The Home Office has been accused of being frivolous about asylum seekers wanting refuge because of they’re sexuality.
Many are from countries where homosexuality is unacceptable – such as Iran, Cameroon and other African nations.
Alexandra McDowall, the UNHCR’s legal officer in London, says the discretion test “introduces an element that shouldn’t be there”.
She says it forces failed gay and lesbian applicants to live “under a veil of secrecy” back home.
People facing threats because of their sexuality count as a “protected group,” alongside those facing religious or political persecution, she adds.
The Home Office have denied telling gay asylum seekers to ‘man up’.
One refugee this blog spoke to, known only as HP, said…
They told me to be a man and stop whinging. They said that my life would be a lot more exciting back in my own country, better than the daily drudge here in Britian. I would be like a spy, living a double life. “Who doesn’t want to be like James Bond, they said.”
Another asylum seeker, currently waiting to hear the result of his appeal on his failed application was told to “learn to keep a fucking secret”.
When approached for comment, an unofficial Home Office spokesman said…
Get teh fuck out my face, faggot
Teh Guardian…
Scores of French riot police descended early this morning on the “jungle” camp in Calais, bulldozing makeshift tents and rounding up hundreds of illegal migrants hoping to stow away on lorries to Britain.
It’s a sorry state if affairs.
We all know why illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, whatever you want to call them, want to come here to this sceptred isle. Depending on who you ask the reasons range from: work; benefits; convert us all to Islam; endangered at home; want a better life; other family already here.
These guys in the ‘jungle’ in France, though. Looking for asylum in Britain. If they get here and can get a claim going, fair enough to them. But…
All the journalists and reporters I’ve heard on this story (and I don’t claim to have heard them all) have all asked why these refugees want asylum in Britain, but never asked why they’re not claim asylum in France when they’re already in France.
Is the French system that bad? Surely they don’t all have family here?
Just an observation. That’s all.
The Daily Mail hasn’t earnt itself the nickname The Daily Fail for no reason. This one is an epic.
Apparently some failed asylum seekers are to be allowed free health care on the NHS, that is currently denied to them. Sorry, I should’ve said ‘proposed’. They’re not currently allowed, and it isn’t definately going to happen.
It’s just a proposal.
According to the Daily Mail, the headline goes…
A million failed asylum seekers will get free NHS care in human rights U-turn
A million people will get NHS treatment. That is an assertion of fact. But it’s not a fact. It’s a proposal.
Digging deeper, but not much deeper. In fact only as far as the first line of the story itself…
NHS treatment will be available for tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers to ensure their human rights are honoured, it was announced yesterday.
So it’s not a millon failed asylum seekers, after all. it’s only tens of thousands. Not quite so shocking that number, is it?
The number has dropped significantly because certain criteria would need to be fullfiled, rather than just any asylum seeker. They would need to be destitute with children and various other things. So the proposal’s not open to all.
Strolling through the article the figures get a little more specific still…
There are understood to be around 450,000 failed asylum seekers who have not left the country, although only 10 or 20,000 are directly affected by the new rules.
So there is ‘understood’ to be less then half a million failed asylum seekers in the country and only just tens of thousands at the biggest guess or estimate.
Just think a little about what is being told here.
There are 450,000 failed asylum seekers. What proportion of total applications these failures are I don’t know.
Lets take the bigger 20,000 number that would be directly affected by the proposals. Which means that approximately 4.5% of failed asylum seekers are affected (for the better, remember).
But for the headline to be correct, 50x more failed asylum seekers would need to be eligible, which if it stayed at the same rate would mean there would have to be 22,500,000 failed asylum seekers. Let that sink in for a moment.
Twentytwo and a half million. Failed. Asylum seekers. A number equivalent to a third of the population of Britain.
As I said earler I have no idea of the proportion of total asylum applications the failed ones make, but how many applications are gonna be needed to get a failure rate of 22.5 million?
And where did this original one million figure come from?
According to the Mail, MigrationWatch.
Notes:
- I originally came to this Mail article via a post on the BNP site. That article says pretty much the same thing but with out the 10-20,000 figure and a bit more pro-BNP propaganda.
- I just realised that there is no time scale mentioned, either. Are these figure for a five year period? A year? Month? Half a week?
- I hope my maths has not let me down
