Tag Archives: immigration

Immigration/Nazis: read history more carefully, says Cleverly – and so he should

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James Cleverly: has he ever read a history book – or, indeed, any book at all?

Look at the state of this:

He’s right and wrong at the same time.

People should indeed read their history books more carefully – he’s right on that! – but if they do, they’ll find that the UK is not – historically – a welcoming country.

See for yourself:

So half a million Jewish people were denied entry into the United Kingdom in the 1930s, despite the obvious cruelty of the Nazi regime in Germany – including Oskar Goldberg’s family who died at Auschwitz as part of the Nazi Holocaust.

And – how convenient! – nobody knows how many of the others, who were turned down or turned away, also died in the Nazi Holocaust.

And now Suella Braverman – with the support of the rest of the Tory government including Cleverly – wants to turn away similar numbers of refugees, behind a smokescreen that she is foiling “criminal gangs”.

How many of them will suffer and die on foreign soil, after being denied safety here? How can anyone with a conscience look at the UK’s own history and support this inhumane and internationally illegal policy?

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Never mind the Nazis – do you know what the BRITISH were saying about immigrants in the 1930s?

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Gary Lineker: he opened a debate on Channel migrants by highlighting similarities with Nazi Germany – but our politicians’ speeches have far more in common with BRITISH MPs of the 1930s.

Tory chameleon Grant Shapps (as he styles himself today) has been quick to jump into the controversy around Gary Lineker.

Mr Lineker compared Tory rhetoric about asylum-seekers – who come across the Channel in small boats because the UK’s current government has closed off all their legal routes to seek sanctuary here – with that of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Here’s what Shapps had to say about that:

Of course the obvious answer to this is to point out that his colleague, Home Secretary Suella ‘De Vil’ Braverman, isn’t targeting the “criminal gangs” at all; she’s persecuting the “vulnerable people” instead. And Shapps is fine with that.

The less obvious answer is to point out that, as a Jewish Cabinet minister, Shapps should be more concerned about the similarity of Braverman’s language to that of UK politicians in the 1930s.

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Here’s Professor Tim Wilson to explain:

When Nazi Germany was persecuting Jews, the UK government “ramped up” laws to prevent adult Jewish people from coming here.

The Kindertransport initiative was laudable, but we should not let it mask the fact that the UK turned its back on those children’s parents and left them to be transported to extermination camps.

The EU and UN conventions on human rights, both of which were created in the 1950s, were set up in acknowledgement of our – and other countries’ – failure to do the right thing.

And now Braverman is turning her back on those conventions because she wants vulnerable people who are fleeing persecution to suffer. It’s the 1930s all over again.

Here’s an example of 1930s rhetoric, pulled at random from Twitter:

“The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest.” Was it an “invasion”, of the kind recently described by Braverman?

Sadly the UK’s main opposition party – Labour – is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories on this issue. In an LBC radio interview, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Gary Lineker was wrong to make his comparison with the 1930s:

Perhaps she was covering for her boss, Keir Starmer, whose words in Prime Minister’s Questions harked back to the UK’s political rhetoric of the 1930s:

During the same exchange, Starmer equated Channel migrants with rapists:

We should be thanking Mr Lineker for raising the issue of inhumane policies directed at people who are too vulnerable to resist.

But it is clear that we didn’t have to look as far as Nazi Germany to find parallels with the 1930s. Both the government and its opposition are parroting British racists of that time.

They shame us all.

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Gary Lineker has no reason to apologise. The Tory Immigration Bill is Nazi-style immoral

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Gary Lineker: once again, his compassion for others has set him against Establishment rhetoric.

The demonisation of Gary Lineker – for pointing out something that should be obvious and uncontroversial – is disgraceful and the Tories doing it should be shunned.

The European Convention on Human Rights was set up in the early 1950s, and Suella Braverman’s filthy little Illegal Immigration Bill spits on it.

She admits it:

The United Nations has also stated that the Bill undermines the “very purpose” of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which “explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly.” The statement added: “International law does not require that refugees claim asylum in the first country they reach.”

That convention was introduced in recognition of the failure of neighbouring countries to help refugees from Nazi Germany when they needed it.

In Parliament, Braverman referred to her Bill removing “foreign national rapists, drug dealers and murderers” – and was reprimanded by Labour’s John McDonnell for “inflammatory language” that was putting asylum-seekers and those who represent them “at risk”.

In response to earlier such shenanigans, former footballer and TV presenter Gary Lineker tweeted that the language in which Braverman’s plan was set out was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. He has a point, it seems.

But of course he faced a backlash. Braverman herself called his words “unhelpful”:

But of course Mr Lineker wasn’t trying to help her; he thinks her law is rotten. Notice that she appealed to “the British people”, claiming that her law was in line what the people want. Isn’t that exactly the kind of rhetoric that the Nazis used?

Also:

Dehumanising people was exactly what the Nazis did, of course.

And – of course – Braverman cynically inflated the figures on the number of people allegedly trying to come to the UK:

The media debate is big on emotion and small on detail, with other claims added in to boost the failing Tory rhetoric.

For example, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Susannah Reid had to torpedo a claim that all asylum claims should be refused (75 per cent are valid) and that civil servants were inclined to grant all asylum claims for an easy life (there’s no evidence to support that at all):

The United Nations has provided valuable insight on the facts here. Its refugee agency, the UNHCR, has stated that Home Office data indicates that the “vast majority” of small-boat migrants would be granted refugee protection if the UK considered their claims.

“Branding refugees as undeserving based on mode of arrival distorts these fundamental facts,” the agency added, calling on the government to consider its own “concrete and actionable proposals” as a way to reduce the demand for small-boat crossings.

Underlying all this is the fact that the so-called “war on immigrants” has been manufactured by the Tories in order to give people a bogeyman to fear and revile.

The reason people are coming across to the UK in small boats is simply that Boris Johnson turned his back on the UK’s former “returns” agreement with the European Union, that allowed a Labour government to return 60,000 people in its last year in office. That’s more than the most recently-recorded number of people coming in. Watch:

Labour has, at least, recognised that there is an easy way to solve the issue of people crossing the Channel in small boats:

Mr Lineker faces a “frank conversation” with his BBC bosses about his criticism of the government, which the Corporation – under its Tory-supporting, Tory-appointed chairman – is claiming contradicts its impartiality rules.

But of course, he was tweeting in a personal capacity.

I am reminded of Rachel Riley’s vigorous campaigning against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the run-up to the 2019 general election.

Her right to do this was not publicly disputed by her employer, the broadcaster Channel 4.

Isn’t it incongruous that she was allowed to undermine a left-winger’s election campaign but Mr Lineker is being reprimanded for passing a reasonable comment on a right-winger’s attack on refugees?

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Won’t this Brexit ‘benefit'(?) seriously hinder crime detection in the UK?

Information deficit: if the police officers standing behind Brexiteer Boris Johnson at this speech knew how badly he’d harmed their ability to detect crime, would they have arrested him for perverting the course of justice?

Is this yet another ‘unintended’ consequence of Brexit that’s going to seriously harm the people of the UK?

Read:

Frontline police and border force officers will remain locked out of information on a key EU database of terror suspects, criminals and immigration offenders for at least another four years, the Home Office has quietly admitted.

UK police and security services conducted more than 600m real time checks on the Schengen Information System II [SIS II] in 2019, but the following year lost access to its instant information on policing, national security, or immigration alerts because of Brexit. A civil servant said they hoped to get access to a planned new EU international law enforcement alert platform “within two or three years, according to a 2021 House of Lords report”.

But it has now emerged that Matthew Rycroft, the department’s permanent secretary, has said that gaining access to EU datasets is at “a very early stage” and is not expected to be completed before 2027/2028.

Source: UK police and Border Force to remain locked out of EU database of criminals | Home Office | The Guardian

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Sunak is hammered by journalists after ‘future plans’ speech that nobody believes

Rishi Sunak delivered a speech on his plans for the future of the UK – and nobody cared.

He delivered five promises: one was to halve inflation (not hard as it is expected to drop, to improve the economy, to cut the national debt, to cut NHS waiting times, and to stop small boats bringing illegal migrants to the UK.

Journalists took him to task over the Tory government’s failure to do what it said, over whether he would implement any of his five promises this year, over his refusal to negotiate pay with nurses, over what the public could do if he fails to deliver on his promises, over the failure of previous government laws to do what’s needed to combat illegal immigration, and over his failure to resolve the strikes.

His comments about nurses and funding for the NHS are particularly hard to stomach:

If you can be bothered to sit through his speech (and it might be worth having around so we can see if he ever bothers to stick to it), here it is:

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Suella Braverman shouldn’t play politics after telling others not to

After being asked whether the survivors of a recent Channel crossing disaster would be welcome in the UK because they came here from a “safe” country, Home Secretary Suella Braverman demanded that her colleagues should not play “politics” over such matters.

She then went on to do exactly that.

Braverman couldn’t say these people are not welcome because others have died – as a result of the fact that the UK has closed all safe routes to the UK in order to keep racists and bigots voting Tory.

Hear it for yourself:

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Sunak’s reply to fellow MP is more proof of what his immigration policy is REALLY about

Here’s further evidence to support This Writer’s belief that Rishi Sunak’s policy on immigration isn’t about introducing a fair system that benefits asylum-seekers and punishes criminals – but about keeping racists and bigots voting Conservative.

Labour MP Chi Onwurah – herself the child of immigrants (as is Sunak himself) – asked if he believed that her parents should have stopped in Lisbon instead of continuing to the UK (where her grandmother already lived), when they left their country of origin, decades ago.

He had no answer. How could he have one?

Here’s Maximilien Robespierre with analysis:

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The Tories are lurching into far-right politics to keep their voter base – racists and bigots

Border Force: immigration is likely to become an even more pressing public issue in the future, despite Rishi Sunak’s plan to strengthen the UK’s ability to foil illegal channel crossings. Is this because the Tories see it as a way back to power after losing the next general election?

A poll reproduced on the Mainly Macro blog shows that 56 per cent of the UK’s population now believe Brexit was a bad idea, compared with only 32 per cent who support it.

Why is the Conservative government still slavishly pushing the falsehood that Brexit was ever going to do us some good, then?

The answer should be obvious: it was a huge fantasy for right-wing, racist flag-shaggers who wanted to get rid of Johnny and Janey Foreigner and thought that saying we would all be better-off was a great way of getting it.

When the Brexit-supporting political parties started cropping up – most notably Nigel Farage’s UKIP – they drained off support that the Tories wanted to keep for themselves.

The only answer they saw was to support leaving the EU and hope that this would draw the headbangers back into the fold.

And it did – albeit with the help of the strongest Brexiteer party in the 2019 elections, that withdrew its candidates from standing in constituencies where the Conservatives had safe seats. Remember that?

But support for Boris Johnson’s ‘hard’ Brexit deal is now becoming an electoral liability for the Tories. Public opinion is shifting away from supporting Brexit, and from fearing the consequences if it is modified.

The costs of Brexit have become so obvious that the broadcast media now feel compelled to start talking about them and the message is that Brexit has reduced living standards and held the economy back.

This means that support for Brexit will be associated with a party that wants to keep the UK poorer.

And that’s a huge relief for This Writer, because I have been saying the same for years!

According to Mainly Macro, it is unlikely that public opinion will have changed enough for a Brexit-opposing party to take power – which is why Labour still supports the policy at the moment.

But this is likely to change during the time that Labour is in office (as still seems a certainty after the next general election).

Where does this leave the Tories?

According to Mainly Macro (again), it leaves them to take a hard line on immigration.

It is the most potent issue among potential Conservative voters, therefore newspaper stories about immigration or asylum-seekers are likely to proliferate in the Tory press under a Labour government.

This Writer is led to guess that this is the reason Rishi Sunak and his ministers have been announcing a series of unpopular and probably ineffective policies to tackle illegal immigration; by attacking the symptom and not the cause, they ensure that the problem remains when a Labour government takes over – and Labour may then be attacked over it.

This in turn may create an obstacle to any return to the EU Customs Union or the Single Market that Labour may plan.

The flag-shaggers, racists and bigots who support Brexit (remember them?) would see the Tories doing all they could to prevent a return to what they consider the bad old days of EU membership – with free movement of working people between countries, remember – and would commit their support to the Conservatives to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

… In theory.

So we see that current Tory policy on immigration is less likely to be about stopping foreigners from coming to the UK illegally, and more likely to be a grubby bid to find a pathway back to power.

Source: mainly macro: The implications of a tipping point in public support for Brexit

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Did Rishi Sunak’s immigration speech seem… familiar to you?

Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons: neither he nor his fellow Tories seem to take their responsibilities seriously.

Rishi Sunak gave a speech in which he set out his plan to reduce illegal immigration.

Maybe you thought it contained some good ideas; on the face of it, it might have.

But it only attempts to handle the symptoms of the problem, and not the causes.

And This Writer fears that some of the measures he introduced may be used to persecute the innocent.

Also, there was something Nurembergian about his delivery – the “enough is enough” rhetoric and the assertion that he would “do what must be done”.

It reminded me of other characters from history and fiction – so I made a video comparison (in this case with a character from fiction).

Do I make a good point?

(For clarity, the clip I’m using is for commentary/satirical purposes and I would not wish to make any attempt to claim ownership.)

The measures announced by Sunak include:

  • a dedicated unit of 400 specialists to handle claims from Albanians
  • new guidance for asylum case workers making it clear Albania is a safe country and requiring evidence of modern slavery when considering a claim
  • UK border officials will also be posted at Albania’s main airport, under a new deal with the country
  • 700 staff for a new unit to monitor small boats crossing the English Channel
  • a pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers
  • plans to house 10,000 individuals waiting on claims in disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites
  • a commitment to double the number of asylum caseworkers, who assess claims
  • more staff and funding for the National Crime Agency to tackle organised immigration crime in Europe
  • plans for Parliament to set an annual quota for refugees coming to the UK
  • new laws, to be introduced next year, to “make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally, you should not be able to remain here”

Refugee charities branded the plans “cruel” and “ineffective”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer dismissed the proposals as “unworkable gimmicks”.

Sunak also pledged to “significantly raise the threshold someone has to meet” to be considered a victim of modern slavery.

But former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May warned modern slavery was “a very real and current threat”.

She urged Sunak not to “diminish our world-leading protections for the victims of this terrible, horrific crime”.

(He didn’t listen.)

And there are other problems:

The UN’s refugee agency welcomed measures to address the asylum backlog but said plans to limit access to asylum to those arriving through “safe, legal routes” went against the principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The UNHCR said the announcements marked “a troubling step away” from the UK’s “commendable humanitarian tradition”.

Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of charity Refugee Action, criticised the government for failing to commit to creating new safe routes for people to come to the UK, which he said “could end most small boat crossings overnight”.

“Most of these changes are cruel, ineffective and unlawful and will do nothing to fix the real problems in the system,” he said.

The Refugee Council said treating people “who come to the UK in search of safety as illegal criminals” was “deeply disturbing and flies in the face of international law”.

The charity said it was “very simplistic” to label Albania safe “when in reality it has serious problems with criminal and sexual exploitation of women and children”.

It’s another Tory mess.

They could have done something useful but they decided not to – possibly because raising hysteria around immigration allows them to distract public attention away from all their other disasters.

And, considering the effect his plan is likely to have on people who are genuinely trying to flee life-threatening situations, he might just as well have pointed a giant cannon at them and shouted “fire!”

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Detainees with weapons cause disturbance at immigration centre

The scene of the action: Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.

A power outage at a London immigration removal centre seems to have given detainees the opportunity to cause trouble.

According to the BBC,

a group of detainees left their rooms and went into the courtyard at the immigration centre armed with various weaponry.

Police officers arrived at 7.45am and Prison Service officers were also there. The detainees involved were returned to their rooms and nobody was injured.

But why did it happen?

Was the incident connected with complaints about the Manston immigrant processing centre, a concentration camp in Kent where conditions were compared with prison by one inmate who wrote a message in a bottle and managed to pass it to the press.

The chief inspector of prisons reported filthy cell toilets, problems with pests and dilapidated communal showers.

Other concerns raised included high levels of vulnerability among detainees, people assessed to be at risk of harm being held for too long and detainees being locked in their cells during lunch and overnight.

Diseases including diphtheria are also said to be present, but the sick – along with people who are pregnant – were said to be treated with nothing more than Paracetomol, according to the ‘message in a bottle’.

And this small disturbance kicked off, the instant the power went down.

Earlier this year, the UK was facing the threat of widespread power cuts due to low fuel supplies.

That threat seems to have subsided now, but what if it hadn’t? How many more such disturbances would we have been facing – and how bad would they have been?

The people involved in this one were said to have had weapons – what exactly were they and how did these people come to have them?

Even if we had the answers to these questions, it seems clear that there are many reasons for concern here.

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