Shabana Mahmood’s plans for draconian treatment of migrants will validate far-right arguments, pave the way for a  Reform victory and endanger us all, argues Peter Morgan

Firstly let’s start with a lie: ‘We have become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world.’  This was the claim of the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, this week as she launched the government’s latest draconian immigration proposals clamping down on refugees and asylum seekers.

The statement is false. The UK is not the destination of choice. In fact, when you consider population size, the UK is ranked seventeenth compared to all other EU countries in the number of asylum-seeker applications last year (according to Migration Observatory based at Oxford University). And there were more than twice as many asylum claims made in Germany, and about 1.5 times as many in Italy, Spain and France than in the UK. According to the UNHCR, the UK is home to approximately just 1% of the refugees who have forcibly displaced worldwide.

The UK offers no ‘golden ticket’, as Mahmood claims. Instead, having taken the scalpel to the winter fuel payments shortly after their election victory, and then disability benefits, Labour has now set its sights on those forced to flee persecution, conflict, violence and human-rights violations or environmental disasters by constructing one of Europe’s harshest immigration systems. Little wonder Labour’s proposals this week were welcomed by racists Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. And even Tory leader Kemi Badenoch hinted her party would swing behind supporting the government to get them passed through parliament.

Mahmood’s proposals include scrapping permanent refugee status and requiring those arriving in the UK as asylum seekers to stay for twenty years, up from five, before they are eligible to settle permanently. They also suggest that someone’s refugee status would have to be reviewed every two and a half years, in effect offering people only temporary sanctuary and leaving them in perpetual limbo. The legal duty to provide asylum seekers support, such as housing and weekly payments, will also be revoked.

Performative cruelty

These are nothing more that ‘headline-chasing cruelty’, said Steve Valdez-Symonds from Amnesty International. ‘Forcing refugees into endless short-term applications, denying visas to partners and children and stripping away support for people who would otherwise be destitute will only deepen chaos, and increase costs,’ he said.

Short-term stay arrangements and stringent limitations on refugee family reunion will only create prolonged uncertainty and despair. And it will further undermine integration and social cohesion within communities: consider, for example, how much more difficult it will become for people seeking a long-term rental, a mortgage or indeed even a permanent job if they’re having their residential status constantly reviewed, living in never-ending fear that they can be removed at any time, and at short notice if the country from which they fled is now deemed ‘safe’ by the government, likely only on the flimsiest of evidence.

The Refugee Council have called the plans ‘highly impractical as well as inhumane’. And they noted that if this policy was in place already, the Home Office would need to review the status of potentially 1.4 million people between now and 2035 which would amount to a cost estimated at £872 million over the next decade. And this in an asylum system which, as all acknowledge, is already backed up with claims, appeals and applications.

Consider also the fact that if a family is forced to return to the country from where they came, how traumatic it would be for the children that were born here if they are forced to leave. So a child who has no experience of living abroad and who might be settled at school, studying hard for their GCSEs, could be uprooted and forcibly removed, and possibly be detained as part of that process.

The asylum reforms will also apply retrospectively to refugees already in the UK once the legislation is introduced. This means that refugees who have not secured long-term status by the time the changes come into force will also be subject to the regular checks and sent back to their home country if it is determined to be safe. This has harrowing echoes of how hardworking people who came to this country as migrants who were so badly treated by the Windrush scandal.

If this new policy becomes law, then the UK will see ‘Ice-style raids’ to remove people, and their children, similar to what we have seen recently in the US under Trump where officials pick up people off the streets, at shopping centres, or in their homes or at their schools and colleges and detain and ultimately deport them.

In the UK, the case of a university student, Motaz, who came to here from Yemen was highlighted by the Refugee Council this week. He explains that he came to this country as a teenager and feels that he would not have been able to rebuild his life under Labour’s new proposed rules. He says:

‘I came to the UK from Yemen as a refugee when I was 16. This country has given me and my family safety at a time when we have almost lost everything. Hearing those new announcements does not make people like me feel secure or included. It sends a clear message that even after years of contributing, studying or integrating, you can still be treated as temporary. A 20-year wait time before someone can apply for permanent settlement does not just delay a document. It delays stability, it delays belonging, it delays integration. It keeps people in a state of uncertainty.’

The Danish model

In releasing their proposals, Labour has made much of the fact that they have been modelled on Denmark’s asylum system. Denmark had once prided itself on its liberal welfare state and human-rights commitments. But it has spent the past decade turning itself into one of Europe’s toughest destinations for refugees.

Before 2015, refugees in Denmark were initially allowed to stay for between five and seven years, after which their residence permits would automatically become permanent. But ten years ago, the Danish government dramatically changed the rules and an amendment to the Aliens Act allowed authorities to revoke refugee status if conditions in someone’s home country had improved, even if those improvements were only slight and unpredictable.

Indeed, Denmark is the only country in Europe to have revoked refugee protection on a large scale. It was the first to reorient its laws away from the integration of refugees and asylum seekers, and towards return.

A significant shift occurred in 2019, just as the Social Democrats returned to power under Mette Frederiksen. Then the parliament approved a package of legislation that has widely been described as a ‘paradigm shift’ in Denmark’s asylum policy.

Under this tougher system, there was one well-publicised case of several Syrian refugees who held temporary protection but had their permits reassessed. Their residencies were revoked, but the refugees could not be deported because Denmark had no diplomatic relations with the then Assad government. So they were placed in so called ‘departure centres’: facilities designed to house people expected to leave the country (and under much stricter conditions than standard refugee shelters.

So Denmark has become a pioneer of restrictive immigration policies, and this is what Starmer’s Labour Party intends to copy. It may be worth them noting the fact that the European Court of Human Rights previously found that Denmark had violated the right to family life under the European Convention on Human Rights due to a three-year waiting period for refugees with temporary protection. And last year, the European Court of Justice accused Denmark of racial discrimination for planned mass housing evictions in previously so called ‘ghetto’ neighbourhoods (now referred to as ‘parallel societies’) where a high proportion of residents are migrants.

Today Denmark’s has become one of the loudest voices in Europe calling for asylum seekers and other migrants turning up without legal papers to be processed outside the continent. The BBC’s Europe Editor, Katya Adler, even reported that the country had first looked at detaining migrants without papers on a Danish island that used to house a centre for contagious animals. Those plans were later shelved.

She also notes that Denmark came under glaring international attention for its hardline refugee stance after it allowed the authorities to confiscate asylum seekers’ jewellery and other valuables, saying this was to pay towards their stay in Denmark. This is an idea that Labour has been only too keen to emulate in its recent proposals.

One wonders if Starmer and Mahmood will also copy another Danish initiative where they were keen for the word to spread about their extreme immigration restrictions. Katya Adler also notes that ‘the Danish government put advertisements in Lebanese newspapers at the height of the migrant crisis warning how tough Danish migration policies were.’ The goal being, to whatever the country’s cost or reputation, to reduce all incentives for refugees to go there.

So right across Europe now, parties are increasingly using language traditionally associated with the far right when it comes to migration, and that includes parties of the centre and soft left, including Starmer’s Labour Party. Recently during a speech on immigration, he evoked the language of the racist Enoch Powell and spoke of the danger of this country becoming ‘an island of strangers.’

Inescapable facts

But if we began this article with exposing ‘a lie’ from the government that the UK ‘has become the migrant’s main destination of choice,’ let’s end this by revealing one undeniable ‘fact’.

the Home Office’s own research has indicated that deterrent measures have little effect on the numbers arriving in the UK. Instead, social networks, language and cultural connections are a much more significant factors influencing decisions of those who want to flee problems in their home country and seek safety.

A recent Home Office report entitled, ‘Sovereign Borders: International Asylum Comparisons’ looked at the factors influencing asylum seekers’ journeys and more specifically why they sought safe haven in the UK rather than other European countries. And the first thing it reveals is that, rather than as Labour Ministers would have us believe that they come here to claim as much benefits as possible, instead it says that many asylum seekers have little to no understanding of the welfare policies on offer. It states: ‘The role of welfare policies, economic factors and labour market access as potential drivers of migration to the UK is limited as many asylum seekers have little to no understanding of current asylum policies and the economic conditions of a destination country. Many asylum seekers have no experience of a welfare state, and they expect to be able to work to support themselves.’

More significantly however, the report reveals the importance of social networks in influencing a migrant’s journey. These act as ‘a facilitators of information’ relating to life in the destination country, and they ‘are considered trusted sources and are likely to influence migration journeys more than information from formal institutions. The presence of diaspora communities can motivate migrants to reach certain destination countries.’

So Labour’s new immigration proposals show they are ignoring the evidence and simply hyping up the right-wing rhetoric. As Amnesty International’s Steve Valdez-Symonds warns: ‘The moment a government decides that fundamental rights can be switched off for certain people, it crosses a dangerous line that should never be crossed. This is how universal protections begin to rot. Once you strip rights from one group, you hand licence to whoever comes next to strip them from others.’

Labour’s new proposals will do nothing other than build the foundation of a Reform victory. They are playing directly into Nigel Farage’s hands. By pushing the myth that migrants and refugees are to blame for society’s problems, they are feeding the narrative that will only serve to fuel Reform’s popularity.

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