- Thu Jun 27, 2024 12:41 pm
#70893
You know when the subject of immigration was being talked about, and Sunak sneeringly said to Starmer “ Oh, so with asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, you’re going to do deals with Assad, the Ayatollahs, and the Taliban, are you ? “
Starmer could have done better in response. What happens when someone applies for asylum in the UK, whether they’ve fled Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else, is that their application is assessed and evaluated, and if it is found that they have a well-founded fear of persecution, imprisonment, or death in their country of origin, which obviously in the case of somewhere like Afghanistan is quite likely, then they are not sent back to their country of origin. They cannot be. They are granted asylum/leave to remain, can get work (probably doing work that is badly needed), pay UK taxes, and make a home in the UK. If their asylum claim is assessed and rejected, then yes, they can be sent back, but no agreement with the fucking Taliban is required. That process is the one that under the Tories has been allowed to ossify and build up into a massive backlog of cases not being dealt with under 14 years of the Tories. That process is the one that Labour will get back operating properly again, and address the backlog, without sending any poor sods to fucking Rwanda. I’m sure Keir could have expressed this more pithily, but he didn’t manage it. It would have been good to hear him nullify the applause that Sunak got for his smart-arse line.
"The opportunity to serve our country: that is all we ask.” John Smith, May 11, 1994.