UN concerned above UK’s asylum and migration overhaul
26 March, 2021
The UN said it would examine British plans to overhaul its system for handling migrants and decrease the ways persons can claim asylum.
Officials at the UN High Commission for Refugees said the UK planned a “sponsor of complex changes” but there is “a universal to seek asylum”.
Britain wants to decrease the ways people can say asylum and only offer non permanent permits to migrants who arrive in the UK from safe nations.
The program announced by the house Secretary, Priti Patel, would only allow long term permission to remain in the UK if the applicant experienced official channels, such as those create in refugee camps.
Others, such as those who get to southern England after crossing the Channel from northern France, would only qualify for "temporary protection position", under that they will be reassessed for removal in a future date.
Matthew Saltmarsh, senior exterior relations officer at the UNHCR, said some claimants had “very reputable reasons” to get protection in specific countries, such as for example family ties.
He said the 1951 Refugee Convention did not provide “unfettered to choose a region of asylum” but it addittionally did not “oblige asylum seekers to use in the first safe and sound country they encounter”.
Plans to send some migrants outside the UK were also criticised.
“Externalisation arrangements often run counter to the spirit of international solidarity and burden-posting,” Mr Saltmarsh said.
“They risk a gradual erosion of the international protection program, which includes withstood the check of time and which we've a collective responsibility to guard.”
Ms Patel said the proposed program rewarded those who came through legal routes, such as the UNHCR, and discouraged those visiting through safe countries.
She said the UK would create "safe and sound and legal routes" for asylum seekers to go to the UK.
More than 100 migrants, including a gal, crossed the Channel about Tuesday, increasing the 806 who have arrived on tiny boats this year.
An archive 8,400 asylum seekers tried to cross the English Channel last year.
Since January, the government has been trying to move laws to give British border law enforcement more capacity to obtain fingerprints from migrants trying to cross the Channel.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com