Shabana Mahmood’s plan to house more asylum seekers in former army barracks is facing a major hurdle after the high court ruled that a policy change forcing torture victims to share rooms was unlawful.
According to a judgment seen by the Guardian, the government failed in its duties when it forced survivors of trafficking, torture and other serious forms of violence to share rooms with strangers.
This was done – obviously – on the public tenpence. Legal aid etc etc.
So, when do we get all Dick the Butcher on these people?
Apparently it has not occurred to Reform (or Restore?) to abolish legal aid for this stuff. The immigration courts as well. They didn’t used to exist. Another one of Blair’s gifts.
It’s difficult to understand why non-citizens do get legal aid.
Difficult? I’d go with impossible, at least as far as immigration is concerned.
It’s in Articles 16 and 23 of the convention.
And?
And that’s why it’s very easy to understand why they get legal aid, and have done since 1951.
The convention does have measures in it to stop people who are not really refugees using it as a general pass to get round immigrations laws, (Article 31 in particular) which are being ignored. But you have to bear in mind that the convention was written in response to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR, and it’s designed for their protection.
The problem is that emergency safety measures provided to save innocent lives are being exploited. When you have a heart attack and the ambulance turns up, you don’t really want them checking your identity papers and making sure you’re not using them as a free taxi service before they start treating you. At the same time, it’s perfectly possible to prosecute and jail people who are taking the piss. The people writing the convention did think about it – the wording of Article 31 is very careful and specific. The problem is that subsequent generations of politics have chosen to ignore those bits.
None of which answers the objection: why is the British government doing things which prioritise foreigners over British people?
Now, or in 1951. But especially now, after a good three or four decades in which ‘asylum’ has been an obvious immigration scam.
1951 didn’t matter much. We got the odd foreign government in exile, poets and writers. It cost a shitload of money to travel the seas in 1951, and you couldn’t easily stay in touch with family or send money back. There were less than a couple of thousand asylum seekers per year in the 1980s. It was barely noticed as going on (and you absolutely want to grant asylum to useful ex-KGB people).
The reason we now have 13,000 asylum applications from Albania is that there are cheap flights from Tirana to London on Wizz or Ryanair. It’s such a fucking awful place, Britons go there on holiday.
Exactly. Digital comms make it easy to hear about faraway places and learn how to go there, get in and exploit the locals; cheap travel makes it possible. I blame Tim Berners-Lee, Joe Sutter, whoever invented the Vehículo longo, and cheap long-distance coaches.
How are foreigners prioritised over British people?
The British government, the one we pay for, believes that the rights of ‘asylum seekers’ are more important than those of British people:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/28/home-office-appeal-migrant-hotel-court-ruling-epping/
Or, take this:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/09/22/hospitals-in-london-pushing-non-english-speaker-patients-to-front-of-line-report/
A mere two examples right off the top of my head.
More broadly, we’re paying to be invaded by foreign criminals.
Why are you so keen on paying to be invaded by foreign criminals?
Article 23: The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals.
They’re not here lawfully, no compulsion to provide paid aid.
Article 31: The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of
their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a
territory where their life or freedom was threatened…
Unless they are fleeing France in fear of their lives, they are here illegally.
That’s not what “coming directly” means, as a bit of thought and knowledge of history should tell you. The convention was drawn up when air travel was an exotic luxury, so it did not envisage refugees flying directly from a country of persecution to their country of refuge. Refugees migh have to travel through several countries before requesting asylum. The restriction intended is that after having settled or being granted asylum in one country, they cannot then decide that they prefer somewhere else and apply for asylum there.
And, of course, in modern times you cannot fly direct to the UK to seek asylum as if you try you’ll be denied boarding by the airline due to not having a visa, and if you apply for a visa on the grounds that you are fleeing persecution and intend to seek asylum, the visa will be denied.
At the time the convention was being agreed, if the various countries had thought that the “coming directly” meant that refugees couln’t set foot in any other country, it would never have been agreed as it would be grossly unfait – countries like New Zealand would bear almost no burden of housing refugees due to having no land border, Canada would bear no burden due to having a border only with the USA etc.
And I draw you attention to the “as is accorded to their nationals”. If you’re a young single Britsih man sleeping on the streets, try applying for council housing and see how quickly you get it.
I think the main issue at the time was the British feeling mildly embarrassed about trying to block some of the escape routes out of Germany because so many of the Jews who escaped tried to get to Judea (British Mandate Palestine) illegally, and at the time we were trying to limit numbers to appease the Muslims there who didn’t like all these immigrants changing the local culture.
You’ll no doubt remember the story of the ‘Exodus 1947’, and the British-run concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and on Cyprus?
Historically, the refugee convention was primarily talking about Jews sneaking across the Mediterranean. It was part of the whole post-war ‘Never Again’ thing.
They were very different times…
One of the route blocked was that of coming to the UK. Hence the Kindertransport saving many children while condemning their parents and relatives to death. Mild embarrassment was wholly inadequate.
… especially as it’s barely available to real citizens.
“Another one of Blair’s gifts to his wife’s career.”
“No more waterboarding, please!”
“It’s worse than that. We’re going to make you share a room with a stranger!”
“No! I’ll talk!”
Are you sure it’s not the stranger that’s complaining?
“But she’s got PTSD, insists on sleeping with the light on, wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, is constantly paranoid and pacing around the room endlessly, and goes into a violent panic, fighting to get out if she hears a noise. I can’t get any sleep and it’s driving me mad…”
And that’s just Nicola Sturgeon.
The chance of her being locked up seems disappointingly small.
Ok, I admit, I’ve been anti Mus for a long time now, but I think she’s playing deep cover. Saying all the right things but doing all the right things at the same time. Two rights, one for each group. So Craig Guildford did his masters bidding and got the Jews banned then just retired quietly despite lying to Parliament and MPs. But she’s going to stop the boats and smash the gangs any minute now…
The root cause of pretty much all of the many many things wrong with the country can be traced back to parts of the legal profession earning lots of money.
Isn’t part of the problem that some of the lawyers don’t make enough money, so go into Parliament?
Only the crap ones.
We’ve really got to leave the UN refugee convention. It was never thought about in terms of armies of people crossing continents.
The UN Refugee convention does not give a right to asylum to “refugees” travelling from France to England. It only bites on the first safe country the refugee reaches (usually Greece)
Correct. So there should be double-ought zero ‘asylum seekers’ in UK. None. They should be denied to their face on their (illegal) entry.
The entire invasion has NO LEGAL BASIS. Government doing what it wants to, at your expense.
I don’t want that, because it’s so slippery. Someone can leave port in Somalia, travel around the cape and still come here, rather than nipping over into Kenya. If you block the route via Greece, they’ll find another way.
I want zero asylum seekers other than personal exceptions. If the minister wants Ukrainians to come here, he has to come to the house and explain why. Beyond that, we’ll allow a few thousand people a year for reasons such as defecting intelligent agents.
If you have open, rule-based things, people will find the holes, and civil servants will just rubber stamp it. So you say “no-one” except for unusual circumstances and you force ministers to come to the house and say it. The public can then judge if they want those people to come here.
From Article 31:
“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their
illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory
where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or
are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present
themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their
illegal entry or presence.”
What good cause do you have for sailing round Cape Agulhas, up the entire 6,000 mile length the Atlantic, and landing illegally here rather than nipping over the border into Kenya? How do you justify describing this route as “directly”?
I don’t know, but what happens when someone finds one, and everyone else copies it? Are the civil servants going to do anything but err on the side of letting someone in because it’s the thing that takes the least work?
And if that is what’s written, why do we have any asylum seekers? Just ban everyone except the Irish and the people of the Faroe Islands. Everyone else has a nearer safe country to go to.
Yep. And there’s something else. When any given Shitholeistan goes tits up and starts exporting large numbers of people, the sensible thing is for those people to pitch up at the neighbouring countries so that those neighbouring countries, assuming they have some good sense of their own national interest, take an interest in what’s happening in Shitholeistan and, if necessary, start to bash heads together in Shitholeistan so that Shitholeistan stops exporting people to those neighbouring countries.
But Western ‘asylum’ bollocks does the exact opposite. By taking people from, say, Sudan, we’re underwriting the shittiness of Sudan and allowing it to continue as such when in fact the likes of Egypt or Saudi perhaps ought to be getting involved.
People can always ignore or change rules they don’t like. It’s the usual problem authoritarians in government have: they think if they pass laws and put in enough detail, that it will somehow solve the problems of criminals who don’t follow the rules. Like laws banning guns to prevent murders, when murder is already illegal. The only long-term solution is to motivate people not to want to do bad things. You have to create a culture where people understand what the refugee convention is for and what it’s not for, don’t treat every asylum seeker like a lost baby sparrow sat on the doorstep.
The refugee convention exists because you can go too far in the other direction, too. If the Nationalist Socialists came back, and we started getting violent hatred rising up against Jews again, or if countries got taken over by Muslims and they started hunting for the Islamophobes who had been posting blasphemously on the internet, and you suddenly needed to flee the country, you would presumably want a way out. There is a certain reciprocity to these things. If people are *genuinely* being persecuted and in danger of death or imprisonment, we ought to “do to others what you would have them do to you”. The trick is to be able to judge who is in genuine need, with no safer alternatives, and who is trying it on and taking advantage of your good nature to gain an advantage. There are people who would steal the fire extinguishers from a public school and sell them for a profit. Or students mucking about with them. That doesn’t mean you should stop providing fire extinguishers, or chaining them up so people can’t use them. It means you have to be smarter about distinguishing the ones using them in a genuine emergency and the ones abusing them, and catch/punish the latter.
The UN convention has words you can use to that effect. But rules can never be so precisely phrased that they can’t be abused. You have to change/persuade the people interpreting them, not the law.
That’s why it’s escalate to the home secretary, name the groups or people in the house. You can’t trust bureaucrats who are following rules to do any interpretation than the laziest one.
Civil servants are not highly motivated detectives who care. If someone says they’re gay and that’s part of the criteria, they just tick the box. They don’t quiz them about disco music and amyl nitrate. One guy gets in, now all his mates know what to say.
If the home secretary wants to let the Belgians in because shit kicked off between the Flemish and French, he can stand in the house and say that. You have to keep this simple and keep it out of the hands of bureaucrats. We can all see who comes in, we can decide if that’s OK or not. There hasn’t been a whole lot of opposition to Ukrainian women and children coming here.
You’re reminding me of the ISIS brides who we are now importing from Syria.
I naturally believe that since the ladies were prepared to go there and marry some Muzzie murderer, they should be left there. And not come back to Oz to murder ME!!!!!
Selfish type, aren’t I??
Many of the civil servants making immigration decisions seem to be from immigrant back grounds themselves.
That’s the theory.
The reality, mirabile dictu, is the exact opposite.
So we do not need to withdraw from the Convention, merely apply its rules. State, in large friendly letters that we shall adhere to the Convention *and we shall require other countries to do likewise.*
Anyone entering the country illegally by small boat is dumped straight back the other side of the channel. Radar is good enough *if the various governments choose to use it* that we can track each boat – so we can know where they came from and take them back.
As an ex-bureaucrat, I’d advise you to withdraw from the Convention anyway.
When was the last judge hanged for treason anyway?
Judge Jeffreys died in the Tower in 1689 while awaiting execution for treason. Probably the closest example.
asylum seekers in former army barracks
This could be great. Like a roach hotel.
Come in monthly and round them all up, then ship them to Sumatra.
Sumatra’s quite pleasant, and the Indonesians would object. I favour South Georgia.
They might frighten the penguins.
Of course the penguins might frighten them.
A win-win.