Braverman's got her dog whistle out (again)
Just reading that Braverman has flown to the US to address the right-wing American Enterprise Institute about the need to reform the international asylum system which was initially launched by the UN in 1951 to help deal with the massive flux of refugees in Europe post war. She is claiming that far too many are granted asylum today due to a blurring of "persecution" and "discrimination". This woman really is a nasty piece of work. In many Western nations, such as the UK, the situation for women or those of the LGBTQ community may well be that they are still discriminated against and there are laws such as our own Equalities Act to try and protect them. In other countries there are no such laws and, indeed, their *** or ***uality leads to far more than "discrimination" - unless she views being stoned to death as an extreme version of discrimination perhaps? Maybe she also thinks it is ok for women in extreme patriarchal societies that they cannot be educated and are treated like chattel who have little recourse if raped? It's only "discrimination" after all.
Rather than try and address the thorny issue of immigration (and it IS an issue) sensibly and thoughtfully, Braverman continues to simply court favour with the right with knee-jerk statements and unworkable and outlandish plans.
As ever, however, just because someone spouts cr ap (well, IMHO she does), does not mean that they are wrong about everything. Certainly, we should view every application for asylum extremely carefully and it may well be that some claims of "persecution" are actually more like "discrimination" as we would understand it but I'm willing to bet that any such applications are a minority. Moreover, as a country, we must surely have a limit even for "genuine" asylum seekers, fleeing for fear of their lives-though if we weeded out and processed all the illegals and economic migrants properly this would help.
Most recent gov. stats on immigration show 78, 768 applications up to June 2023 for asylum, up 19% on last year. This is the highest figure in 2 decades with 71% of these applications being initially granted (pre pandemic this initial number of granted applications was 30%) . I agree that such an increase warrants investigation but Braverman's dog whistling isn't helpful.
Elsewhere the stats show that just under 3.3 million (!) visas were granted (+ 58% on LY). These were mostly for work (up 63%,) or study (up 34%). Work visas for skilled workers were up 34% but 50% up for care workers. Vast majority of work visas were for Indian nationals, who also made up largest number of student visas (China still second). Obviously, we rely on such foreign workers and foreign students in higher education also helps bring money in but the visa figure also includes visas for dependents that accounts for 24% of them now. I get that if you want/need to attract foreign workers this may also entail applicants from their families but 24% of 3.3 million is a bloody big number and worth more scrutiny?
Family related visas elsewhere -mostly for partners- was Up a whopping 110% on last year to 75,717. A legal form of immigration that warrants investigation too looking at this increase surely?
175,000 were offered "protection" of which 12% were designated refugee status with 88% offered a "safe and legal (humanitarian) route to the UK". Of the infamous boat people, 20,354 entered detention centres (-3% on previous year) with 75% subsequently bailed. The stats don't show how many simply "disappeared" into the UK. A mere 4,000 were forcibly returned.
Given the above statistics, it does seem clear that immigration remains a problem but whilst there is an understandable focus on the illegals and the 175, 000 who have been offered "protection" they are not the only areas that bear looking into. 116,000 grants were made for settlement in the UK and there were 210, 465 applications for citizenship over the past year which is surely not sustainable (though many may be work related there are also many family based applications for example).
I have sympathy for them and can't blame anyone for trying to seek a better life for themselves and family but the reality is that we cannot simply keep accepting economic migrants as they turn up. At the same time, we also clearly need both skilled foreign workers as well as those prepared to work the numerous poorly paid jobs (e.g. in the care industry) that Brits don't want to do This situation in itself is another issue that surely needs dealing with.
Time for a proper, reasoned, response from our politicians on immigration and a long overdue open and honest debate rather than the normal click-bait deflections. But I won't hold my breath 😞
