Simon Fell is the MP for Barrow and Furness.
I just lately joined the Furness Multicultural Discussion board, a small volunteer group in my constituency, for a really affecting assembly. Alongside the nice crew from the FMF, we have been joined by about 20 of the 70-odd asylum seekers residing in The Majestic Resort in Barrow-in-Furness. I listened to their tales and was left very moved.
One in every of my jobs in Parliament is to take a seat on the Dwelling Affairs Committee. We’ve simply accomplished an enquiry into the asylum system and its many failings, all the things from the small boats issues, to present Dwelling Workplace backlogs. It’s a woeful state of affairs. Persons are proper to be sick of it. Nevertheless it’s very straightforward to overlook the folks caught within the system.
Some info. Not a single individual crosses the channel with out the help of a legal gang. A few of the those that accomplish that have been offered into slavery lengthy earlier than they attain the UK. Others after paying their fare, see the boats’ flimsy nature, and attempt to flip round, however are marched aboard by those self same gangs at knifepoint.
Others are extra cavalier and are making a selection about their future and the place they wish to spend their lives. Some are financial migrants. And others – a really slim minority – are folks of concern, who might wish to hurt us, recognized by Border Drive and different companies shortly. Clearly, there isn’t any ‘one dimension matches all’ asylum seeker arriving.
One of many gents I met in Barrow labored for greater than a decade with the UK and the US in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. When the Taliban seized again Afghanistan, he knew he was a goal, left his spouse and youngsters, fled for his or her security, and travelled right here. I’m no skilled, however to me he ticks each field to be granted asylum. Had he been in Kabul as a substitute of Helmand, there may be each probability we’d have immediately airlifted him to the UK throughout these determined final days of Operation PITTING.
Many others have comparable tales, fleeing conflict, persecution, and genocide. They’ve come right here and requested for asylum. A lot to their shock, they’ve ended up in Barrow, or comparable cities.
Amongst the group I met have been folks expert in plane upkeep, chemical engineers, cooks, a gentleman with a succession of {qualifications} in sustainable vitality, people holding a number of doctorates, and an IT advisor. They’re hungry to work, earn, and provides again. However they’ll’t due to the principles they stay underneath. Nor can they declare advantages. So teams just like the Multicultural Discussion board discover them volunteering alternatives, doing gardening and dealing on small initiatives.
One gentleman got here to the UK optimistic. He speaks good English and has glorious {qualifications}. But he informed me that he now doesn’t care if the Dwelling Workplace orders him to depart. He has spent 18 months in limbo and can fortunately declare asylum abroad. He desires to work, relatively than sit on his arms along with his physique and thoughts atrophying. Some might say good riddance. However others will see the chance misplaced with this gentleman, and others like him.
There are two points at play right here – the big backlog of circumstances that the Dwelling Workplace is impotent to course of, and the age selections seem to take. You possibly can hate the system, and the way the folks I spoke to obtained to the UK. I’ve each sympathy. Nevertheless it appears ridiculous that we are able to’t harness the skills of people that have excessive abilities, wish to come right here and work, earn and pay tax.
It’s not honest to have parallel immigration methods – with these making use of pretty sitting in a protracted queue that by no means strikes ahead, whereas others arrive underneath the steam of legal gangs. The unlawful route breaks the authorized one. Backlogs have gummed up the entire system, and so we find yourself with people from Syria and Afghanistan spending their time in Barrow.
Stopping the unlawful routes, getting by way of the backlog, and permitting folks to make claims for asylum and have them judged – sure or no – in good pace needs to be the hallmarks of a very good asylum system. This isn’t taking place, and it’s not adequate.
This damaged system has different penalties too. One gentleman I met was sporting a forged on his arm – he had been jumped and overwhelmed up one night time, leading to a damaged wrist. Others reported being threatened, or having acquired racist feedback. I attempted to persuade them that my neighborhood was welcoming. However many are actually too afraid to depart the lodges they’re housed in.
It’s clear that this case is making a powder-keg. Import a number of dozen dark-skinned folks right into a neighborhood that’s about as far-off from wherever else within the UK as potential (Furness is a peninsula on the Cumbrian coast, with its fundamental highway typically described as ‘the longest cul-de-sac in England’), and that’s 98 per cent White British, and you may see the place issues may come up.
This manifests in each the challenges I listed above, and in far-right activism. Patriotic Different, one group, is now energetic in my neighborhood, placing leaflets by way of doorways which make use of vile language.
The North West Night Mail – my native paper – uncovered the racist chats being utilized by members of this group in native protests. They declare to be talking for atypical folks, however but their avatars on social media characteristic swastikas, their founder is a Nazi sympathiser, and the Dwelling Workplace is reportedly contemplating proscribing their organisation. However our damaged asylum system has allowed them to take root.
Any immigration system needs to be predicated on management. That was what Brexit was about. We should have the ability to select who we wish to settle for right here – whether or not on compassionate grounds, or for financial causes. We’re not going to attain that with out closing down unlawful routes.
And we’re not going to attain that just by ramping up the rhetoric. There’s no straightforward answer right here, and anybody who tells you there may be mendacity.
Working with international locations who typically have diametrically opposing views to you on the answer is hard, nevertheless it’s solely method to do it. We want a correct partnership with France, and the EU, on managing these migrant flows and stopping the small boats. Attaining this shouldn’t only a matter for the Dwelling Workplace, however ought to utilise the diplomatic bon viveur of our new Overseas Secretary too. It’s going to require compromise.
It’s not an excessive amount of to ask for a good, working system that makes fast selections and permits us, as a number nation, to be beneficiant to the needy, however discerning as to who we let in. One which doesn’t stoke up anger.
Attending to that time shall be powerful, however price it: for gents like these I met in Barrow final Tuesday, for our economic system and public companies, by taking away the one stick the far proper has, and by proving the Conservative method to migration is the suitable one.
