When public debate moves to how many rings a refugee could be allowed to wear before having them confiscated at the border as part of processing a claim for sanctuary, common sense as well as compassion on asylum is being strained to breaking point.
The announcement that the UK will abolish the right of refugees to secure status, and instead only issue temporary visas, has caused shock and copious column inches. What it all shows is the need for those who want border control that is both progressive and effective to stop sitting on the sidelines and reclaim the debate.
In today’s political discussions, fact is too often confused with fiction when it comes to refugees – the substantive misconception being that the existence of the small boats reflects something special about the UK, rather than the scale of the numbers fleeing persecution.
When one in every 70 people in the world is either running from war, political or religious persecution or conscription, the number of people asking for help has exponentially grown across every continent. It is worth remembering that while the UK had the fifth-highest number of asylum claims in 2024 in Europe, it was 17th when adjusted for our population size.
However many claim asylum, it is clear we need to tackle a system that works for no one. While the right rails about the European Convention on Human Rights, the truth is that it was leaving the European Union that made this situation nigh-on impossible to address.
Data shows just 3% of appeals to remove foreign nationals from the UK were successful on human rights grounds. In contrast, the problems of trying to protect borders after Brexit are increasingly obvious. As members of the European Union, we were not just part of the Dublin Regulations on family reunion, we also had access to the Eurodac data set to see when individuals had asylum claims rejected elsewhere in Europe.
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Denmark’s asylum policy isn’t the answer
Making it impossible for a confirmed refugee to make long-term plans in the UK will do nothing to tackle these issues. It will not improve our ability to process people more quickly at the border, nor will repeatedly checking that these people are still victims of torture or political dissidents reduce the costs of the system. It will push more people into precarious living in the UK, making exploiting refugees easier and leading to children being detained as their families refuse to leave the place they now call home.
Those who look at Denmark as the way forward need to ask why we would copy a model that has seen much lower rates of migrant employment and incomes than we have in the UK – making those who do stay more dependent on the state and excluded, not less. In contrast, asking how we can better regulate our housing market and workplaces, access to language lessons and learn from community sponsorship would do far more to break the stranglehold of smugglers.
This state of affairs is a wake-up call that the argument about how border control is secured in the chaos of the modern world has for too long been dominated by voices of hostility and hysteria. Threatening to withhold your vote will not change that – speaking up for returning to working with other countries, for safe routes and processing people at source.
Once we offer someone sanctuary, we should make integration, not isolation, the offer to ensure our communities benefit from diversity rather than being tested by it. Progressives must not shrug their shoulders, take to social media to moan or walk away from this issue for fear of being called woke. There is a better way forward – it’s time we all began speaking up for it.
Stella Creasy is the Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow and the chair of Labour Movement for Europe (LME). Join LME to support progressive voices on Europe and migration.
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