FutureLearn course<\/a> on migration law which is open to anyone interested in migration.<\/p>\nShe writes: The number of people crossing the English Channel via small, barely seaworthy, vessels is on the increase \u2013 as are the anti-immigrant narratives that seem so often to accompany forced migrants. Government and media narratives tend to suggest that the fault lies either with organised criminal gangs (the smugglers and traffickers) or with fleckless or opportunist migrants seeking to exploit either our asylum system or the system designed to protect victims of human trafficking. \u00a0Even lawyers defending the rights of asylum seekers have been targeted by senior government ministers, as if legal representation was itself somehow subversive. Calls for clamping down on illegal migration, for detention of \u201cillegal\u201d migrants, for methods to root out smugglers and traffickers, for increasing the severity of our border controls, and for pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights are regularly and frequently made and hailed, as if any or all of these will solve the problem of people arriving by small boats. Very little attention is paid to the human rights of the migrants themselves, nor the reasons why they use such dangerous means to get to the UK.<\/p>\n
In any event, the problem is not as simple as is suggested by the government or media pundits \u2013 and this is borne out by the fact that no UK government policy has managed to stem the tide of people feeling forced to circumvent our border controls. No amount of additional money thrown at the French Government, for example, (the UK has pledged \u00a363m for the coming year) will solve the problem. The small boat arrivals have increased from approx. 8500 in 2020, to 28,500 in 2021, to more than 40,000 people in 2022. The UK paid the French Government \u00a355m in 2021 to encourage them to deter migrants from setting sail from France, yet the number of migrants arriving here has almost doubled in that time. A mere \u00a38m more in the coming year looks like it may amount to throwing good money after bad.<\/p>\n
The problem with the small boats (both the dangers to the migrants and the problems posed for border controls) is that it is not an isolated one; it needs to be seen in a broader context. Globally, the number of forced migrants uprooted from their homes because of persecution, armed conflict, and other serious human rights violations is increasing year on year. The UNHCR indicates that the number of people forcibly displaced by such causes rose from 41.9 million in 2011 to 89.3 million by the end of 2021. This fact, together with the facts that international law provides only the right to file a claim for asylum, but no safe routes for people fleeing, and that Western states have increasingly tightened their border controls, means that more and more people resort to using smugglers and traffickers. These criminal gangs facilitate the circumvention of border controls, in order to allow fleeing migrants to claim asylum.\u00a0 It is thus increasingly difficult for those seeking asylum, to travel safely and arrive legally in the UK or indeed any Western county. And yet, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights declares the right to seek asylum as a human right, and the Refugee Convention is designed to ensure that those who arrive and claim asylum are not sent back to a country where their lives or physical safety are at risk. In addition, the Refugee Convention prohibits the imposition of sanctions for the sheer fact of arriving without the correct documentation (\u2018illegally\u201d). \u00a0The recent suggestion by the Centre for Policy Studies, whose forward was written by the current Home Secretary, that indefinite detention of \u201cillegal\u201d migrants will act as a deterrent, would amount to an egregious violation of the Refugee Convention to which the UK is a party.<\/p>\n
Asylum seekers, in the modern era, are most often in a situation where they flee the danger of death and other severe human rights violations at home, run the risk of grave dangers in the hands of organised criminal gangs (smugglers and traffickers) whilst en route, and finally risk being detained in indefinite immigration detention (see eg Manston), and in the case of the UK, years of uncertainty and poverty (they are not permitted to work here) while their claims are processed.<\/p>\n