I am so bored hearing Tories talk about illegal immigration of refugees, whether in the House of Lords or on Question Time, that I went looking for the refugee definition by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That’s all. Emphasis mine:
We are registered on this.
It makes it clear that those who think they are refugees can, quite explicitly, violate immigration law.
They must be welcome.
They must be provided with care.
They are even issued a passport if they don’t have one of their own or one they don’t want to use.
There is no right to deny entry, or force them to leave.
They cannot be stopped.
It is shameful that ministers and the media continually ignore these obligations.
Why do they do that? Because they can never imagine themselves as refugees. It is an arrogant exceptionalism that allows them to treat the refugee as ‘the other’.
Well, that and the empathy bypasses that all who join the Tories are required to have. And it’s totally shameful, and turns everyone into international criminals, in my opinion.