'Safe and Legal Routes'

I am writing this on the Eurostar, on my way to the Netherlands for the weekend. I have the luxury of two passports, one British and one from an EU membership state. These days I travel with both. I leave and enter Britain with one and enter and leave the EU with the other.

Neither of those passports are my ‘original’ one, as I was born in the then Polish People’s Republic and gained Swedish citizenship in 1982. My father and mother had sought political asylum in Sweden, arriving in 1976 and 1977 respectively, my mum with infant me on her arm.

Although leaving Poland was much easier in the 70s than it had been for many years, it still involved applying for permission to leave, as well as to arrive wherever you were going. The former was tricky, involving a lot of bureaucracy, a little luck, and, crucially, a letter of invitation from sponsors at the destination. Needless to say there was a network of individuals who could provide such letters, if you had the connections and the means.

Among refugees we were lucky, it was a time when defection from the East, for whatever reason, was encouraged in the West, we had enough money to afford flights, enough means, education, knowledge, language skills, contacts, support, safety and strength to obtain documents that allowed us to arrive in Sweden ‘legally.’ Inevitably, however, those who need refuge the most tend to have the least access routes asylum.

For most refugees there are currently no legal ways to seek asylum in the UK.

What the UK government terms ‘safe and legal routes’ to gain refugee status in the UK are nationality-specific resettlement schemes, not ways to apply for asylum. Currently there are schemes running for Ukrainians, Afghans and Hong Kong nationals. Needless to say, these are restricted to those who can prove their nationality and meet criteria, such as a finding sponsor in the UK for Ukrainians, proving that they are at risk since UK troop withdrawals for Afghans, and being able to accommodate and support themselves in the UK for at least six months for Hong Kong nationals. 

There is also a refugee family reunion policy and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) UK resettlement scheme. The conditions for the first are self-explanatory, whereas the latter is open to individuals identified by the UNHCR among those living formal refugee camps and referred to the UK. A person cannot apply to the UNHCR, and a very small proportion of refugees worldwide are resettled using this scheme. Finally, there is community sponsorship and the mandate scheme, both which depend on sponsorship in the UK, and have resettled fewer than 1,500 people since 1995.

If you are not the right kind of national, or don’t fit the criteria for those schemes, if you have no family or friends or charities to sponsor you, or no means to get in touch with those, if you are unable to reach a UN refugee camp, or not lucky enough to be selected by the UNHCR, let alone if you have lost or have no means to acquire any kind of travel documentation through displacement, war or the failure of ‘your’ government, there are officially no ‘legal’ routes to attempt to obtain status as a refugee in the UK. 

If you arrive at a UK border point without valid documentation to enter, you are deemed ‘illegal’. These days it is hard to get on any kind of international transport without such papers, so very few people do. With Britain being an island, and the channel crossing having been increasingly fortified (see above video of the barbed wire fence on the side of the rail tracks at Fréthun as you emerge from the channel tunnel) and increased security measures making stowing on vehicles very difficult, here we are with 45,000 people arriving by small boat in 2022.

The vast majority of those arriving in small boats sought asylum, which made them ‘legal’ under UK law. Currently any arrivals by small boat are prevented from seeking asylum, and thus deemed ‘illegal.’ The Secretary of State now has a duty to deport all ‘illegal migrants.’ How and where all of these deportations are to be carried out is unclear. A hint is the Government is offering at least £700m to private security firms for the management of cross channel arrivals.

The, frankly, crackpot Rwanda scheme, just like the ill-fated Bibbi Stockholm barge, is just so much bluster to make the government appear to be hard on migration ahead of elections next year when they have very little else to recommend them to the voters. Neither scheme will even marginally dent numbers of refugees, and besides, the vast majority of migration to the UK does not consist ‘illegal’ migrants or refugees.

Global migration on a large scale is here to stay, including growing numbers of refugees. If the UK does not provide safe and ‘legal’ routes to seek asylum in the county, small boats and other clandestine means of entering the country will continue.

I put the word legal in inverted commas, since under the 1951 Refugee Convention those who seek asylum cannot be punished for ‘irregular’ entry.

As I continue my journey, grateful for my life-long luck as a migrant, I leave you with a summary of rights accorded to refugees under that convention to which the UK is a signatory, and an extract from the Illegal Migrations Act 2023:

The cornerstone of the 1951 Convention is the principle of non-refoulement contained in Article 33. According to this principle, a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

Other rights contained in the 1951 Convention include:

• The right not to be expelled, except under certain, strictly defined conditions (Article 32)

• The right not to be punished for irregular entry into the territory of a contracting State (Article 31)

• The right to non-discrimination (Articles 3 and 5)

• The right to decent work (Articles 17 to 19 and 24)

• The right to housing, land and property, including intellectual property (Articles 13, 14 and 21)

• The right to education (Article 22)

• The right to freedom of religion (Article 4)

• The right to access to justice (Article 16)

• The right to freedom of movement within the territory (Article 26 and Article 31 (2))

• The right to be issued civil, identity and travel documents (Articles 12, 27 and 28)

• The right to social protection (Articles 23 and 24 (2-4)).

Under the Illegal Migration Act 2023 the Secretary of State has a duty to make arrangements for removal of a person deemed ‘illegal,’ regardless of whether

(a) the person makes a protection claim,

(b) the person makes a human rights claim,

(c) the person claims to be a victim of slavery or a victim of human trafficking as defined by regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 69 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, or

(d) the person makes an application for judicial review in relation to their removal from the United Kingdom under this Act.