BREAKING NEWS!!

Smugglers store small boats!!!
In a WAREHOUSE!!!

Now why WOULDNT that be the headline story on #r4today? What could possibly matter more than the continued manufacture of a sense of threat over small boats? 🙄
They’ll find another boat if you confiscate this one Just imagine if every time we hear this nonsense they also specified:

“Asylum seekers are left destitute in France & routinely harassed & abused by police.
They have no other way to reach asylum in the UK than with smugglers.” #r4today

Yvette Cooper’s borders announcement today is a betrayal of everyone who voted for change.

Ten days since racists attacked asylum seekers & mosques & today Labour announce they’re ramping up the failed narrative that we can just get rid of the people we don’t want here. #r4today Over last decades we vastly increased immigration detention capacity.

More & more people locked up, while we try to get rid of them, although in most cases we don’t do that.

They experience that brutality. We pay the immense cost. And what changes?
Absolutely nothing. #r4today

Farage’s demand that we further appease anti-migrant hatred with another swipe at human rights is the opposite of what we need.

But the underlying suggestion here that HAD the Southport killer been an immigrant, riots would be justified is the foghorn giving him away.
#r4today

https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1820910478165733842

The men, women & children terrorised as the hotel was set alight & a mob daubed racist slogans across its walls would have as little to do with him if he had also crossed a border as they do now.

Farage’s demand for the “truth” is papering over his own dangerous lies. #r4today

Textbook interview from Cleverly on how to normalise & empower the far right:

-Only problem he identifies with Farage is his plans to stop migration won’t work
-Reinforces the idea migration is bad & Farage’s aims are legit
-Says Tories are the real anti-migrant vote #r4today Directly afterwards we hear from France where the EXACT same narrative pursued by Macron led to a far right victory in the election.

We hear the same again: we need remove migrants, more failed measures of immigration control, control Muslims, migrants are the problem🤦‍♀️#r4today

Over 40 people killed at sea by the Greek coast guard.

9 of those people deliberately thrown into the sea.

There literally are no words for European (in which I absolutely include the UK) depravity in the name of border enforcement. #r4today Literally leaving babies adrift at sea on rafts. On camera. In broad daylight.

That is “stop the boats” in action. There’s no way to push back asylum seekers that doesn’t kill.

Our borders kill every day, Greeks are just taking a bit more active involvement these days. #r4today

This is only the “immigration election” because we’re all once again dancing to Farage’s tune who, unbelievably, is on one of the BBC’s flagship programmes #r4today AGAIN this morning.

To the public, it’s an election about the NHS & cost of living. For which we need immigrants. Zero net is an insane anti-growth proposal that would see our NHS waiting lists explode, make it impossible to recruit teachers for our kids, trash our ability to build houses, and desperately damage our economy leaving us much poorer.
#r4today

Weird🤔
Because none of the 6 or 7 reports released this year by credible academics, researchers & service providers detailing horrendous exploitation, & debt bondage driven by the temporary work visa system Jenrick oversaw, seem to have been covered on #r4today🤷‍♀️

🧵👇

https://twitter.com/eddwilson/status/1788078370879635643

This @FocusOnLabour report reveals migrant farm workers are unable in practice to change employer due to visa restrictions, leaving them trapped when underpaid or not given enough work.
They can then be coerced into poor living &working conditions #r4today labourexploitation.org/publications/b…

The Rwanda bill passed.

Very few asylum seekers will ever be sent there, but this morning, thousands of homeless men, women & children who came to us with nothing & asked for help but we left in limbo, have fear hanging over them of violent deportation to a dictatorship #r4today And it’s the violence I want you to think about today.

Because there is no way to carry out the deportations Sunak is crowing about without serious violence.

People will struggle, they’ll be restrained, may attempt to self harm or kill themselves. Over & over again. #r4today

The old “ID cards to stop migration” argument again 🙄🙄

Unnecessary, expensive, exclusionary nonsense.

They have ID cards across EU - FAMOUSLY a region with no issue of undocumented migration???

Just grasping to reinforce a false narrative that migration is a threat #r4today WE DONT NEED expensive, bureaucratic ID systems.

That’s not how you solve the issue of real people denied papers to safely undertake journeys to safety, community & opportunity.

It’s just another recycled sideshow from people with no answers for society’s real problems #r4today

I think we’re still very unlikely to see a May election. I tend to agree with those like @lewis_goodall who argue, why would Sunak go for certain defeat today, over probable defeat tomorrow?

But there’s a scenario playing out in my head now that I can’t stop thinking about, so… We know the Labour lords are not planning to stand up too hard against the “safety of Rwanda” bill. Maybe one or two rounds of pinpoint but likely wrapped up within a week.

That means the bill is almost certain to pass unamended by 26 March when parliament rises.

The news will be all about Galloway today - that’s why the government published these 13 immigration inspection reports in one go yesterday, to bury them.

But the scale & degree of chaos, mismanagement, dereliction of duty & incompetence they reveal is astounding, truly #r4today

https://twitter.com/zoejardiniere/status/1763263890035458543

Quality control of asylum decisions abandoned
Kids put at risk of trafficking
Country risk research incoherent
Inadequate security checks in airports…

in a sane country the whole government would resign. Instead they carry on, just without the independent scrutiny🤷‍♀️ #r4today

David Neal,

(former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders & Immigration sacked last week by Cleverly for telling the papers about chaos at the Home Office who sat on 14 of his reports in a row without publishing them)

is about to give evidence to HASC parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/3c… Neal opens:

"I've been sacked for doing my job and doing what the law requires of me"

Oooh he's mad.

Leaked proposals to reduce immigration are a joke:

1. Raising salary threshold is classist & pointless, only limits our ability to recruit doctors, nurses, etc

Many jobs are excluded from minimum salary thresholds anyway cos we so badly need workers incl care & farming #r4today 2. Putting a cap on the number of health & social care worker visas… do I have to explain why this is counter-productive, unpopular & idiotic?

An arbitrary cap based on anti-migrant politics rather than our actual healthcare needs is insane & bound to be reversed #r4today

I feel the need to break down why this article has got it so, so wrong.

It's central argument is we can increase migration, and embrace it, as long as we show we can have tough borders & wont let asylum seekers cross them irregularly.

Sounds tempting... economist.com/leaders/2023/1… There are 2 ways in which it is wrong -

1. There's no evidence we embrace the 'good' migrants once we've kicked the 'bad' ones hard enough. We just shift who the bad ones are.

2. It is only by regulating irregular migration we can stop it - even increasing visas isn't enough.

Senegal has been in political crisis - ignored in our news - for months.
Deadly violence, internet shutdowns and repression.

There is no safe way for the victims to escape and build the safe futures they have every right to hope for.

So we let them die at sea. 63 more today. For as long as I’ve been alive, European politicians have pursued the same strategy of increased cruelty, cutting rights, passing the buck, & demonisation.

It has never worked. It will never work.
When will we be tired of insisting the solution is more of this cycle of failure?

Greek authorities’ story has changed again.
This is what refugee pushbacks & passing the buck inevitably leads to.

Finally the world is looking at Greece’s deadly migration policies. But as @minnierahman says, these are also UK policies, enacted on a different coastline #r4today The UK has learned all the wrong lessons from Greece.

Their brutal response has led directly to more deaths.

There is no way to make people who have nothing left, only hope, disappear. If we don’t offer alternatives, they will risk the crossing & smugglers will profit. #r4today

Riddle me this, cos I’m seriously thinking it through.
Starmer is right on a couple of things, namely the Tories are no longer what they used to be, but a far right populist, extremist outfit. And Labour have moved into the ground vacated, & are now a moderate right wing party… Who is our left or even centre-left option?

Cos it’s fine if Starmer’s Labour is “coming out” as the real Conservatives. You do you.

But neither me, nor my family, nor most young people have ever, nor plan to ever, vote Conservative you see. Not under any name or colour…

High net immigration figures will be built up into a frenzy in the next weeks. A couple things to remember:

- the rise is driven by people on visas, not asylum seekers, who remain a tiny proportion

- the immigrants are people who bring huge positives to our communities #r4today - The immigrants being from India & china “instead” of the EU is a neutral.
The only thing that matters is what rights they have on their visas

- More people’s visas now are short-term & highly restrictive, that do not have a pathway to settlement.
That’s not positive #r4today

Today, the government’s “stop the boats” #RefugeeBanBill debated in the Lords

The Bill means when people come to us asking for help, we will no longer assess whether they are refugees or not- We’ll simply lock all of them up, regardless

Only traffickers will welcome it #r4today People will always try to seek safety in the UK.
We are one of the richest, safest countries on Earth & we colonised a third of it, leaving ties of language & community behind.
We abandoned Afghans, we are abandoning the Sudanese. They won’t give up because of this Bill #r4today

It's come to my attention again that few people have any idea what the government's "stop the boats" illegal migration bill does, so:

It ends the right to seek asylum in the UK.

No decsions. No applications will be processed. From Afghans to Albanians. Limbo forever for all. There are infinitessimally small caveats but this is essentially the truth & the whole story.

In plain & simple terms: No one coming to us for help (or any reason) will have their claim for protection heard anymore, ever.

They'll all be detained, all be left in barges & hotels.

I wrote a piece on how to respond to the #RefugeeBanBill and whether safe routes/humanitarian visas are the answer.

Proud of this one, although I don’t know how many friends it will make me..

It’s the principle of territorial asylum we have to defend now opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-traf… In short, we’re dancing on the head of a pin contorting our demands into the space considered “politically viable” to protect ever shrinking numbers of “good refugees” through safe routes.

No proposal I’ve seen would actually remove the need for some to take irregular journeys..