Considering what lefty lawyers have been up to here in the US, some abuse is definitely needed.
Steve
After the circulation of the dossier, McKenzie said she had been subjected to abuse including threats to drown her “like an asylum seeker” and to leave dead bodies at her property.
Eat shit, lol.
Tim the Coder
Since US lawyers are now standing in court issuing death threats to jury members (Andy Ngo case, Portland), or demanding key witnesses to election fraud state their home address in open evidence, I suspect hanging is not abuse enough.
Witchie
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. Henry VI, Part 2
Western Bloke
The problem isn’t the lawyers, it’s the piss-weak Tories. Blaming lawyers is like complaining that someone else trained harder for a race while you sat home watching Netflix.
They have a majority of 83, billions in resources and can’t write a law that works and gets people deported? There’s no excuse.
Truth is, they have no commitment to this. They can’t be that bothered. All they’re doing is making noise because the voters care.
Steve
The problem isn’t the lawyers, it’s the piss-weak Tories
Embrace the raw, liony power of “and”.
Basically, our entire ruling class needs chasing into the sea.
Boganboy
But if lefty attacks on Tories DON’T lead to abuse, that’s fascism.
Western Bloke
Steve,
“Embrace the raw, liony power of “and”.
Basically, our entire ruling class needs chasing into the sea.”
No, it’s not “and”.
Blaming lawyers is just venting. How dare these lawyers do their job and drive a coach and horses through the holes in the law? It’s pathetic, emasculated government to blame them rather than taking responsibility and making changes.
bloke in spain
I think the judiciary might have a part to play there. Long captured ground of the progressive left. As we’ve seen, doesn’t matter what laws you write, it’s the interpretation does the damage.
Western Bloke
BIS,
I think there’s some leaning towards the left, but many of these cases are about holes in the law, and then judges interpret it in a certain way. Government should be bringing new bills when they lose these cases hardening up the law to prevent misinterpretation within a matter of hours. But they aren’t.
Ultimately, Rishi can fix this problem, or say that it can’t be fixed. I don’t like Prime Ministers with majorities whining like they’re activists. And if he wants to admit that there’s nothing he can do about the judiciary then that opens a much bigger can of worms. Deporting people who shouldn’t be here doesn’t exactly seem like rocket science to me.
Ottokring
Governments over the last 30 odd yers have been very adept at criminalising everything else, I fail to see why they cannot achieve this for arriving on Dungeness beach without papers or having gender neutral toilets in co-educational schools.
I’d prefer the Khmer Rouge approach and machine gunnig headteachers, but I guess that might be a political hard sell.
Theophrastus (2066)
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
PJF
They have a majority of 83, billions in resources and can’t write a law that works and gets people deported? There’s no excuse.
To be fair, there’s fuck all that passing laws can do when all the institutions have been marched into. The left own everything that isn’t directly elected. The problem with the Tories is they are historically a party of the establishment; they fundamentally want to conserve those hollowed out institutions.
bloke in spain
Governments over the last 30 odd yers have been very adept at criminalising everything else, I fail to see why they cannot achieve this for arriving on Dungeness beach without papers
It is criminalised, as far as I’m aware. They do not have right of entry. Therefore they have broken UK law.
Cast your mind back to a couple years ago. The girl who’d achieved some notoriety over in the States for what were described as her “Far Right views” She was detained on arrival & in due course sent packing back to the States. Denied entry under UK law. Attempting to enter the country without papers would seem ample reason to deny entry.
Steve
WB – lawyers are not “just doing their jobs”, they’re activists and political players.
Judges are lawyers.
Western Bloke
Steve,
“WB – lawyers are not “just doing their jobs”, they’re activists and political players.”
Well, I don’t agree, but let’s assume they are. What are you/Rishi going to do about it? How do we solve this problem of the courts blocking deportations?
john77
@ Ottokring
Not everything – there are some things, such as eating, which they cannot/dare not try to (hence when Wilson decided to decimalise everything, he didn’t dare forbid pubs to sell beer by the pint). But politicians (and the civil service far more, but covertly) love to create laws to stop people doing something which they dislike as it is far easier than engaging in a civilised discussion *and winning*. There is a ratchet effect since hardly anything ever gets repealed, despite a previous Conservative Government committing itself to repealing one regulation for every new one introduced because the civil servants just ignored the order.
Steve
WB –
Well, I don’t agree,
That is your right.
My take is it’s Current Year and lawyers are equally as bent as journos or politicians or academics or BBC presenters. Y(EV)MMV.
but let’s assume they are. What are you/Rishi going to do about it?
Rishi is going to do nothing except tell you sweet little lies, and there is nothing I can do.
I did try warning people about what was coming re: immigration, long before the first suicide bombs went off on English soil, and long before we found out about the grooming gangs.
But here we are.
How do we solve this problem of the courts blocking deportations?
We don’t. Soon, England as a whole will be just like London. Nobody’s coming to rescue us, and there’s no reason to believe our system of government is going to solve anything.
Sorry x
John
Soon, England as a whole will be just like London.
Except that’s not the end of it.
We’ve pretty much run out of 4 star hotels so Rishi will have to slash the waiting lists for asylum hearings by approving 10,000+ every day. That pushes even more responsibility onto local authorities but they don’t have the resources either. Things will start to resemble many US sanctuary cities (or Paris) with migrant tent encampments, pavement sleepers and utter lawlessness. Only then, once the 3rd world realises the free stuff has finally run out and the UK has been bled dry, might they stop coming. Bad as things are right now they’re going to get infinitely worse over the next 20 years.
But hey, at least the GDP will have gone up.
Charles
@Tim the Coder – “US lawyers are now standing in court issuing death threats to jury members (Andy Ngo case, Portland)”
Citation required. And in any case, lawyers can ask for anything – it’s the court that decides whether they get what they ask. In the USA lawyers routinely ask for absurdly long sentences – many times the defendant’s longest possible lifetime – which is hardly a left wing thing to do.
@bloke in spain – “They do not have right of entry. Therefore they have broken UK law.”
Except the UK has signed up to an international treaty (and, indeed, was a big advocate of the treaty originally) which says that a legitimate refugee who arrives in a manner which would be illegal for anyone else cannot have the means of arrival held against them. This means that people who arrive and claim to be refugees cannot be deported until their claim has been assessed to see if it is ilegitimate. Depite all the anti-migrant rhetoric, the government is doing nothing to make these assessments quick or efficient even though this is something they could do fairly easily. One might come to the conclusion that they don’t want to solve the problem because it gives them something to pretend to campaign on.
Ottokring
One might come to the conclusion that they don’t want to solve the problem because it gives them something to pretend to campaign on.
Charles is right for once. The repudiatiin of the treaty and the imprisonment of illegals on Ascension or West Falkland is but an Oder in Council away.
The problem for the govt is that their inaction is rather obvious and that any promises to “do something” will be met with “you’ve had X years, a huge majority and did nothing.”
Bloke in North Dorset
“ Blaming lawyers is just venting. How dare these lawyers do their job and drive a coach and horses through the holes in the law? It’s pathetic, emasculated government to blame them rather than taking responsibility and making changes.”
The Brave browser search summariser tells me that up to the last election on average 15% of MPs were lawyers but it dropped to 11% at the last election. God knows how many lawyers are in the HoL.
On top of that:
“ The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel is a group of government lawyers who specialise in drafting legislation. We work closely with departments to translate policy into clear, effective and readable law. Our role will often begin when legislation is first being considered and we will remain involved throughout the Parliamentary process and beyond.”
Most of what we think of as loopholes are Parliament’s inability to pass laws we would like be abuse of our membership of various treaties. They don’t want to leave those treaties because MPs want to be seen as nice people by foreigners.
As I pointed out to someone on Twatter, this is like the run up to Brexit. If the main parties don’t sort this out we’ll find one that will and they don’t even have to be elected to make Parliament act, just the threat that they’ll stand is enough.
The Meissen Bison
Charles: In the USA lawyers routinely ask for absurdly long sentences – many times the defendant’s longest possible lifetime – which is hardly a left wing thing to do.
Charles: Citation required
Anon
@bind
Yes, but would add that deportations aren’t something a country can do alone, you need international agreement (even if just bilateral) to deport people. So you can’t have the UK go it entirely alone on migration policy unless it plans to use UK territories overseas to house people who can’t be deported elsewhere. France doesn’t want the boat people back.
And some migrants lose or destroy their identity documents to make it harder to get sent back home – can claim to be from a place where asylum cases are heard more sympathetically, or just a place in a big enough mess that even when your asylum case fails, it’s deemed unsafe to return you, or you can even just be a pain in the backside by not making it clear where you should be deported to.
I’ve said before the UK government should sort out the backlog of claims, which is something that should be in its power to do. But seems to have become more difficult – I saw some stats suggesting the number of hours spent processing each case had risen dramatically and this may be linked to the need to make things legally more watertight against appeals. Also to do with the inexperienced staff. But what you do once you process someone and the claim fails is more complicated than “just deport them”. Getting rid of all the rights of appeal would involve tearing up a lot of legal fabric including treaty membership, as you note. And deportations aren’t as mechanically straightforward as they sound, especially if a migrant isn’t cooperative.
There will be a lot more migration in the next twenty years than in the last twenty, and there was far more then than in the twenty before that. This is one of those global megatrends – transport has got cheaper, people in poor countries are getting rich enough to afford it while still poor enough for Europe to look like the promised land. It surprises me that European and North American states who are all on the receiving end of this don’t sit down and renegotiate some of the international refugee treaties to stop the abuse of the asylum system by people who are primarily economic migrants – this has always been a problem to some extent, but the situation we are coming into is very different to when those treaties were first written.
Boganboy
Anon
I note that France has no problem ‘deporting’ the boat people.
However I certainly agree with you that the UK and others should simply scrap the refugee treaties. Or just abandon them.
But I’d argue that the do-gooder lobby, and the lawyers and others who profit from migration, would make this impossible.
bloke in spain
Except the UK has signed up to an international treaty (and, indeed, was a big advocate of the treaty originally) which says that a legitimate refugee who arrives in a manner which would be illegal for anyone else cannot have the means of arrival held against them.
That’d be the same treaty that says that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe haven country they enter. If they’re coming from France, they can’t be refugees, can they?
My opinion has always been, on arrival bang them up in a detention area where they get the minimum accommodation, sustenance etc the law requires. So that doesn’t require any more than a prisoner doing time in lockdown. If it’s OK for how we treat our own people, it must be OK for them. They do not get to apply for asylum because they have no grounds to apply (see treaty). There is no door that leads from the detention area into the rest of the UK. The door that leads out is always open. If you want to apply for UK asylum from a safe haven country, you may do so. All applications will be judged on their merit. And that’s about how asylum applicants were treated back when that treaty was first enacted. Ask any of the refugees who were processed through the camps in the period after WW2. I’ve known some. It was not a nice experience they told me. But that was the price of entering the West. It ticked all the legal boxes then.
As far as I can see, that ticks all the legal boxes.
bloke in spain
It’s actually worth looking at that period of history. It’s the last time Western Europe had to deal with refugees in the numbers it’s having to now. Parents of a friend were processed in the Brit occupied region of Austria having crossed from the Soviet zone. He Lithuanian, she Russian. They met in the camps. He was quite fortunate, having served in the SS as a concentration camp guard. And that is a very tangled story that’s starts with the Russian annexation of Lithuania in ’38 & had him serving in the Red Army until captured by the Germans about ’42ish. If anyone had a right to be a refugee, he had. Having already been a POW on both sides twice.
Western Bloke
BiND,
“As I pointed out to someone on Twatter, this is like the run up to Brexit. If the main parties don’t sort this out we’ll find one that will and they don’t even have to be elected to make Parliament act, just the threat that they’ll stand is enough.”
Spot on. It’s a lot like the EU, in that there’s various noise about it from politicians, some PR-friendly activity, but they don’t care much. And in the end, people got so fed up (in combination with Cameron just being the wrong guy) that they voted UKIP and did enough damage to enough seats to scare the Conservatives into holding a referendum.
If Reform can get their act together I think it’s going to mean the Conservatives lose a lot of seats, enough to deliver a considerable victory for Starmer.
Addolff
Charles, how can a million ‘visitors’ come here via legal means every year yet boat people cannot?
The UN estimate there are 60 million seeking to come to the UK. Do you believe we should accept them all? The only answer must be no, so we agree there is a limit, we just differ on what that limit is (Mine would be zero, at least until all those already here have been processed and every person living here requiring accomodation has been housed).
They are coming from France so not refugees, they are economic migrants and you can’t knock the French (for this anyway) – we would do exactly the same thing if we were in their position, glad to see the ‘travellers’ go somewhere else.
So, fingerprint and DNA sample every person arriving here.
Those with documentation can have their claim processed. The French government do not provide food, accomodation, pocket money, so neither should we (an article I saw on Euronews said that Denmark has tightened it’s benefits to migrants and many are returning to Germany. So again, not refugees, economic migrants).
Any laws broken while waiting to be processed would see the claim rejected.
If they cannot provide evidence of who they are (Once they realise no documents = no right to stay we won’t be told ‘They are lost’ or ‘I was made to throw my papers away by traffickers’), detain them and ship them to a destination of their choice or a destination of our choice if they refuse.
Those on the left are very keen to support the ‘right’s of migrants but silent on the rights of the indigenous peoples of Europe, in complete contrast to their position regarding Europeans going anywhere in the world.
bloke in spain
“They are coming from France so not refugees, they are economic migrants and you can’t knock the French (for this anyway) – we would do exactly the same thing if we were in their position”
It’s worth pointing out the lengths the French go to prevent these people getting to the coast in the first place. I lived close to Lille in NW France & with a Brit reg car was regularly pulled up by the Gendarmerie & Doane (French frontier control) looking for traffickers carrying illegals. The French authorities provide little aid for those camped around the ports. Rather, they make life as difficult for them as possible. And they really are a problem in France. It’s made life hell for anyone living near that coast. They barricade themselves in their own homes. I had a couple try to break into the car during a brief stop at a McD’s on the Calais Dunkerque highway.
To the French, the UK’s causing this serious problem for them by being so hospitable if the buggers manage to get across. And they don’t understand why. They’re not. Economic migrants get a very rough time. Not just from the system but from the French. Something they don’t understand. You lot don’t like the Channel crossers but individually, you won’t do anything about it. If the movement was in the other direction, they wouldn’t get across the beaches. The French would see to that.
Lots more by searching for things like “200 year” sentence.
@Boganboy – “the UK and others should simply scrap the refugee treaties”
Is that because you don’t know why they were agreed in the first place, or because you are in favour of genocide?
@bloke in spain – “That’d be the same treaty that says that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe haven country they enter”
No. It wouldn’t. That treaty allows you to pass through any countries before claiming asylum. What it forbids is setting down in a safe country and subsequently changing your mind and applying elsewhere (well, you’re free to apply, but unlike in the first instance there is no obligation on the country to accept you).
– “If you want to apply for UK asylum from a safe haven country, you may do so.”
How? Apart from special cases such as Ukraine, there is no mechanism to apply for asylum in the UK for people who are not already in the UK – regardless of the status of the country that they are applying from.
– “It’s made life hell for anyone living near that coast.”
So, if the French make life hell for the lawful residents, it cannot be better for the migrants, so proving that France is not a safe country for them.
Boganboy
‘because you are in favour of genocide?’
That depends on who the genocide happens to, Charles. Basically, since I grew up during the collapse of the empire, I’m in favour of anti-imperialism. Thus I feel foreigners should be allowed to go to hell after their own fashion. But they shouldn’t be allowed to drag us there with them. Naturally, they disagree.
I suppose you could call me a Chamberlainite. After all, Neville was perfectly happy for Adolf to make a mess of Germany. He just didn’t want him to do it to Britain.
bloke in spain
‘because you are in favour of genocide?’
That’s an easy one to answer. Yes. Entirely. Anyone who favours the retention of the nuclear deterrent is. It’s the purpose of the things. To nuke the opposition into radioactive dust. And their kids. Especially those multimegaton city killers, bless their little re-entry heatshields.
Anon
@boganboy
“I note that France has no problem ‘deporting’ the boat people”
Well up to a point. As @bis says, they certainly do the “hostile environment” thing. Nevertheless, the fact there are large camps of migrants – many of whom haven’t even claimed asylum in France since they intend to pass through – is indicative that they aren’t finding it easy to remove people either.
Boganboy
Hadn’t thought of the nuclear deterrent BiS. And yes, I’m a firm supporter of it. As I think I’ve mentioned, I feel the Brits would be absolute idiots to get rid of it. I only wish we had such a thing in Oz.
Of course the Greens snuck a bill banning nuclear power through about 20 years ago. I can imagine how they’d react to nuclear weapons. (Is this the millionth or the billionth time I’ve bitched about the Greens?)
Indeed I just noticed an article deploring the agreement the Ukrainians made to get rid of their nukes when they gained independence. Had they not done so they could have nuked the Russian armies, and Moscow, when Puke invaded.
Western Bloke
Charles,
“Is that because you don’t know why they were agreed in the first place, or because you are in favour of genocide?”
But when those treaties were agreed was travel so easy as it is today? No, it wasn’t. Asylum seekers used to be the people with the resources to get here. They were the elite of their societies, already living like westerners. People who could come here and make a good living. Apart from their numbers being small, they also fitted in fine. We didn’t have a problem with kids arriving at school who couldn’t speak English or having medieval ideas about women.
Charles
@Western Bloke – “when those treaties were agreed was travel so easy as it is today?”
– “We didn’t have a problem with kids arriving at school who couldn’t speak English…”
The whole point of school is to teach people. And far more people today already speak English than used to be the case. There was a time when French or Latin was the language to know.
Considering what lefty lawyers have been up to here in the US, some abuse is definitely needed.
After the circulation of the dossier, McKenzie said she had been subjected to abuse including threats to drown her “like an asylum seeker” and to leave dead bodies at her property.
Eat shit, lol.
Since US lawyers are now standing in court issuing death threats to jury members (Andy Ngo case, Portland), or demanding key witnesses to election fraud state their home address in open evidence, I suspect hanging is not abuse enough.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. Henry VI, Part 2
The problem isn’t the lawyers, it’s the piss-weak Tories. Blaming lawyers is like complaining that someone else trained harder for a race while you sat home watching Netflix.
They have a majority of 83, billions in resources and can’t write a law that works and gets people deported? There’s no excuse.
Truth is, they have no commitment to this. They can’t be that bothered. All they’re doing is making noise because the voters care.
The problem isn’t the lawyers, it’s the piss-weak Tories
Embrace the raw, liony power of “and”.
Basically, our entire ruling class needs chasing into the sea.
But if lefty attacks on Tories DON’T lead to abuse, that’s fascism.
Steve,
“Embrace the raw, liony power of “and”.
Basically, our entire ruling class needs chasing into the sea.”
No, it’s not “and”.
Blaming lawyers is just venting. How dare these lawyers do their job and drive a coach and horses through the holes in the law? It’s pathetic, emasculated government to blame them rather than taking responsibility and making changes.
I think the judiciary might have a part to play there. Long captured ground of the progressive left. As we’ve seen, doesn’t matter what laws you write, it’s the interpretation does the damage.
BIS,
I think there’s some leaning towards the left, but many of these cases are about holes in the law, and then judges interpret it in a certain way. Government should be bringing new bills when they lose these cases hardening up the law to prevent misinterpretation within a matter of hours. But they aren’t.
Ultimately, Rishi can fix this problem, or say that it can’t be fixed. I don’t like Prime Ministers with majorities whining like they’re activists. And if he wants to admit that there’s nothing he can do about the judiciary then that opens a much bigger can of worms. Deporting people who shouldn’t be here doesn’t exactly seem like rocket science to me.
Governments over the last 30 odd yers have been very adept at criminalising everything else, I fail to see why they cannot achieve this for arriving on Dungeness beach without papers or having gender neutral toilets in co-educational schools.
I’d prefer the Khmer Rouge approach and machine gunnig headteachers, but I guess that might be a political hard sell.
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
They have a majority of 83, billions in resources and can’t write a law that works and gets people deported? There’s no excuse.
To be fair, there’s fuck all that passing laws can do when all the institutions have been marched into. The left own everything that isn’t directly elected. The problem with the Tories is they are historically a party of the establishment; they fundamentally want to conserve those hollowed out institutions.
Governments over the last 30 odd yers have been very adept at criminalising everything else, I fail to see why they cannot achieve this for arriving on Dungeness beach without papers
It is criminalised, as far as I’m aware. They do not have right of entry. Therefore they have broken UK law.
Cast your mind back to a couple years ago. The girl who’d achieved some notoriety over in the States for what were described as her “Far Right views” She was detained on arrival & in due course sent packing back to the States. Denied entry under UK law. Attempting to enter the country without papers would seem ample reason to deny entry.
WB – lawyers are not “just doing their jobs”, they’re activists and political players.
Judges are lawyers.
Steve,
“WB – lawyers are not “just doing their jobs”, they’re activists and political players.”
Well, I don’t agree, but let’s assume they are. What are you/Rishi going to do about it? How do we solve this problem of the courts blocking deportations?
@ Ottokring
Not everything – there are some things, such as eating, which they cannot/dare not try to (hence when Wilson decided to decimalise everything, he didn’t dare forbid pubs to sell beer by the pint). But politicians (and the civil service far more, but covertly) love to create laws to stop people doing something which they dislike as it is far easier than engaging in a civilised discussion *and winning*. There is a ratchet effect since hardly anything ever gets repealed, despite a previous Conservative Government committing itself to repealing one regulation for every new one introduced because the civil servants just ignored the order.
WB –
Well, I don’t agree,
That is your right.
My take is it’s Current Year and lawyers are equally as bent as journos or politicians or academics or BBC presenters. Y(EV)MMV.
but let’s assume they are. What are you/Rishi going to do about it?
Rishi is going to do nothing except tell you sweet little lies, and there is nothing I can do.
I did try warning people about what was coming re: immigration, long before the first suicide bombs went off on English soil, and long before we found out about the grooming gangs.
But here we are.
How do we solve this problem of the courts blocking deportations?
We don’t. Soon, England as a whole will be just like London. Nobody’s coming to rescue us, and there’s no reason to believe our system of government is going to solve anything.
Sorry x
Soon, England as a whole will be just like London.
Except that’s not the end of it.
We’ve pretty much run out of 4 star hotels so Rishi will have to slash the waiting lists for asylum hearings by approving 10,000+ every day. That pushes even more responsibility onto local authorities but they don’t have the resources either. Things will start to resemble many US sanctuary cities (or Paris) with migrant tent encampments, pavement sleepers and utter lawlessness. Only then, once the 3rd world realises the free stuff has finally run out and the UK has been bled dry, might they stop coming. Bad as things are right now they’re going to get infinitely worse over the next 20 years.
But hey, at least the GDP will have gone up.
@Tim the Coder – “US lawyers are now standing in court issuing death threats to jury members (Andy Ngo case, Portland)”
Citation required. And in any case, lawyers can ask for anything – it’s the court that decides whether they get what they ask. In the USA lawyers routinely ask for absurdly long sentences – many times the defendant’s longest possible lifetime – which is hardly a left wing thing to do.
@bloke in spain – “They do not have right of entry. Therefore they have broken UK law.”
Except the UK has signed up to an international treaty (and, indeed, was a big advocate of the treaty originally) which says that a legitimate refugee who arrives in a manner which would be illegal for anyone else cannot have the means of arrival held against them. This means that people who arrive and claim to be refugees cannot be deported until their claim has been assessed to see if it is ilegitimate. Depite all the anti-migrant rhetoric, the government is doing nothing to make these assessments quick or efficient even though this is something they could do fairly easily. One might come to the conclusion that they don’t want to solve the problem because it gives them something to pretend to campaign on.
One might come to the conclusion that they don’t want to solve the problem because it gives them something to pretend to campaign on.
Charles is right for once. The repudiatiin of the treaty and the imprisonment of illegals on Ascension or West Falkland is but an Oder in Council away.
The problem for the govt is that their inaction is rather obvious and that any promises to “do something” will be met with “you’ve had X years, a huge majority and did nothing.”
“ Blaming lawyers is just venting. How dare these lawyers do their job and drive a coach and horses through the holes in the law? It’s pathetic, emasculated government to blame them rather than taking responsibility and making changes.”
The Brave browser search summariser tells me that up to the last election on average 15% of MPs were lawyers but it dropped to 11% at the last election. God knows how many lawyers are in the HoL.
On top of that:
“ The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel is a group of government lawyers who specialise in drafting legislation. We work closely with departments to translate policy into clear, effective and readable law. Our role will often begin when legislation is first being considered and we will remain involved throughout the Parliamentary process and beyond.”
Most of what we think of as loopholes are Parliament’s inability to pass laws we would like be abuse of our membership of various treaties. They don’t want to leave those treaties because MPs want to be seen as nice people by foreigners.
As I pointed out to someone on Twatter, this is like the run up to Brexit. If the main parties don’t sort this out we’ll find one that will and they don’t even have to be elected to make Parliament act, just the threat that they’ll stand is enough.
Charles: In the USA lawyers routinely ask for absurdly long sentences – many times the defendant’s longest possible lifetime – which is hardly a left wing thing to do.
Charles: Citation required
@bind
Yes, but would add that deportations aren’t something a country can do alone, you need international agreement (even if just bilateral) to deport people. So you can’t have the UK go it entirely alone on migration policy unless it plans to use UK territories overseas to house people who can’t be deported elsewhere. France doesn’t want the boat people back.
And some migrants lose or destroy their identity documents to make it harder to get sent back home – can claim to be from a place where asylum cases are heard more sympathetically, or just a place in a big enough mess that even when your asylum case fails, it’s deemed unsafe to return you, or you can even just be a pain in the backside by not making it clear where you should be deported to.
I’ve said before the UK government should sort out the backlog of claims, which is something that should be in its power to do. But seems to have become more difficult – I saw some stats suggesting the number of hours spent processing each case had risen dramatically and this may be linked to the need to make things legally more watertight against appeals. Also to do with the inexperienced staff. But what you do once you process someone and the claim fails is more complicated than “just deport them”. Getting rid of all the rights of appeal would involve tearing up a lot of legal fabric including treaty membership, as you note. And deportations aren’t as mechanically straightforward as they sound, especially if a migrant isn’t cooperative.
There will be a lot more migration in the next twenty years than in the last twenty, and there was far more then than in the twenty before that. This is one of those global megatrends – transport has got cheaper, people in poor countries are getting rich enough to afford it while still poor enough for Europe to look like the promised land. It surprises me that European and North American states who are all on the receiving end of this don’t sit down and renegotiate some of the international refugee treaties to stop the abuse of the asylum system by people who are primarily economic migrants – this has always been a problem to some extent, but the situation we are coming into is very different to when those treaties were first written.
Anon
I note that France has no problem ‘deporting’ the boat people.
However I certainly agree with you that the UK and others should simply scrap the refugee treaties. Or just abandon them.
But I’d argue that the do-gooder lobby, and the lawyers and others who profit from migration, would make this impossible.
Except the UK has signed up to an international treaty (and, indeed, was a big advocate of the treaty originally) which says that a legitimate refugee who arrives in a manner which would be illegal for anyone else cannot have the means of arrival held against them.
That’d be the same treaty that says that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe haven country they enter. If they’re coming from France, they can’t be refugees, can they?
My opinion has always been, on arrival bang them up in a detention area where they get the minimum accommodation, sustenance etc the law requires. So that doesn’t require any more than a prisoner doing time in lockdown. If it’s OK for how we treat our own people, it must be OK for them. They do not get to apply for asylum because they have no grounds to apply (see treaty). There is no door that leads from the detention area into the rest of the UK. The door that leads out is always open. If you want to apply for UK asylum from a safe haven country, you may do so. All applications will be judged on their merit. And that’s about how asylum applicants were treated back when that treaty was first enacted. Ask any of the refugees who were processed through the camps in the period after WW2. I’ve known some. It was not a nice experience they told me. But that was the price of entering the West. It ticked all the legal boxes then.
As far as I can see, that ticks all the legal boxes.
It’s actually worth looking at that period of history. It’s the last time Western Europe had to deal with refugees in the numbers it’s having to now. Parents of a friend were processed in the Brit occupied region of Austria having crossed from the Soviet zone. He Lithuanian, she Russian. They met in the camps. He was quite fortunate, having served in the SS as a concentration camp guard. And that is a very tangled story that’s starts with the Russian annexation of Lithuania in ’38 & had him serving in the Red Army until captured by the Germans about ’42ish. If anyone had a right to be a refugee, he had. Having already been a POW on both sides twice.
BiND,
“As I pointed out to someone on Twatter, this is like the run up to Brexit. If the main parties don’t sort this out we’ll find one that will and they don’t even have to be elected to make Parliament act, just the threat that they’ll stand is enough.”
Spot on. It’s a lot like the EU, in that there’s various noise about it from politicians, some PR-friendly activity, but they don’t care much. And in the end, people got so fed up (in combination with Cameron just being the wrong guy) that they voted UKIP and did enough damage to enough seats to scare the Conservatives into holding a referendum.
If Reform can get their act together I think it’s going to mean the Conservatives lose a lot of seats, enough to deliver a considerable victory for Starmer.
Charles, how can a million ‘visitors’ come here via legal means every year yet boat people cannot?
The UN estimate there are 60 million seeking to come to the UK. Do you believe we should accept them all? The only answer must be no, so we agree there is a limit, we just differ on what that limit is (Mine would be zero, at least until all those already here have been processed and every person living here requiring accomodation has been housed).
They are coming from France so not refugees, they are economic migrants and you can’t knock the French (for this anyway) – we would do exactly the same thing if we were in their position, glad to see the ‘travellers’ go somewhere else.
So, fingerprint and DNA sample every person arriving here.
Those with documentation can have their claim processed. The French government do not provide food, accomodation, pocket money, so neither should we (an article I saw on Euronews said that Denmark has tightened it’s benefits to migrants and many are returning to Germany. So again, not refugees, economic migrants).
Any laws broken while waiting to be processed would see the claim rejected.
If they cannot provide evidence of who they are (Once they realise no documents = no right to stay we won’t be told ‘They are lost’ or ‘I was made to throw my papers away by traffickers’), detain them and ship them to a destination of their choice or a destination of our choice if they refuse.
Those on the left are very keen to support the ‘right’s of migrants but silent on the rights of the indigenous peoples of Europe, in complete contrast to their position regarding Europeans going anywhere in the world.
“They are coming from France so not refugees, they are economic migrants and you can’t knock the French (for this anyway) – we would do exactly the same thing if we were in their position”
It’s worth pointing out the lengths the French go to prevent these people getting to the coast in the first place. I lived close to Lille in NW France & with a Brit reg car was regularly pulled up by the Gendarmerie & Doane (French frontier control) looking for traffickers carrying illegals. The French authorities provide little aid for those camped around the ports. Rather, they make life as difficult for them as possible. And they really are a problem in France. It’s made life hell for anyone living near that coast. They barricade themselves in their own homes. I had a couple try to break into the car during a brief stop at a McD’s on the Calais Dunkerque highway.
To the French, the UK’s causing this serious problem for them by being so hospitable if the buggers manage to get across. And they don’t understand why. They’re not. Economic migrants get a very rough time. Not just from the system but from the French. Something they don’t understand. You lot don’t like the Channel crossers but individually, you won’t do anything about it. If the movement was in the other direction, they wouldn’t get across the beaches. The French would see to that.
@The Meissen Bison – “Citation required”
From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/michael-ilk-200-year-sentence-prison-attempted-murder-montana-1.3742657 – “Calgarian Michael Ilk gets 200-year prison sentence in Montana”
From https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/indiana-man-pleads-guilty-in-triple-slaying-faces-200-years/128402/ – “Indiana Man Pleads Guilty in Triple Slaying, Faces 200 Years in Prison”
From https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/man-300-year-sentence-confession-932315-20230723 – “Man serving 300-year sentence for the 5 murders claims he was coerced into confessing by police”
Lots more by searching for things like “200 year” sentence.
@Boganboy – “the UK and others should simply scrap the refugee treaties”
Is that because you don’t know why they were agreed in the first place, or because you are in favour of genocide?
@bloke in spain – “That’d be the same treaty that says that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe haven country they enter”
No. It wouldn’t. That treaty allows you to pass through any countries before claiming asylum. What it forbids is setting down in a safe country and subsequently changing your mind and applying elsewhere (well, you’re free to apply, but unlike in the first instance there is no obligation on the country to accept you).
– “If you want to apply for UK asylum from a safe haven country, you may do so.”
How? Apart from special cases such as Ukraine, there is no mechanism to apply for asylum in the UK for people who are not already in the UK – regardless of the status of the country that they are applying from.
– “It’s made life hell for anyone living near that coast.”
So, if the French make life hell for the lawful residents, it cannot be better for the migrants, so proving that France is not a safe country for them.
‘because you are in favour of genocide?’
That depends on who the genocide happens to, Charles. Basically, since I grew up during the collapse of the empire, I’m in favour of anti-imperialism. Thus I feel foreigners should be allowed to go to hell after their own fashion. But they shouldn’t be allowed to drag us there with them. Naturally, they disagree.
I suppose you could call me a Chamberlainite. After all, Neville was perfectly happy for Adolf to make a mess of Germany. He just didn’t want him to do it to Britain.
‘because you are in favour of genocide?’
That’s an easy one to answer. Yes. Entirely. Anyone who favours the retention of the nuclear deterrent is. It’s the purpose of the things. To nuke the opposition into radioactive dust. And their kids. Especially those multimegaton city killers, bless their little re-entry heatshields.
@boganboy
“I note that France has no problem ‘deporting’ the boat people”
Well up to a point. As @bis says, they certainly do the “hostile environment” thing. Nevertheless, the fact there are large camps of migrants – many of whom haven’t even claimed asylum in France since they intend to pass through – is indicative that they aren’t finding it easy to remove people either.
Hadn’t thought of the nuclear deterrent BiS. And yes, I’m a firm supporter of it. As I think I’ve mentioned, I feel the Brits would be absolute idiots to get rid of it. I only wish we had such a thing in Oz.
Of course the Greens snuck a bill banning nuclear power through about 20 years ago. I can imagine how they’d react to nuclear weapons. (Is this the millionth or the billionth time I’ve bitched about the Greens?)
Indeed I just noticed an article deploring the agreement the Ukrainians made to get rid of their nukes when they gained independence. Had they not done so they could have nuked the Russian armies, and Moscow, when Puke invaded.
Charles,
“Is that because you don’t know why they were agreed in the first place, or because you are in favour of genocide?”
But when those treaties were agreed was travel so easy as it is today? No, it wasn’t. Asylum seekers used to be the people with the resources to get here. They were the elite of their societies, already living like westerners. People who could come here and make a good living. Apart from their numbers being small, they also fitted in fine. We didn’t have a problem with kids arriving at school who couldn’t speak English or having medieval ideas about women.
@Western Bloke – “when those treaties were agreed was travel so easy as it is today?”
It’s easier now to travel at a whim for a foreign holiday, but just as easy for migrants. From https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/10/calais-smuggler-gangs-channel-migrants-uk-security – “Bijan, a Kurdish asylum seeker who paid smugglers £3,500” and from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/14/tiktok-migrant-smugglers-albanians-portsmouth-spain/ – “Albanian people smugglers are providing passage from Santander on the north coast of Spain to the south coast port of Portsmouth for £14,000 per person… The cost is four times the £3,000 to £3,500 charged by people smugglers to cross on small boats”
– “We didn’t have a problem with kids arriving at school who couldn’t speak English…”
The whole point of school is to teach people. And far more people today already speak English than used to be the case. There was a time when French or Latin was the language to know.