Denigrating asylum-seekers will only aggravate social tensions

A record 45,755 people crossed the Channel last year with 5,500 already having done so this year. The asylum backlog has fallen slightly but was still over 138,000 last month.

The cost to the taxpayer of housing migrants in hotels is £6m a day and now the UK Government is planning to use old RAF air bases and a three-storey barge off the Dorset coast to accommodate them.

After the anti-migrant protests on Merseyside earlier in the year, when asylum-seekers were attacked, Robert Jenrick, the Immigration Minister, told MPs this week: “Those protests are a warning to be heeded, not a phenomenon to be managed. We need to listen to public concern and act upon it.”

READ MORE: Michael Settle: More and more migrants are coming so what can Government do?

It is undoubtedly true some migrants are gaming the system. For example, Mr Jenrick pointed out how “around 50%” of assessed asylum-seekers, who claimed to be children, were, in fact, young adults.

However, the overall numbers for 2022 showed 75% of Home Office decisions were in favour of granting asylum; the highest in more than 30 years. So, most people crossing the Channel are, eventually, deemed to be genuine refugees by the UK authorities.

Yet despite this UK ministers are using language that seeks to differentiate and denigrates those crossing the Channel, many of whom choose this route because there aren’t any safe and legal ones.

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Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, argued those in small boats had values “at odds with our country”. Consequently, there were “heightened levels of criminality” related to drug-dealing, exploitation and prostitution. Not that British citizens would engage in any of this behaviour.

During Wednesday’s debate on the Government’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill, Mr Jenrick described most of those crossing the Channel, who had come from a place of safety, ie France, as “asylum-shoppers”.

He said the “astronomical” number of small-boat migrants undermined Britain’s “cultural cohesiveness,” because they tended to have “completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK,” and it threatened to “cannibalise” Britain’s natural compassion towards people fleeing danger overseas.

Migrants come ashore in Kent (Image: free)

Mr Jenrick argued the bill, which seeks to ensure anyone arriving in the UK illegally will be detained and then promptly removed, did “not turn our back on those in genuine need” but, rather, was “undoubtedly the morally just thing to do”.

This echoed Ms Braverman’s sentiment that the legislation, which, she said, Britons “overwhelmingly want,” was “humanitarian and compassionate”.

Needless to say, campaigners responded angrily, saying ministers’ language was from the “Far Right playbook” and was “pouring petrol on a xenophobic and racist fire they themselves have lit”.

Opposition politicians were equally aghast, denouncing the bill as “immoral,” “disgusting” and “unworkable”.

The Government came under friendly fire from ex-PM Theresa May, who claimed the bill would mean “more people will stay enslaved and in exploitation,” by giving human traffickers “another weapon” to stop suspected modern slavery victims going to the police. This is because the legislation would end current protections against removal while asylum-seekers’ cases are considered.

And as the Government addressed the concerns of Tory right-wingers by committing to giving UK minsters more leeway to ignore European court rulings, Sir Geoffrey Cox, the ex-Attorney General, questioned why it was intending to open the way to a “breach of our obligations under the [European] convention”.

Elsewhere, the Government sought to buy off Tory rebels on a number of issues.

One related to those centrist Conservative MPs, who wanted court approval to detain unaccompanied children longer than three days. They didn’t push their amendment to a vote, saying they did so “on trust” after ministers pledged to work with them on a “new timescale”. But Alison Thewliss for the SNP wasn’t buying it, saying her party did “not trust them to do the right thing”.

READ MORE: Michael Settle: Despite Channel tragedy, more desperate people are heading this way

The Government also pledged to address another concern by saying it would publish a report on new legal routes within six months of the bill becoming law. But there were no details.

And now, of course, there is the crisis in Sudan, which Mr Jenrick admitted was likely to lead to a new surge in migrants attempting to cross the Channel in small boats. Yet Ms Braverman said the Government had “no plans” to introduce safe and legal UK routes for such refugees.

Her hopes of reducing the small boat numbers are partly pinned on the plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda. But this is still stuck in the courts and is likely to be until the autumn.

Labour, like others, believe this Government policy is nothing more than a gimmick and the money could be better spent on improving joint action with the French authorities, together with speeding up asylum decision-making and returning failed applicants to safe countries like Albania and India to help clear the backlog and end hotel use.

Having passed its Commons stage, the migration legislation now goes to the House of Lords, where peers are sharpening their knives. A wave of amendments will be accompanied by a wave of condemnation at the Government’s plans.

Usually after a period of parliamentary ping-pong between the two Houses, the Lords relents because convention says that a manifesto commitment isn’t blocked. However, the Government measures were not in the Conservative manifesto. One minister noted: “When the Lords get hold of it, they’re going to dismember the bill.”

Of course, sounding tough on a highly contentious issue and using dog-whistle messages in the run-up to a poll, like England’s council elections next week, is nothing new.

However, adopting such a demonising attitude on such a sensitive subject as asylum smacks of an administration that looks increasingly shaky, overwhelmed and desperate. And what’s more the public know it.