I am so bored of hearing Tories talking about illegal immigration by refugees, whether in the House of Lords or on Question Time, that I went to find the definition of a refugee by the UN High Commission on Refugees. This is it. The emphasis is mine:
We are signed up to this.
It makes clear that those who think they are refugees may, quite explicitly, break migration law.
They must be welcomed.
They must be provided with care.
They just even be issued with a passport if they have none of their own or one they do not wish to use.
There is no right to refuse entry, or to force them to leave.
They may not be detained.
It is shaming that ministers and the media continually ignore these obligations.
Why do they do that? Because they can never imagine themselves as refugees. It is arrogant exceptionalism that lets them treat the refugee as ‘the other'.
Well, that and the empathy bypasses that all who join the Tories must compulsorily have. And it is totally shameful, and makes international criminals of them all, in my opinion.
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I read that as meaning they may be expelled, provided it’s to a place which doesn’t endanger life or freedom.
Andy Carry
You missed the word ‘fear’ – “where he or she FEARS threats to life or freedom”. So the test is of the belief of the person being thrown out, not of the nazis throwing them out.
In fairness, its not just the Tories with these awful immigration policies… Labour aren’t much better (which is increasingly becoming a worrying pattern nowadays)
Empathy by-pass?
I reluctantly disagree.
Why, the Tories have empathy for themselves, their party and their funders because it’s about survival of course – that is why they have lurched further to the Right and are trying to appeal to the ‘silent majority’ who don’t go things like go on Question Time and reveal what they think because they know it will be challenged.
These silent assassins – unreason’s enablers – are everywhere in our midst waiting for the privacy afforded by the voting booth. They’ve either been created by austerity or have always been the type of person who just holds some sort of prejudice that can be exploited (and what prejudice cannot?).
I agree that it is shocking that we have politicians who wish to make people ‘stateless’ so that they have no rights whatsoever and are due no obligations – making them into ‘non-persons’.
Refugees are just another expendable item for the Tories in their quest for a Thousand Year English Reich.