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The UK government is looking to profit from closing borders to asylum seekers
By: []
Date: 2021-12
On 24 November, 27 people lost their lives crossing the English Channel. It’s a journey that, for the ‘right’ people with the ‘right’ visas, takes less than an hour. But, of course, there’s no such thing as an asylum visa. If you’re coming here to seek protection – even if, like many of those on the boat, you’re trying to join family here in the UK – you have to get your feet on British soil in order to make your case. For those seeking asylum, this journey is fraught with danger – for too many, it’s deadly.
The recent deaths should have marked a turning point for the UK government. Instead, it has decided to push forward with its dangerous new Nationality and Borders Bill, at the same time as promoting the border security industry. Both will make crossings even deadlier.
The Borders Bill going through the House of Commons this week effectively ends the UK’s commitment to refugee protection and the international laws that govern it. There is no obligation under international law to claim asylum in the ‘first safe country’. And yet, under this new system, anyone who travels through another country on the way here – which will be everyone, since we’re an island and you can’t travel by plane without a visa to seek asylum – will be punished for doing so.
People who come to the UK to seek protection, rather than waiting years elsewhere in the hope of being resettled, would never get full rights. Instead, they could be detained offshore, kept here indefinitely in camps or just never have their claims heard at all.
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Speaking in Parliament the morning after the Channel disaster, home secretary Priti Patel dubbed the deadly journey “unnecessary” and accused people crossing the Channel of “elbowing women and children who need support out of the way”. Never mind the fact that three children and seven women – one of whom was pregnant – were among those who died in the Channel the previous day.
She also talked up the bill as a way to “break [the] business model” of the smugglers. “The criminals who facilitate these journeys,” Patel told Parliament, “are motivated by self-interest and profit, not by compassion.”
But as it turns out, smugglers aren’t the only ones hoping to profit. In fact, on the very same day as the Channel drownings, the UK government published a glossy advertising brochure. The products on sale? British-made border security technology.
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