Opinion: 'Constant lies over asylum seekers is infuriating'

Rolling 24-hour news is the staple of my television viewing (I rotate between Sky News and BBC News) but I am coming to the conclusion that it’s probably not good for my blood pressure.

I’ve reached the stage now where I have started shouting at the television (yes I know they can’t hear me but it does help to ease my frustration).

And what, you may ask, is causing me such angst.

It is the incessant repetition of lies, deliberate misuse of words, constant gaslighting and ignoring international law by government ministers and increasingly by news presenters themselves, especially in relation to refugees and asylum seekers crossing the channel in small boats.

And this manipulation of the narrative is deliberate.

Let’s start with the repetition of the word ‘crisis’ to describe what’s happening on the Kent coast (I will park up Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s disgraceful use of the word ‘invasion’ that has even been criticised by members of her own party).

So it’s a crisis, is it? The system may be in crisis – overcrowding at the Manston reception centre, asylum applications not dealt with quickly enough – but the actual numbers don’t really amount to a crisis by a long way.

If there is an increase in anything, it’s an increase in government incompetence.

As the campaign group 38 Degrees points out: Braverman grossly exaggerates UK’s ‘crisis’ with the country receiving just 8.4 asylum applicants per 10,000 population. This places the UK firmly at the bottom of the European list. Cyprus, for example, had 152.6 applications per 10,000 of its population, Germany 22.9 and France 17.8.

There have been concerns about overcrowding at the Manston processing centre in Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA) (Image: Gareth Fuller/PA)

And if we are talking absolute numbers, in 2021, Germany handled more than 190,000 asylum applications while France had more than 120,000. In the same year, the UK had 45,500 applications.

And then we come to the word illegal. Again, repetition of a lie doesn’t make it true. And that’s what we are dealing with, a lie repeated over and over again.

It is not illegal to cross the Channel in a small boat and it is not illegal to travel through ‘safe’ countries before claiming asylum according to the 1951 Convention on refugees which accepts refugees may have to use ‘irregular’ methods to enter a country.

As the UNHCR says: “There is no such thing as a bogus asylum seeker or an illegal asylum seeker.

As an asylum-seeker, a person has entered into a legal process of refugee status determination.

Everybody has a right to seek asylum in another country. People who don't qualify for protection as refugees will not receive refugee status and may be deported, but just because someone doesn't receive refugee status doesn't mean they are a bogus asylum-seeker.”

(However, migrants can make themselves ‘illegal’ if they don’t give themselves up to the authorities as soon as they arrive in the country and try to slip away to work as undocumented migrants.)

There is also a myth that asylum seekers are legally obliged to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach. Again, this is just a lie as evidenced by the 1951 Convention.

What used to exist was our participation in the so-called Dublin III agreement which had two main functions. The first was to speed up the process of reuniting refugee families in safe countries where asylum had been granted.

The second allowed the UK to return some asylum seekers to a European country they had travelled through without having to consider their claim. But the UK pulled out of the agreement when we left the EU (yes, one of those mythical Brexit benefits) so we can’t do that any more.

And before anyone mentions Albanian gangsters, yes this is a problem but to deliberately conflate young Albanian men coming here to work for criminal gangs with asylum seekers fleeing war is just more gaslighting.

Perhaps if the government put more resources into speeding up processing asylum claims then maybe we could speed up deporting those who do not have a legitimate right to be here.

On another topic, I was delighted to see that remedial work on Northwich Library is in hand.

I spent many a happy hour with my nose in a book at the library and was saddened to see it in such a state of disrepair but I was heartened by the words of Graham Pink, director of commercial management and delivery at Cheshire West and Chester Council, who said: “Over the past months, a team of historic building specialists and structural engineers have been working together to calculate how to sensitively support the building to allow conservation and repair work to be undertaken.

“This first phase of structural support work will allow the engineers to get up close to the building and design a scheme of structural repairs along its west elevation, which is suffering from some complex structural problems.

"This will safeguard this important historic building and architectural asset at the heart of Northwich town centre."

My best wishes go to everyone involved in the project and I really hope it is successful.