Cross-posting on asylum
JAMES Mackenzie of Two Doctors fame greeted me with a less-than-friendly Tweet this morning, casting doubt on my human compassion in light of the asylum debate that’s been kicked off again by the terrible events at the Red Road flats in Springburn on Sunday.
This kicked off an exchange of Tweets and eventually led to James suggesting that we cross-post, so that both our views on this issue could be seen by readers of both our blogs. Here’s mine; James’s will appear here and on his own blog in due course.
by Tom Harris
THE TRULY tragic case of the three asylum seekers who committed suicide by throwing themselves from the high-rise block of flats in Glasgow has resurrected the debate on our asylum system.
We still don’t know enough about this specific case to be able to make a judgment as to what actually occurred and why. The media have, at various points, described the deceased as Russian and Kosovan. One report suggested at least one of them was suffering from severe mental illness. They may or may not have successfully claimed asylum in Canada before arriving in the UK.
The fact is we don’t know how much, or if any, of this is true. And it would be irresponsible in the extreme, in the meantime, to make hysterical accusations based on rumours and speculation.
Which is why, presumably, Robina Qureshi has been all over the Scottish media doing just that.
Robina, with whom I’ve crossed swords before, is the director of a branch of Solidarity housing “charity”, Positive Action in Housing, who provide support to failed asylum seekers in Glasgow. Yesterday, in the immediate aftermath of the terrible news breaking, she told The Times that “if the suicides had anything to do with the Border Agency telling the victims that they could not stay in the country, then the agency was culpable”.
But despite her qualifying her own conclusions with that “if”, she organised a demonstration outside the Border Agency office in Glasgow today, telling Radio Clyde and anyone else who would listen that what happened in Springburn was a direct result of official threats to return the asylum seekers home. She’s also called for a public inquiry, although since she’s already decided what the facts are, I’m not sure why she needs one. In RobinaLand© every claim for asylum should be awarded and public servants who enforce the law are, according to Robina, barbarians.
She also said:
We believe there should be a public inquiry into these deaths, and the impact of the UK Border Agency and its terror campaign – disguised as asylum policy – on the lives of asylum seekers who have lived here for years
Yes, many of them have lived here for years – illegally and after being told repeatedly thattheir asylum claim had been rejected because there was no threat to their safety in their home country. And by describing asylum policy as a “terror campaign”, Robina is demonstrating why no-one other than a few gullible hacks take her seriously.
Even the normally sensible James Mackenzie, who works for Holyrood’s two Green MSPs, accused me of a lack of compassion in the comments I made to The Times. Fair enough. I’ve been dealing with this issue too long to expect people to approach it objectively and without recourse to emotive language (see his guest post above).
Even if it emerges that the deceased threatened officials with suicide if they attempted to remove them, surely that threat could not be allowed to be a veto over legal process?
When phoned by The Times yesterday, I knew I couldn’t talk about this specific case – apart from the fact that we didn’t really know what had happened, the deaths didn’t happen in my constituency – but agreed to talk about general asylum policy.
But until the facts, rather than speculation and rumour, hold sway, it would be most unwise to make subjective judgments about this case, however tempting it would be for some to try to make political capital on the back of such a human tragedy.
As for asylum policy in general, my view, having dealt with hundreds of cases since 2001, is very clear: an asylum policy differentiates between those who have a genuine reason to fear persecution in their home country, and those who simply want to live in the UK in order to attain a better quality of life. Those who fall into the latter category must apply through the immigration route. To award refugee status to everyone who claims it would catastrophically undermine its very notion. It would result in an “open-door” immigration policy, and no-one other than a few swivel-eyed Trots (and the entirety of the SNP, of course) wants that.
