanistan. In the UK, the main countries of origin are Iran, Eritrea, Albania, Sudan and Iraq. This difference is mostly due to the role played by family, historical and geopolitical connections in shaping decisions about where to move to and settle.

In other words, most people don't want to come to the UK, but those few who do, really want to come here and not elsewhere.

And this is a useful graphic (though don't complain to me about it being a pie chart please!)

Screenshot 2021-12-02 at 19.32.24.png (315.62 KiB) Viewed 1442 times

[Millennie Al]

I was thinking about mini-fixes to the system which would allow slightly easier holiday visas (which then means people can make asylum claims without needing to drown, suffocate, hang under lorries etc).

Worth remembering these drownings aren't the first mass deaths to occur to refugees to the UK in recent years.

There can be no mini-fixes because the system is working as intended. You are not eligible for a holiday visa to some to the UK unless you are genuinely coming on holiday. If you are applying with the intent of staying (whether by claiming asylum or not) you will not be granted a holiday visa unless you can fool the entry clearance officer, which is failrly unlikely as they have seen it all before and will err on the side of rejection.

For offical policy on coming to the UK to seek asylum, see https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... oad-policy which leads you to a PDF which is short enough to quote in its entirety:

As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK fully considers all asylum
applications lodged in the UK. However, the UK’s international obligations under the
Convention do not extend to the consideration of asylum applications lodged abroad and
there is no provision in our Immigration Rules for someone abroad to be given permission to
travel to the UK to seek asylum. The policy guidance on the discretionary referral to the UK
Border Agency of applications for asylum by individuals in a third country who have not been
recognised as refugees by another country or by the UNHCR under its mandate, has been
withdrawn. No applications will be considered by a UK visa-issuing post or by the UK Border
Agency pending a review of the policy and guidance.
20 September 2011

I have highlighted the most relevant bit. The only solution is a complete overhaul of immigration policy which thoroughly rejects racism and xenophobia. Nothing less will make much difference.

[plodder]

Lol, the grandstanding approach won't work - it never does, not ever. Some sneaky mini-fixes will and always do provide the solutions. In a broader sense this is why everything is a completely crazy patchwork of muddles and imperfections. It's also why ideologues of all stripes are dangerous and mostly completely ineffective.

[IvanV]

This is a good piece, "debunking key myths" about the asylum system. This part caught my eye,

In the EU, most people claiming asylum come from Syria and Afghanistan. In the UK, the main countries of origin are Iran, Eritrea, Albania, Sudan and Iraq. This difference is mostly due to the role played by family, historical and geopolitical connections in shaping decisions about where to move to and settle.

Albania is seemingly an odd one to be on that list, as we tend to think of it as reasonably stable these days. People go there on holiday and enjoy it. But it is the second largest source of asylum claims in Britain. We tend to assume it will be joining the EU before long. [Edited to correct] Although there is a broad public assumption that it is a reasonably safe place to live, in fact there is a relatively high success rate to Albanian asylum claims in comparison to many other places. Though of course Roma people from EU accession countries tended to seek asylum here before those countries joined the EU, so this does not exclude an oppressed minority.

But Albania is a different case. It is not the poor but reasonably quiet place the tourist sees. It is a mafia state, funded by drug running. There is much human trafficking of the local population. It also has a persisting tradition of inter-clan blood-feuds, which makes life very dangerous for people from certain families, if some relative has done something and the other lot are out to kill you now if they have an opportunity. And why to Britain? Much their main traditional connection is with Italy - before Covid about half of all flights out of Tirane went to Italy. And notoriously there are so many in Switzerland these days they make up a large fraction of the national football team.

Here's a couple of articles on "why Albania" which I found interesting.
Albanian asylum claims - mainly about unaccompanied minors
We need to talk about Albania

Curiously we see a coincident issue with our 3rd largest source of asylum claims, Eritrea. Again, Eritrea's traditional connection is with Italy. It only exists as a separate entity because it is a former Italian colony. Historically it forms part of the Ethiopian province of Tigray. Over half the population are Tigrinya, and about a third are Tigre, who are distinct but closely related. That Eritrea is an appallingly repressive state to be compared to North Korea is not in dispute. Frequently when Eritrea takes part in international sporting competitions, many of the participants seek asylum.

[Fishnut]

This is a couple of days old but I don't think it's been posted yet (apologies if it has and I missed it), People onboard sinking Channel dinghy ‘tried to contact UK authorities according to the Guardian.

The two survivors from the incident last Wednesday claim those onboard made repeated calls to the British and French authorities as their flimsy dinghy began to sink.

According to one of the survivors, the British responded by telling them to get in touch with the French...

HM Coastguard has repeatedly refused to clarify whether it received a distress call or calls from the sinking boat in the early hours of Wednesday morning...

[Dan O’Mahoney – the clandestine channel threat commander] said HM Coastguard responded as soon as the French launched a search and rescue operation, after French fishers spotted bodies floating in the water. This was at 12.58pm on Wednesday – about 11 hours after the survivors claim they first raised the alarm...

“The right side of the boat was losing air. Some people were pumping air into it and others were bailing the water from the boat,” Ibrahim [one of the two survivors], 21, told Rudaw, speaking from hospital in Calais, where he was recovering from hypothermia. “Then after a bit, we called the French police and said: ‘Help us, our pump stopped working.’”

“Then [we] sent [our] location to the French police and they said: ‘You’re in British waters.’ So we called Britain. They said call the French police,” Ibrahim claimed. “Two people were calling – one was calling France and the other was calling Britain.” The calls were made in English, he confirmed.

When someone is in distress, if you can help them, you help them. You don't worry about jurisdiction, you go and save them and worry about the paperwork after. But instead emergency services on both sides of the channel tried to ignore their responsibilities and people ended up dying. This isn't the first time people have drowned in the channel and I wish I knew what could be done to make it the last. But I don't, so it won't, and more people will die in one of the busiest shipping lanes within sight of two of the richest countries in the world.

[Brightonian]

This is a couple of days old but I don't think it's been posted yet (apologies if it has and I missed it), People onboard sinking Channel dinghy ‘tried to contact UK authorities according to the Guardian.

The two survivors from the incident last Wednesday claim those onboard made repeated calls to the British and French authorities as their flimsy dinghy began to sink.

According to one of the survivors, the British responded by telling them to get in touch with the French...

HM Coastguard has repeatedly refused to clarify whether it received a distress call or calls from the sinking boat in the early hours of Wednesday morning...

[Dan O’Mahoney – the clandestine channel threat commander] said HM Coastguard responded as soon as the French launched a search and rescue operation, after French fishers spotted bodies floating in the water. This was at 12.58pm on Wednesday – about 11 hours after the survivors claim they first raised the alarm...

“The right side of the boat was losing air. Some people were pumping air into it and others were bailing the water from the boat,” Ibrahim [one of the two survivors], 21, told Rudaw, speaking from hospital in Calais, where he was recovering from hypothermia. “Then after a bit, we called the French police and said: ‘Help us, our pump stopped working.’”

“Then [we] sent [our] location to the French police and they said: ‘You’re in British waters.’ So we called Britain. They said call the French police,” Ibrahim claimed. “Two people were calling – one was calling France and the other was calling Britain.” The calls were made in English, he confirmed.

When someone is in distress, if you can help them, you help them. You don't worry about jurisdiction, you go and save them and worry about the paperwork after. But instead emergency services on both sides of the channel tried to ignore their responsibilities and people ended up dying. This isn't the first time people have drowned in the channel and I wish I knew what could be done to make it the last. But I don't, so it won't, and more people will die in one of the busiest shipping lanes within sight of two of the richest countries in the world.

Yes, when I saw that I wondered why the British could not have taken the details and passed them on to the French and vice versa instead of hanging up (as seems to be implied).

[plodder]

Yeah, that was my Daily Mail link above. Rescues at sea often involve civilian vessels with the coastguard co-ordinating, so it’s a big wasted opportunity if true. In other news, Britain First have crashed the RNLI website and threatened the volunteer crews. Can’t remember if they’re a proscribed organisation yet.

[Fishnut]

From the Indy,
Convictions quashed for asylum seekers wrongly jailed for steering dinghies across Channel.

Court of Appeal judges threw the convictions out on Tuesday because of the same “error of law” that saw five other cases overturned last year.

Lord Justice Edis previously found that the law had been “misunderstood” by the Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and that a legal “heresy” developed making asylum seekers believe they had no defence to charges of assisting unlawful immigration.