Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited care
Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.
About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.
Continue reading...Among the makeshift tents near the French beaches, we ask what drives people to make the perilous journey in small boats and what could prevent more deaths
There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy.
Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel on Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed Karzan in the UK, paying people smugglers thousands of euros to get across the Channel in the absence of other possible routes. Karzan said that he had been in continuous contact with his fiancee and was tracking her GPS coordinates. “After four hours and 18 minutes from the moment she went into that boat,” he said, “then I lost her.”
Continue reading...So often in debates about asylum, statistics are used out of context to back up a politically motivated point, or as fuel in the government’s culture war against asylum seekers. Here are the key statistics about the UK’s asylum system in context
13,210. The number of people the UK granted protection to via asylum or resettlement routes in the year to September 2021 This is significantly lower than before the pandemic hit in March 2020.
64%. The proportion of initial asylum applications that were successful in the year ending September 2021. This rate has increased in recent years. In addition, almost half of unsuccessful applications are granted on appeal.
17th. The UK’s ranking against EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications it gets, adjusted for population. The UK’s asylum application per capita rate is almost half the EU average. Germany received 122,015 asylum applications in the year ending March 2021; France, 93,475.
37,562. The number of asylum applications in the UK in the year ending September 2021. This is 18% higher than last year, which saw a dip as a result of the pandemic, and less than half the peak of 84,312 that was seen in the early 2000s.
25,700. The number of people who have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats. This is three times the total number who arrived via this route in 2020.
83,733. The number of people awaiting an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of September 2021. Delays in the asylum system have increased rapidly since 2018: this is 41% higher than a year ago.
86%. The proportion of refugees worldwide who live in low-income countries neighbouring their country of origin. A very small proportion choose to travel to Europe. The UK is home to just 1% of the 26.4 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their home country across the world. Around half of the world’s refugees are under the age of 18.
£39.63. The amount that people seeking asylum get per week to subsist on in the UK. In France, it’s £42.84, and in Germany £65.63. In Germany, they are allowed to work 3 months from making their applications, in France it’s 6 months. In the UK they’re not allowed to work at all regardless of how long it takes for their application to be processed.
Continue reading...Analysis: The UK government’s own experts say many journeys are actually organised directly by desperate families
The government repeatedly insists that sophisticated criminal networks are driving the Channel crossings by people seeking asylum in Britain. Of all the contested claims advanced by the home secretary on the issue, it remains among the most pervasive.
True to form, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s drownings, Priti Patel wasted little time reiterating her determination to “smash the criminal gangs” behind such crossings.
Continue reading...Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking
A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Macron slams Boris Johnson for trying to negotiate with him via Twitter as it cancels talks with UK officials over Channel crossings
The French government has accused Boris Johnson of “double speak”. In a briefing, the French government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, said that the proposal in Johnson’s letter to Emmanuel Macron for France to take back people who successfully cross the Channel on small boats was “clearly not what we need to solve this problem”.
According to PA Media, Attal also said that the letter doesn’t correspond at all” with the discussions Johnson and Macron had when they spoke on Wednesday. Atta went on: “We are sick of double speak.”
What would be completely unacceptable, a stain on our country and a scandal would be to see in future those whose parents have died being placed in inappropriate institutions, in elderly care homes or mental health institutions.
That would be something that I think would bring shame to our country as well as an utterly inappropriate lifestyle for those to whom we should be giving the best possible care.
This is not a bill about a condition, it is not about dealing with Down’s syndrome, it is about people who deserve the same ability to demand the best health, education and care as the rest of our society.
It is not on our part an act of charity, it is an act of empowerment and the recognition that all members of our society must have a right to respect, independence and dignity. That is why I brought this bill forward.
Continue reading...Ali, 28, left his home in Iran to escape religious persecution. After being denied asylum in France, he made the decision to cross the Channel in a dinghy. He told the Guardian's Today in Focus podcast about his experience making the perilous crossing twice, in search of a better life
Young people who have made the dangerous journey tell why they have risked all to reach the UK
In the early hours of Thursday morning, a group of newly arrived refugees huddled together on the coast of Dover. The smugglers had not halted their trade in moving people across the Channel and, just hours after 27 people died on the perilous journey, they were back at work.
There is little evidence that the latest loss of life will deter others from making the dangerous journey. After the tragic drowning of the Kurdish family who tried to cross the Channel in October last year, two asylum seekers who survived told the Guardian that, despite being deeply traumatised, they continued trying to cross and not long after made it to the UK.
Continue reading...French president says: ‘We do not communicate on these issues by tweets’ after PM issues five-point plan via Twitter
President Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson to “get serious” or remain locked out of discussions over how to curb the flow of people escaping war and poverty across the Channel.
In a further sign of an escalating diplomatic crisis since the deaths of 27 people on Wednesday, the French leader criticised the UK’s decision to issue a five-point plan via Twitter instead of conducting bilateral talks.
Continue reading...News of Channel deaths has reached camp, but many still plan to pay people smugglers huge amounts in hope of a better life
Everybody at the camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk, little more than a scrappy collection of tents with no toilets or running water, has heard about the 27 people who drowned on Wednesday.
Everybody knows the risks. But everybody says they still have the same plan, to try to get on a boat to the UK, because they do not believe that death will come to them – and because of their hope for a better life.
Continue reading...As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe
Were they driven to the freezing shores of Europe by desperation, or did several thousand Kurds instead make the dangerous journey in search of opportunity?
As officials in Iraqi Kurdistan grapple with what is driving a crisis that is thought to have led to scores of citizens drowning in the Channel on Wednesday, and thousands of others to brave precarious migrant routes to Europe, even more are preparing to leave.
Continue reading...Analysis: UK suggestions that the French are not exerting themselves enough belies a more complex situation
Behind Boris Johnson’s suggestions, in the wake of the Channel drownings, that France was not doing enough to stop small boat crossings, lies a more complex picture. There is a growing sense among charities and the French political class that policing, security and repression alone cannot solve the issue of refugees risking their life to reach the UK to claim asylum.
In the past year, with rising numbers of attempted small boat crossings across the perilous shipping lanes of the Channel, there has been a significant increase in policing and patrols along the French coast, with new surveillance equipment, reservists called in, and more than 600 police officers and gendarmes working 24 hours a day – increasingly at night – to patrol a 40-mile stretch of rugged coast. UK financing has already contributed to new technology and an increase in officers. In addition, asylum seekers sleeping rough are moved on nightly, with tents and sleeping bags confiscated and camps broken up.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron has stressed the need to develop 'stronger and responsible' partnerships with Britain and Europe after at least 27 people, including women and children, died on Wednesday trying to cross the Channel on an inflatable boat.
Speaking on Thursday, the French president said: 'When these men and women reach the shores of the Channel, it is already too late.'
British and French leaders have traded accusations after the tragedy
Home Office says 67,547 applications waiting to be dealt with, as ministers urged to drop ‘nationalist posturing’
Asylum claims made in the UK have risen to their highest level for nearly 20 years, according to new figures from the Home Office, as the head of the Refugee Council calls for less “nationalist posturing” over people fleeing war zones.
The backlog of cases waiting to be dealt with is also at a record high, with 67,547 people in the queue and more than 125,000 either waiting for a decision or due to be removed from the UK.
Continue reading...Charities say home secretary’s policy for small boats in Channel is unlawful under rights and maritime laws
Priti Patel is facing three legal challenges over her controversial plans to push back refugees on small boats in the Channel who are trying to reach the UK.
Several charities including Care4Calais and Channel Rescue are involved in two linked challenges arguing that Patel’s plans are unlawful under human rights and maritime laws. Freedom from Torture is involved in a third challenge.
Continue reading...Two survivors in intensive care as four are arrested over drownings in boat described as like ‘a pool you blow up in your garden’
At least thirty one people including five women and a young girl have died trying to cross the Channel to the UK in an inflatable dinghy, officials say, in what is the deadliest incident since the current crisis began.
Two survivors are in intensive care while police have arrested four people suspected of being linked to the drownings. The International Organisation for Migration said it was the biggest single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.
Continue reading...UK home secretary addresses Commons after 27 people – including at least one pregnant woman and three children - drown off UK coast
The MP for Calais Pierre Henri Dumont told Sky News that he believes 29 bodies have been found.
British Red Cross chief executive Mike Adamson said: “Reports of more lives lost today in theChannel are truly heartbreaking and come far too soon after other recent deaths on this route.
Continue reading...Downing Street declines to praise home secretary over attempts to stop crossings in small boats
Priti Patel is being put under “immense pressure” from Downing Street and Conservative MPs over government efforts to halt Channel crossings in small boats, with No 10 refusing to say the home secretary had done a good job.
As figures revealed, the number of people making perilous crossings has tripled since 2020, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson twice declined to praise Patel’s strategy on Monday. He said the prime minister had “confidence in the home secretary” but would only say she has “worked extremely hard and no one can doubt this is a priority for her”.
Continue reading...People smugglers are putting hundreds to sea this autumn despite stormy weather
More than 75 people are feared dead after their boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while attempting to reach Europe in one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year, according to the UN.
Fifteen survivors were rescued by local fishers and brought to the port of Zuwara in north-western Libya. They said there were about 92 people onboard the vessel when the incident took place on 17 November. Most of those who died came from sub-Saharan Africa.
Continue reading...PM Edi Rama says he will ‘never receive refugees for richer countries’ after Raab said UK was exploring plans
Albania has strenuously denied it is willing to process people crossing the Channel to Britain, after the UK deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, confirmed that the government is exploring ways of processing asylum seekers abroad.
Edi Rama, the prime minister, said he would “never receive refugees for richer countries”, after a report in the Times suggested Albania would be willing to host an offshore processing centre for people arriving in the UK from France in small boats.
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