Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Your "judgment" that Schengen's external borders are not effectively policed is based on "unregulated people roaming around Europe unchecked". But this doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole point of the Schengen zone is that movement within it is unregulated and unchecked — just like movement within the UK. If this shows that Schengen's external borders are not effectively policed, surely it also shows that the UK's external borders are not effectively policed? But in fact it shows neither. The fact that people are free to move within the Schengen Zone and within the UK tells you nothing about how free they are to enter those areas in the first place.

A slightly more rational approach would be to look at numbers of undocumented residents - those who reside in the Schengen zone without an immigration status which entitles them to do so. This is necessarily hard to quantify, but in 2017 Pew Research estimated between 3.8 million and 4.8 million for EU/EEA as a whole (not just for Schengen). At the time this would of course have included the UK. Going with the upper estimate, that would have been about 0.93% of the population of the EU/EEA in 2017.

The Pew Research report didn't contain any breakdown by country, but the University of Wolverhampton did its own study of undocumented residents in the UK in 2020, and came up with a range of 594,000 to 745,000. Going again with the upper estimate, that would about 1.1% of the UK's population in 2020.

These figures suggest that, however ineffective the policing of the EU/EEA borders, they are more effectively policed than the UK's borders.

yes , you misunderstand the Dublin 'agreement'.

Quote The objective of the Dublin III Regulation is to ensure quick access to the asylum procedures and the examination of an application on the merits by a single, clearly determined EU country.

Anyone in the asylum porcess in the Eu would have access to the courts of the EU. I assume Cooper did not want actions of all UK minister and officials to be subject to the Court of Justice?

link

But the point of my post, other than to show what little alternative to the Tories the voters of UK really have, is to again expose UK politicians suggesting that the EU must fix a clearly UK domestic problem. I previously posted (post #14666) about Peter Hain suggesting that the Eu need to change time limits for non EU citizens visiting the EU.

Why UK politicians seem to be constantly harking back to the EU to solve their, domestic, political problems suggests to me an unwillingness to accept responsibility for their actions.

There's no general law in France that prevents people from leaving France to go to another country, and you can't arrest or detain people for seeking do that. It makes no difference if the person is likely to be refused entry to the country that they wish to go to. (And I'm pretty sure that this is also the case in the UK - in general, anyone in the UK is free to leave it — they don't need the permission of the UK government to do so, much less of a foreign government.)

Attempts are made to prevent small boat crossings from France to the UK, but this is not on the basis that the people concerned have no right to leave France (because they do) or on the basis that they have no right to enter the UK (because that is no concern of the French authorities). SFAIK those attempts are based on laws governing navigation in the English Channel. The Channel is a very busy shipping lane and is highly regulated. Vessels operating in the English Channel have to follow prescribed routes, carry prescribed paperwork, have prescribed safety and navigation equipment, etc. When the French police patrol the beaches of Normandy and the Pas de Calais, they are relying on these regulations to give them legal authority to prevent people setting out to cross the Channel in overloaded RIBs.

The asylum process is complicated. The idea that one should claim asylum in the first safe country moves the responsibility to those countries that would be the closest to the areas people come from. Conveniently for the UK this is not them. So they are quick to jump on this position as if it is some wonderful idea or solution.

It doesn't address major problems though, why should someone who would have their application successfully accepted and has family/relations in the UK or speaks English, be forced to claim asylum in Poland? Or maybe in Greece? Or in France? It makes no sense to try and claim this is what should happen, so I think it is safe to say that those that parrot this line is only doing it because they know it is not an honest suggestion to the problem. Add in that while the UK is "open" to people wanting to claim asylum, it offers no safe routes for people to do so. You cannot get to the country on a flight without a visa to claim asylum at the airport so that is not an option. There are no facilities in other countries that people can avail of to get the process started either.

So before you talk about safe countries, you need to talk about shared responsibility. The UK, or this UK Government, wants to have zero to do with asylum seekers so they are using dishonest argument to avoid taking their fair share compared to other countries. Until the UK takes their fair share and has a process in place for these people to safely arrive in the UK, it makes discussions about safe countries moot. The fact that people would harp on about it would say more about those putting this view forward as somehow serious or carrying weight when in fact it shows just a lot of prejudice.

The UK leaving the EU has meant they are able to be more nasty and mean when it comes to their responsibilities in regard to other human beings who are in need.

Why would any EU country, in any way, process someone who wishes to apply for asylum in the UK? That can only be done by the UK.

There is a difference between a refugee seeking asylum and migration .

Who is blaming the UK ?

Why blame the EU for these people arriving. Why not blame the country they are leaving or the countries they had to get through to get to the EU.

Fact is people are arriving in the UK and the UK government are doing a sht job dealing with it and sound like absolute scumbags when they talk about it.

All you are trying to do is your usual whataboutery.

You have a funny way of looking at this issue. Take Syria, of the 6.8m refugees, 5.2 went to neighboring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan. Germany took 788k and the UK took 23k, that's a big number but even Canada took 70k, so it's not like the UK is swamped with Syrian refugees. Not all refugees can go to the first safe country, we all know that, How could one country take near 7m people ?

All countries have to share the global migrant issue, the UK spent centuries going around the world taking and causing problems, helping these countries now seems fitting.

The Dublin agreement allowed EU countries to return refugees to the first EU country they came from. Your point is this is something that the UK wants. Well if it wanted this why oh why didn't the UK negotiate for this as part of the future trade agreement ? was it because they didn't see it as important as their plan all along was to shut down by way of procedure, the legal means for migrants to seek access to the UK (apart from 2 or 3 regions globally) and then push the boats back in the oceans. Because that's what their doing. And with no surprise, they blame the EU for this, for not stopping the migrants.

This is 100% a UK made problem and it's going to take a 100% UK solution. The most logical answer is to trade away something in return for the EU to assist in policing this, lets say the UK give freedom of movement for work and leisure to EU citizens, that sounds fair to me.

If a refugee does not apply for asylum in an EU country then why should the EU take any action?

Clearly, for all sorts of reasons, people are deciding they want to apply for asylum in the UK. The UK therefore have a legal obligation to process that application .But they are failing to do so. There is in fact many years delay in processing applications.

Even if there was a way to make the UK subject to EU courts and to the Dublin III procedure, and I am fairly sure the UK government would resist that, the idea that the application has to be to the first EU country they enter is not correct. That is just one criteria.(** see below) Another aim of the pact "In particular, the New Pact recognises that no Member State should shoulder a disproportionate responsibility and that all Member States should contribute to solidarity on a constant basis. " On this basis the EU courts might order a significant number of asylum seekers be allocated to the UK, much more than manage to get there by boat ( Or is it only some parts of the new immigration pact you think should apply to the UK?)

But in a more general way, the UK does not have a crisis with excessive asylum applications. What it has in a domestic political system which has sought to scapegoat immigrants in general way for all perceived problems. And, sensibly, there is no way that the EU would attempt to help UK politicians dig themselves out of that particular hole.

** The criteria for establishing responsibility are, in hierarchical order:

• family considerations,
• recent possession of visa or residence permit in a Member State and
• whether the applicant has entered EU irregularly, or regularly.

So what? Again blaming someone else. Why not pick on African countries or wherever. Immigrants want to come to the UK. Presently the UK is covering it eyes and ears and pretending it can just wish it away or failing that hoping that the 'invaders' die in the channel.

But as plenty of others have pointed out, the UK could and should set up proper processing facilities. They could even work with the likes of Franch to do so in France, but that would involve having to accept some genuine asylum seekers. It isn't that they want less, they want none. They want to completely avoid their international obligations and the geography that they can claim that since the UK are an island they can ignore their part in creating many of the problems leading to immigration.

What they should do is put in place a proper system, to take in, process and accept/return those that should or shouldn't be in the country. But its much easier to blame these immigrants for the government's lack of investment across many areas of the UK including housing, education, NHS etc.