Opinion: A Memorandum of Misunderstanding

By Olivia Jones

Migrants are perhaps the most prevalent political scapegoat in the history of European civilisation. In the 30's Jewish migrants were "not humans, but animals". In the 70's we were being "rather swamped by people with a different culture". In 2018, people escaping hardship in Central America and the Middle East were "Not people. These are animals". Anti-migrant sentiment is as deeply ingrained in the political discourse of European society as white supremacy in many respects, though is far more widely accepted. Not all anti-migrant sentiment is based in racism, or a hatred, but it is all based in a lack of understanding of the issues faced by the migrant community, why people chose to risk their lives to emigrate illegally, and what can be done to stop this from happening.

In a new Ministerial Statement issued by the Home Secretary, details of a new 'Memorandum of Understanding' between the British and French Governments were outlined in regards to migrants who attempt to cross the English Channel to either reside illegally in the UK or attempt to seek asylum. The MoU sets out a number of provisions; including the installation of x-ray and infrared equipment to find stowaways in vehicles, law enforcement patrols of 100 officers to police the English Channel, and a refugee camp at Calais where refugees found in the Channel will be sent upon capture to await the processing of their applications for asylum. The MoU has received broad condemnation from non-Government parties, and has sparked protests in France. But why? Well for that we'll need to look at the policies it proposes in more depth, some of the criticism of it throughout, and some of the inconsistency on the issue from the Government.

In her speech on the subject of the MoU to the House, Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesperson SapphireWork MP indicated a number of inconsistencies in Government response. In her 15 minute speech, she outlined that the Home Secretary had previously said that refugees and migrants caught in the Channel would be "conveyed (...) back to the UK", and later further confirmed this original sentiment in a statement that read "after rescue, these refugees will be brought to the UK and will enjoy the robust protections (...) that British policy provides". As is evident, none of this was held to. The Liberal Democrat Spokesperson also mentions in her speech that while earlier the patrols of the Channel were said to be for "strictly humanitarian reasons", the Government has now backtracked on this and said that they will instead be law enforcement officers.

The policy itself outlined not only sets up to do the wrong thing but fails at doing the wrong thing it sets out to do. It sets out to stop people emigrating illegally and forcing them through the asylum system. As former Home Secretary Theresa May said in 2012, "the aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment to illegal immigration", and the Tories are no less committed to this ideal than before. But the truth is that the UK's asylum system is unjust to its core; Freedom from Torture reports in their study Lessons Not Learned that credibility assessments for asylum are flawed, unrealistic and unlawful evidential burden is placed on applicants, the Home Office operates under an ethos of 'refusal culture' and sets out with the intent to make asylum more exclusive rather than more accessible, and the Office has an 'inadequate learning culture and a lack of independent oversight'.

The study then does into detail about a few key statistics. In 2004 and later 2013, Amnesty International found that multiple aspects of asylum applicant's claims were being denied on credibility grounds 'without a reason provided' for the denial, and that more than four in five were overturned on appeal due to a flawed credibility assessment. An earlier Freedom from Torture study titled Proving Torture found that 84% of applicants has experienced Home Office decision makers who dismissed medical evidence because they had already reached a negative credibility finding.

Even more egregiously, Asylum Aid found in their study Through her eyes: enabling women's best evidence in UK asylum appeals that all of the asylum appeals they looked at were overturned based on flawed credibility assessments. Several organisations point to poor interview technique as a reason for flawed credibility assessment, while analysis by the UN reveals that negative credibility assessments are not backed up by evidence in the majority of cases. In Lessons Not Learned they say that "Amnesty International concluded that avoidable mistakes were central to flawed credibility assessments, and a significant number of successful appeals could be avoided if the issue of poor quality credibility assessments by some case owners is effectively addressed".

There is also the issue of the failure of Home Office workers to apply the correct standard of proof to asylum applicant claims. As Freedom from Torture sets out, the main question in deciding on an asylum claim is meant to be whether there is a real risk of likelihood that the person seeking asylum will be subject to discrimination or persecution if they return to their country of nationality or origin. This standard doesn't call for a caseworkers to be "certain" on the validity of the claimants proof, it rather requires the caseworker to take make a holistic assessment based on the relevant aspects of the claimant's account. However Home Office decision-makers have repeatedly been found to be failing to apply this standard of proof and it is leading to unfairly denied claims even in situations where further proof is provided but decision-makers ignore it.

So right off the bat we find that the very principle behind the Memorandum of Understanding is flawed; it presupposes that trying to put more people into the asylum process is the morally just thing to do to keep migrants safe and give them a safe path to entry, however it isn't at all that and is indeed an active sentencing. Then we must look at what they want to do with these migrants. So, after catching migrants in the English Channel and ferrying them back to France, the British and French Governments want to put the refugees in a newly-restored Calais Jungle camp. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the original set up half a decade ago experienced hate crimes from the local anti-migrant alt-right against its residents and was eventually shut down by the French Government, displacing potential thousands of refugees, looking at this policy on its own we see it again has no basis in the goal it's attempting to set out to accomplish. The Home Secretary has personally confirmed that the purpose of this facility will be 'solely to process asylum applications', meaning that people waiting for asylum will not be provided with living support in their wait. Furthermore even if they were, leaving them at Calais is condemning them to potentially years of inhumane conditions even if they are provided mediocre shelter and money for food; and with our broken asylum system this in a massive number of cases won't even end with them being granted entry.

Statistics from The Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford, show that 62% of asylum applications are initially rejected, while only 38% are initially accepted (and given previous figures we know that this is overwhelmingly not because these people don't deserve asylum). 78% of rejected applications are appealed, of which 40% are appealed successfully and a further 60% are rejected completely. Migration Observatory also found that the share of asylum applications processed within six months has fallen from 73% to just 25%, meaning this refugee camp which doesn't even set out to be a livable temporary residence is likely going to have people waiting in sub-par conditions for months to years. We know that these migrants are coming here from countries put into unstable positions by western (thus very much French and British) colonisation, and more modern western warfare. The top five most common countries of nationality for asylum seekers are Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Pakistan, and Albania. The bulk of countries involved in the migrant 'crisis' are countries that the west has been largely responsible for making so unstable. It is for this reason that we must have the guts to take them in; make these people safe in our country rather than stranding them in what amounts of a soft detention facility at Calais.

So how do we solve the migrant crisis in a way that is humanitarian and fair, rather than just pushing the problem off of our doorsteps? How do we ensure that people fleeing tyranny, in many ways brought on by western wars of aggression, can brought safely into the UK?

For one, the laws and application thereof surrounding asylum application must be reviewed by Parliament. Their definitions of need for asylum are often too strict, and the process of taking applications has very little oversight nor is it fair. More independent oversight, a review of how decision makers follow criteria, or a more neutral and objective review of evidence and need to keep someone safe could be employed. Right now interpretation is often allowed to be based on the verification of singular bits of evidence rather than a holistic approach that would take all factors into account. As the Freedom from Torture study concludes;

Improving decision-making can help to restore faith in the Home Office, reduce the number and costs of appeals and associated legal aid and support costs, and empower those recognised as refugees to move on with their lives, and integrate and contribute to society.

Right now, asylum seekers who will genuinely face persecution if they are sent back home very well may be, and as one of the requirements to apply for asylum is to have left your home and be unable to return this is indeed a kind of death sentence. Asylum seekers also must be able to come into the UK and have a place of housing and safety while their applications are processed, so that they will not be forced to remain in the country of France which has a massive anti-refugee and migrant movement. This involves boats found in the Channel being brought over into the UK so that the occupants can be safely processed.

There also is the issue of the Government fining airlines and transport companies found to be carrying people without the correct documents - people who come under the category of asylum seeker are often too poor to afford documentation or indeed are stateless and therefore cannot acquire documentation. Legal methods of entry are exclusive, open only to those who can afford them which invariably doesn't include the people who need them to most, so methods of crossing the channel without needing to pay lots of money should be expanded upon (indeed given the fact there is a tunnel under the channel, this wouldn't even be particularly difficult).

However the wider conversation about the criminalisation of human movement is also worth talking about. Many parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the People's Movement, and many members of the Labour Party, advocate for removing restrictions on the movement of people - making it legal to cross the border of a country without needing a visa and putting the onus on the person immigrating to be able to find accommodation and work and treating the border merely as a method to stop other illegal activities such as drug smuggling. There is extensive academic analysis to show that this would also do a fair amount of good in other areas; for instance right now a lot of anti-trafficking operations have actually resulted in people who did not want to be in countries being returned to those countries.

For instance, if you imagine an LGBT+ person in Brazil who is worried that they will face discrimination under the current Government but cannot afford to move to a safer country legally; they may go to a people smuggler to get passage there. When they arrive in the desired country they may need to pay off the smuggler, most often through sex work. This may be startling to some but it is an ugly reality, and a lot of the policies being advocated for cracking down on trafficking without replacing it with making legal entry easier and removing income barriers on it would simply have the effect of forcing these people to say in their dangerous situations and would not indeed benefit the most vulnerable people in the situation of illegal immigration at all.

The argument around freedom of movement policies, making it easier for people who immigrate to work towards residency or indeed making it so that anybody who immigrates is allowed to live in a country if they can make a living there, is a radical one. It's one that parties don't often touch on, which is why it's incredibly important that parties are advocating for changes in the way that we think about migration. Everybody across the political spectrum agrees that the status quo isn't working, and it would be folly not to assume that the majority of people across the policial spectrum generally do want to do the thing that would benefit the most people, however much of the response seen from parties in the UK shows a clear misunderstanding of the issue.

Ultimately in a society in which everybody is just struggling to get by, and where migrants face very genuine issues, what politicians need to be doing is listening to the studies done on problems such as the issue with asylum application or with the restriction of movement. Politicians need to be doing what will keep people safe, and ensure that people don't need to be turning to people smugglers or dangerous crossings of the English Channel. Unfortunately, the Memorandum of Understanding between France and Britain simply doesn't do that; and is endemic of a misunderstanding of the issues faced by migrants that has plagued our society for decades. People need support and a loving hand from a Government that generally cares... they don't need a detention center in the Channel nor a tent city at Calais.

Olivia Jones is a journalist based out of Central Birmingham. She has worked as a policy advisor for multiple parties before settling for as a writer for The Independent. Her main articles are part of a weekly recap series named A Week In Politics.