Andrew L. Urban.
Australia and America (like Hungary) have effectively closed their borders to illegal migrants; Britain has not. Illigrants, as I like to call them, cause massive socio-economic disruptions under the sympathy-draining label ‘asylum seekers’. They are not. They are thieves.
Go ahead, call me callous – but hear me out. Genuine refugees are asylum seekers, fleeing real danger and/or oppression from rogue regimes (think Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, etc) or natural disasters (think Nepal). Genuine asylum seekers do not cross Europe and take people smuggler assisted passage to the country offering the richest welfare as the prize for getting there. That’s why they pay the smugglers; it’s a secure investment.
The cost to the British taxpayer (as it did to Australia’s and America’s) runs into billions over the years; billions effectively stolen in cash and services, without demanding corresponding responsibility…oh, except the government feels compelled to distribute leaflets to advise how they must not rape or mistreat women. But perhaps they need to print some leaflets warning illigrants not to commit other violent (and non-violent) crimes. The US is still suffering from and struggling with crimes that are aftereffects of the massive illigration of the Biden era, from rapists and murderers to deadly truck drivers.
Then there is illigrants’ sense of entitlement, which I believe is largely driven by two factors: one, being labelled asylum seekers that generates victim-sympathy; two, generous benefits, a subliminal confirmation of being ‘valued’ as special. Law-abiding legal migrants in the Anglosphere and elsewhere, make significant contributions to society and the economy; illigrants not so much. (See Sweden and post-Angela Merkel Germany). Britain and the United States do not have a reliable census of people who are in the country unlawfully, so there is no precise official “workforce participation rate of illegal migrants” comparable with the ordinary labour-force participation rate of the resident population. (Maybe check with your Uber driver or pizza delivery guy…)
But we have to accept that the legal concept of ‘asylum seeker’ needs to be distinguished from the way the term is used in political debate. The UK House of Commons Library expressly notes that the UN Refugee Agency considers that international law does not require refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. The Refugee Convention’s central protection is non-refoulement: a person must not be returned to a country where they face persecution or other serious harm.
There is nevertheless a substantial distinction between the right to seek asylum and an unconditional right to choose Britain as the country in which an asylum claim must be determined. British law permits an asylum claim to be treated as inadmissible where the claimant has a connection with a safe third country, and British rules specifically contemplate claims being affected by travel through or connections with safe countries.
This is particularly relevant to people who cross the English Channel after travelling through several demonstrably safe countries. Their arrival in Britain does not, in itself, establish that they are refugees. Nor does the fact that they have reached British territory establish that Britain was the country in which they first required protection. Their individual claim still has to be assessed against the Refugee Convention criteria, while the circumstances of their journey and any connection with a safe third country can be legally relevant.
In short, “asylum seeker” is a status describing a claim for international protection; “refugee” is a legal status arising when the relevant criteria are satisfied. Crossing the Channel from France does not automatically disqualify someone from refugee protection, but neither does reaching Britain by that route establish a right to remain in Britain.
The bottom line is that managing illigration is primarily a political matter, not a legalistic one. So is excessive legal migration, which is a problem effectively facing Australia, and which is also affecting society and the economy. That, too, is a political issue.