From: Rosemary Hoyle (Chair of Amnesty Wharfedale)

Also signatories, members of Amnesty Wharfedale: Helen Barnes; Sandra Duff; Eileen Bernard; Elizabeth Hall; Ed Carne; Chris Knamiller; Shannon Coles; Nicola Swann; Hilary Davies

MEMBERS of Amnesty Wharfedale are shocked by the Home Office’s proposed reorganisation of arrangements for people seeking asylum in the UK. Use of the term immigrant, often accompanied by the word ‘illegal’, confuses the issue. Desperate people, fleeing war, famine, persecution, and mistreatment are seeking asylum as a basic human and legal right. People are not illegal!

The suggestion that there are ‘deserving ’migrants and those less deserving because their only method of reaching safety is by boat is abhorrent. It is impossible to see, as the Home Secretary claims, how such a system will stop people smugglers from exploiting people so desperate that they are prepared to risk their lives. It seems likely that the proposed plan will only increase the use of smugglers because Home Office policy dictates that claims for asylum cannot be considered from those who have not yet arrived here.

Not only is the plan unworkable it is likely to be illegal as it will breach the 1951 Refugee Convention (which Britain helped to write) which does not require a person to claim asylum in the first country they reach.

And what of humanity? Are we impervious to the kind of shocking reality of some people’s lives that we could endorse such a plan? I doubt it.

The Government claims to have settled more refugees than any other European country. Yet this is a disingenuous conflation of figures and definitions under different resettlement schemes. Germany has resettled more displaced persons by a long way, France and Italy also accepted more refugees. According to the United Nations High commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) by the end of 2018 the number of refugees, pending asylum cases and stateless persons represented about one quarter of one percent (0.26%) of the UK’s total population.

Desperate people, many of them unaccompanied minors, need a safe legal route to security so that they can rebuild their lives. The Home Office should fulfil its International obligations by restarting the Resettlement Programme as soon as possible.