T Borders Bill will make Britain “one of the most anti-refugee countries in the world,” an international aid group has warned.

Medicine San Frontiers (MSF) UK said it was shameful that Tory MPs had trampled on efforts by peers to remove some of the cruellest elements of the Nationality and Borders Bill in a debate on Tuesday night.

Despite a number of Tory backbenchers speaking out against the proposals, the government proceeded to comfortably win a series of votes to reinsert clauses removed by the House of Lords.

They include measures to criminalize asylum-seekers for entering Britain without permission and introducing a new system whereby refugees will be treated differently depending on their means of arrival.

MPs also voted to reinstate proposals that could open the door to offshore processing centres for asylum-seekers, with just three Conservatives rebelling during the vote.

“In its current form, the Bill will enshrine the UK as one of the most anti-refugee countries in the world, at a time when the devastating impact of war and conflict is absolutely evident,” MSF UK’s advocacy officer Sophie McCann said in response to the votes.

“The government cannot be serious about this Bill — it is unworkable, exorbitantly expensive and inhumane, targeting some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

“There is nothing ‘fair’ about criminalizing, detaining, pushing back and imprisoning refugees in offshore detention centres simply because of how they arrive in the UK.”

Later in the debate, MPs also rejected a Lords amendment which would have granted confirmed victims of modern-day slavery and trafficking support for at least 12 months.

The Bill will now return to the Lords for further consideration.

A spokesperson from the UN’s refugee agency said today it was regrettable that peers’ amendments were rejected by MPs, but added: “We believe that a compromise on amendments is still possible that would bring the legislation into compliance with commitments under international law and maintain protection for refugees in the UK.”

Source: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/the-borders-bill-makes-britain-one-of-the-most-anti-refugee-countries-in-the-world

The post The Borders Bill makes Britain ‘one of the most anti-refugee countries in the world’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Three years ago, I was working in Moria camp, the largest and possibly most notorious refugee camp in Europe on the Greek island of Lesvos. A former army barracks built to house just under 3,000 people, Moria camp was chronically overcrowded and, at its peak in 2020, had a population of over 20,000 people, one-third of whom were children.

The squalid conditions these migrants were forced to live in were harrowing: hygiene facilities so scarce that hundreds shared one shower, there were no toilets in some parts of the camps, families had to sleep in summer tents in the freezing winter, and rubbish piled high around them.

I met young children showing signs of severe distress and some were self-harming. Children were bitten by scorpions, snakes, and rats. Access to healthcare inside the camp was virtually non-existent and food shortages were the norm. Violence was an everyday reality and deprivation was everywhere. It was a dystopian hell.

At the time, I was disgusted by the anti-refugee rhetoric spreading through Europe. How could people not see that these were vulnerable human beings who had a right to protection?

“In the name of ‘fixing the broken asylum system’ the British government is planning to bring in some of the most punitive, cruel and dangerous migration policies in the world”
Now in 2022, I hear the same populist anti-refugee rhetoric being wielded against people trying to reach the UK on boats in the English Channel – this time in the form of the British government’s Nationality and Borders Bill.

If passed, the bill will criminalise men, women and children trying to reach sanctuary in the UK with potentially fatal consequences. It will violate the Refugee Convention and other international legal obligations and undermine the UK’s international standing. We must try and stop it.

Terrifying possibilities

In the name of “fixing the broken asylum system,” the British government is planning to bring in some of the most punitive, cruel and dangerous migration policies in the world. The Home Office claims the bill will help to save lives, but we know that more lives will be lost as a result of their dangerous and illogical measures.

Plans to expand the use of large-scale asylum accommodation, replicating the Greek island approach, terrify me. These measures confine people to prison-like facilities, severely impacting their access to vital services and damaging their mental and physical health. I know – I have seen it happen.

I am appalled that the government considers Napier Barracks, a former military site where hundreds of newly arrived asylum seekers in the UK have been sent, a “prototype” for larger-scale facilities. Conditions in Napier have been decried by multiple independent investigators, the High Court, NGOs and, most importantly, the inhabitants themselves.

MSF UK@MSF_uk
The #AntiRefugeeBill, or Nationality and Borders Bill, returns to Parliament today.

Here’s a reminder of the dangers of this inhumane legislation and how you can become a part of the growing movement against it.

MSF UK@MSF_uk

We’re at a critical point where the UK Gov could erode the fundamental right of claiming asylum.

Under the Gov’s proposed Borders Bill, unaccompanied children and torture survivors can be criminalised and denied vital protections.

Let’s not allow this!
https://msf.me/3n9jynx

Proposals for offshore detention facilities are meanwhile extremely alarming. This would allow asylum seekers to be removed to another country and detained there indefinitely while their claims are processed.

My colleagues who worked on Nauru Island, where the Australian government implemented a similar policy, witnessed some of the worst mental health suffering recorded in MSF’s 50 years of existence. Almost one-third of our 208 patients attempted suicide. Children as young as nine years old tried to kill themselves.

If these measures were not bad enough, the government is also attempting to enable pushbacks of migrant boats in the Channel. This is not only dangerous but a flagrant violation of international law. MSF’s search and rescue teams in the Mediterranean Sea have seen first-hand the deadly consequences of attempts to push back small boats and refusal to rescue those onboard.

Over 1,500 people drowned in the Central Mediterranean in 2021 because of UK and EU-backed policies that undermine effective search and rescue. If the UK adopts this approach in the English Channel, it is inevitable that more people will die.

Counterproductive measures

Not only is the Nationality and Borders Bill cruel, but it will also be ineffective and counterproductive. Harsher detention policies and pushbacks will not stop people seeking safety, it will only make their journeys more dangerous. Lives will be lost in a pointless battle where the casualties will be vulnerable and persecuted people.

Perversely, while the British government repeats talking points about the need for people to arrive through “legal routes,” it has made it virtually impossible for people to reach the UK through official channels.

The Dubs Scheme, focused on relocating unaccompanied child refugees from within Europe, and family reunification pathways have been shut down. The only remaining option is the painfully slow UNHCR resettlement scheme, which resettles fewer than 1% of the world’s refugees every year.

“The British government claims it wants to stamp out people smuggling operations that prey on vulnerable people, but this bill actually risks pushing more people into the hands of these dangerous gangs”

The UK government has also failed to establish a functioning scheme to enable individuals in immediate danger to legally enter the UK. Six months after the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme was announced, the programme has only just formally opened and the first to be “resettled” include those already evacuated to the UK. Those still in Afghanistan are forced to wait while the humanitarian situation further deteriorates.

As MSF is one of the few international organizations left providing medical care, my colleagues in Afghanistan see the crisis unfolding daily. People cannot simply wait and hope their time for resettlement will come soon. Yet if they attempt to reach the UK via irregular routes, they will face criminalisation and indefinite detention under measures set out in the Nationality and Borders Bill.

The British government claims it wants to stamp out people smuggling operations that prey on vulnerable people, but this bill actually risks pushing more people into the hands of these dangerous gangs.

The Home Office’s own Equality Impact Assessment of the Nationality and Borders Bill found “there is a risk that increased security and deterrence could encourage these cohorts to attempt riskier means of entering the UK.”

Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are not the faceless mass that the government attempts to portray them as, but real people who want to be safe. Many have already endured torture, sexual violence, and imprisonment, not to mention the perilous journey to the UK, which nobody undertakes lightly.

The Nationality and Borders Bill is a deliberate and racist attempt by the UK government to shirk its obligations to these vulnerable people. It is inhumane, punitive, and doomed to fail.

Demonizing and criminalizing people who arrive on boats will not fix the broken asylum system – it will only cause further suffering to the people who need our solidarity and care the most.

Sophie McCann is advocacy officer at MSF UK and former advocacy manager for MSF’s operations in Greece.

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@alaraby.co.uk

Opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.

Source: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/nationality-borders-bill-will-only-cause-more-suffering

The post The Nationality and Borders Bill will only cause more suffering and death first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In late September, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington-based think tank, organized a week-long tour on the U.S. border with Mexico. I was the only European there, and the migration crises of the Old Continent gave me a unique perspective on the ongoing “significant challenge” (the Biden administration’s parlance for “crisis”) at the Mexican border.

CIS took us to a “calmer” section of the border; we visited the westernmost edge of Texas, the city of El Paso, and some of the borderlands in New Mexico. The word “calmer” is a misnomer; with more than 17,000 migrants apprehended in September the El Paso sector of the border can only be called calm, because in the Rio Grande Valley sector U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) arrested 55,000 illegal immigrants during the same period.

In the smallish town of Mesilla, we met Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-NM-2), whose congressional district takes up 180 miles on the southern border. The most striking thing for me was Herrell’s assessment that the Biden administration discontinued key Trump-era immigration and asylum policies simply because they were introduced by the Republican president.

No, this is not going to be a slippery “should have” argument about the “beautiful” wall, because Trump’s signature project is as symbolic to the Democrats as it was for the previous administration. My point of contention is the immediate termination of the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP, also known as “Remain in Mexico”) on Inauguration Day. The reason behind the decision to discontinue MPP (which obviously lacked any kind of impact assessment) was that the policy is considered to be inherently cruel and inhumane among Democrats. Well, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate European Union has been laboring to hammer out a similar policy since 2017.

France’s then-freshly-inaugurated French president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed in July 2017 that camps should be set up in Libya where asylum seekers’ claims could be examined without their entering the continent. The same year, prominent EU leaders endorsed a plan that would entail setting up camps in the Sahel in Africa, where actual refugees could be separated from economic migrants. These camps would be run by the United Nations, but the bulk of the funding would come from the EU. The German delegation endorsed the plan with the condition that the camps need to offer adequate protection and provisions for their inhabitants. So, setting up camps that adhere to the unquestionably high human-rights standards of the EU is possible in Chad and Niger but camps in Mexico are inherently cruel and inhumane?

It’s not just the EU, however, that has been eyeing a solution wherein asylum seekers have to wait abroad while their claims are processed. In the United Kingdom, the proposed Nationality and Borders Bill would introduce a similar scheme. The proposed British bill takes after the Australian system that involves ferrying asylum seekers to other nation-states while their claim is being processed. Inside the EU, the socialist Danish government recently proposed a comparable procedure. In my experience, these are not the countries that usually make the news with human rights violations.

After taking a look at Europe and beyond, the claim that MPP is inherently cruel and inhumane does not seem necessarily true. This, of course, does not automatically mean that MPP was flawlessly implemented during the Trump presidency. But the incoming Biden administration most certainly could have evaluated it and could have tried to fix it before completely scrapping it. It is definitely going to be interesting to see what the court-ordered reimplementation of the program will look like from mid-November onwards. I think that the Biden administration should consult more with European experts who have encountered similar policies—they will be less likely to “walk out” on an online meeting.

During the border tour, we visited an unfinished section of the wall in New Mexico. According to our guide, a local rancher, before the construction of Trump’s wall, there used to be vehicle barriers and barbed-wire fences installed on the border. Once work started on the Republican president’s signature project all previous installments were cleared away. With construction halted by the incoming Biden administration, long sections of the border remain now where the old barriers have been cleared away, but the new wall hasn’t been constructed.

Europe learned the hard way the importance of physical barriers on borders. With the vivid memory of the iron curtain and the Berlin Wall looming over the continent, any kind of migration policy that involved concertina wire was considered to be strictly verboten by most politicians. There were of course early exceptions: in 1993 a fence was constructed around the town of Ceuta—a Spanish exclave in Morocco—to stop waves of illegal African migrants. The real change in public opinion came in the aftermath of the 2015 Syrian refugee/migration crisis. When hundreds of thousands of people reached the southern border of Hungary (and the EU) during the summer of 2015, the conservative Hungarian government decided to build a fence on the Serbian border. Initially the decision was severely criticized by left-wing parties in Hungary as well as in the European Parliament. But when the severity and the magnitude of the crises finally set in, criticism faded.

In 2021, Belarus started using migrants as weapons in hybrid warfare to blackmail the EU, by flying them in from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa and then directing them towards the Lithuanian border. When the small Baltic country decided to erect a border fence to stop the waves of migrants, there was no controversy in Europe whatsoever. Furthermore, the EU rallied behind its besieged member right away: Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) deployed 100 officers, thirty patrol cars, and two helicopters, while the European Commission allocated roughly $35 million for migration management with possibly more funds to follow.

The bottom line is: it took an unparalleled number of people to flock to the borders of the EU to change general public opinion about physical barriers on borders. If numbers are any indication: CBP apprehensions on the Southern border in FY2021 were the highest since the authorities started keeping records in 1960. It can be argued that for Democrats a border wall did not seem necessary in 2016 or in January 2021, but November 2021 is a different matter. I think that one would have a hard time finding a sitting government in Europe that wouldn’t come up with a concertina wire solution for a “significant challenge” like this one.

Kristóf György Veres is a researcher at the Migration Research Institute in Budapest, and an Andrássy Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-europe-sees-us-border-crisis-196126

The post How Europe Sees the U.S. Border Crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.