The Nationality and Borders Bill is anti-refugee to its core. I will fight it every step of the way. It lacks basic humanity and represents an acceleration of the Government’s deeply damaging demonisation of migrants and asylum seekers.
The Bill will enable the UK Government to block visas for overseas visitors if the Home Secretary believes that their country of origin is refusing to co-operate in taking back those the Government want to deport. Asylum seekers will be able to be removed from the UK while their asylum claim or appeal is pending, which opens the door to offshore asylum processing.
Those who have fled war, famine, persecution or violence will be blocked at the border, based on the false premise that a refugee who has sought to escape persecution and danger through what the Government call an irregular route to the UK ought not to seek protection, creating a two-tier system regardless of need and criminalising those seeking protection, while failing to end indefinite detention. That is cruel, deeply unjust and unworkable, all from a Government comprised mostly of individuals who have led lives of extraordinary privilege.
The Bill is illegal, breaching commitments under the refugee convention of 1951. Like many places in the UK, my home city of Leicester is forged from a proud history of welcoming refugees and asylum seekers. We are better for our diversity.
The Bill shows that, far from learning from the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation, the Government are intent on expanding the damaging hostile environment. Asylum seekers who arrive in Britain are often from countries where the UK has contributed to their disruption, either by arming current conflicts or through the enduring legacy of colonialism.
The UK Government have persistently been warned that if they do not open safe and legal routes for people to practise their legal right to claim asylum, deaths at sea are unavoidable. Yet they have proceeded to close the few legal avenues that exist, such as the right to family reunion. Time and again, the Government have chosen to turn their back on those seeking protection from war, climate disaster, torture or other awful acts. The Bill will compound the misery of people fleeing intolerable conditions.
The Government must end the destructive demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers and abandon this deeply damaging Bill.
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