Proposed changes aim to deter people from seeking asylum in UK
For thousands of immigrants fleeing wars and climate change, the promise of refuge in Britain may soon turn into years of uncertainty.
After a year that saw some of the biggest race riots and anti-immigration demonstrations in decades, Home Secretary (Interior Minister) Shabana Mahmood has introduced what she calls the largest overhaul of the asylum system in modern times, an end to automatic routes to permanent settlement.
Refugee status, once a five-year stepping stone to citizenship, will now last just 30 months, and those arriving by what the government calls 'illegal routes', such as small boats from France, could wait up to 20 years for permanent settlement, all, it claims, aimed at securing Britain's borders.
Migrant rights campaigners say the changes won't work.
This idea of smashing criminal gangs, well, the only way to actually smash these so-called criminal gangs is to give asylum seekers that are currently in France and want to cross the channel, to actually give them a safe way of traveling across the channel, because at the moment, the criminal gangs are, sorry to use the language, but exploiting the gap in the market created by a lack of safe routes provided by governments.
Sabby Dhalu, ‘Stand Up to Racism’
The UK takes far fewer asylum seekers than many other countries such as Germany, France and Spain. The British government says the changes are necessary. Critics say at the heart of it all lies politics.
I think they are a series of gimmicks, really, that are designed to pander to the far-right threat, particularly reform UK electorally, which is a far-right political party, for the first time in British history, is leading in the opinion polls and looking like it could form the next government. So it's designed to pander to the racism of the far-right.
Sabby Dhalu, ‘Stand Up to Racism’
Against the backdrop of a backlash from some of Labour's own MPs, the measures will be put to vote inside Parliament.
And so inside parliament Labour MPs will be wrestling with a dilemma of their own making: how to be the party of compassion, while also increasingly sounding like their anti-immigrant right wing rivals.
Their vote on those changes will be a measure of how far they're willing to travel along that route.
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