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Sunak firm over boats

Britain has relatively few asylum-seekers. Last year, it recorded 74,751 applications, its highest number since 2002, but France had more than twice and Germany more than three times as many.

Still, Rishi Sunak wants fewer asylum-seekers. To do this he demonises those already here, and those coming on boats. Dehumanising language is key to legislating brutality. Yet boatloads of asylum-seekers are still arriving – hurting his poll standing. Hence his hasty trumpeting that smallboat crossings were 20% down this year while those in Europe were going up.

Deterrence probably did not lead to this. Other plausible explanations, barrister Colin Yeo wrote, could be migrants switching to clandestine means to avoid detection, worse weather, or departures from the French coast being more effectively blocked. There are 10,000 more asylum-seekers awaiting assessment than before Sunak’s premiership. This could easily be reduced by extending the welcome for Ukrainians to those fleeing Afghanistan, Syria or Sudan.

But Sunak alighted on refugees as a threat to be dealt with. Getting a handle on this imagined menace, he thinks, will convert the applause garnered into enthusiasm for failing Tory economic programmes. Instead, it is stoking tensions in communities and resentment among asylum-seekers for their enforced destitution.

This opinion is not necessarily shared by Stuff newspapers.

Opinion

en-nz

2023-06-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281792813423914

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