The UK’s ongoing illegal immigration crisis could spark social unrest and feed votes to extremist political movements, a former Australian foreign affairs minister has said.
Alexander Downer warned that government failure to get a grip on current uncontrolled levels of immigration will force the British public to “look elsewhere” for solutions.
The Policy Exchange paper, written by the think tank’s head of demography and immigration David Goodhart, said the new route could scale down the current “free for all” by focusing on women and children in conflict zones.
The move would cut off the high percentage of young, fit, and healthy men—who have the means to pay people smugglers—from entering the UK.
However, such a route, based on the government’s Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme for Syrians (VPRS), could only be implemented once illegal Channel crossings drop below 10,000 a year.
Send Boats Back
Writing in the report’s foreward, Mr. Downer, chair of Policy Exchange, said: “If too many migrants come to any particular country, this will force up housing and rental prices, put pressure on health services, cause overcrowding in schools and generate social unrest.“Put simply, there are two things which need to be done. First, governments need to make a clear headed assessment of the types of migrants they need and the numbers they can accommodate.
“As for illegal immigration, which does include gaming government’s obligations under the Refugee Convention, this also needs to be carefully managed.”
The Australian former politician said the government must make it clear that paying people smugglers to gain access is “unacceptable,” suggesting boats should be turned back and sent to “offshore processing centres.”
“Instead, governments should resettle a fixed number of refugees, the numbers being dependent on what any particular country can reasonably accommodate.
“As for the rest, their boats should be turned back and the asylum seekers be processed in offshore processing centres.”
Although acknowledging the suggestions as “controversial,” Mr. Downer added: “The alternative, which is to maintain the status quo, is to exacerbate public unrest about this issue and in turn feed votes to extremist political movements.
“The public will want the problem solved, and if mainstream political parties are unable to solve it, they will look elsewhere.”
Syrian Model
Mr. Goodhart, author of the report, said the UK’s Channel crossings have become a “significant part of the wider European” migration problem.However, he noted that of the 90,000 asylum applications made in Britain last year, only half came from those who arrived via small boats.
He wrote: “About 9,000 came by other irregular routes, most likely cars and lorries, and around 25,000 came on a legal visa and then claimed asylum.
“This means the Government must keep up the effort to make the swift removal of those who don’t qualify for asylum a priority by appropriate detention measures and establishing returns agreements with as many countries as possible—where relevant, in return for aid and liberalised visa regimes for work, visit and study.”
He said the model for a more “universal safe and legal route” is the UK’s 2014 established VPRS.
The Syrian refugee scheme was built on earlier government models such as the Gateway Protection Programme, which worked in collaboration with the European Union and the United Nations Refugee Agency, under which NGOs, including the Red Cross and Refugee Council, volunteered to help resettle a few hundred people who had been living as refugees for more than five years.
The VPRS was similarly designed for a few hundred people, however it ended up resettling over 20,000 of the most at risk Syrians in the UK.
Described in the report as a “success story,” the large majority of Syrian immigrants became the responsibility of the 275 local authorities which pledged to resettle 22,716 people with significant government funding.
The report states, “Any generic safe and legal route, like the Syria scheme, would need to target the most vulnerable, be limited in scale and require intense cooperation between central and local government.”
Security Risk
Mr. Goodhart also suggests expanded community and family sponsorship schemes as another safe and legal entry route.He wrote: “Canada takes in about 8,000 people a year through such routes, the UK (excluding Ukraine) currently only a few hundred.
“The Homes for Ukraine scheme has shown that willing citizens can play a bigger role in the refugee/asylum system than the state has hitherto believed possible.”
The report says that this bigger role for concerned citizens in the “absorption of refugees” helps to mitigate three of the public’s biggest anxieties about irregular entry: its cost, lack of integration, and “the fact that it is harder to screen for security risks.”
“The security risk appears to be rising after some recent asylum seeker murders plus the possibility of a new wave of Gazan refugees crossing the Channel,” it states.
The report also suggests that the government should “do more to encourage established diaspora communities such as that from Iran or Afghanistan to step up to offer more assistance and accommodation for their co-nationals.”
