In the annals of official stupidity, a report is today’s Times that the Home Office has, over the last month, been deporting asylum seekers to Zimbabwe of all places, and is due to deport many more over the next few weeks, deserves a page all of its own.
Worse still is this particularly asimine example of offical doublethink from the Home Office which is reported as having said:
“Regular country assessments are carried out in order to ascertain the current country situation and ensure the safety of returning people to their country of origin who have no legal basis of stay in the United Kingdom.
“In light of this we would not remove anyone to a country where their lives would be in danger. We are returning people to Zimbabwe where it is found to be safe to do so.
They are “failed” asylum seekers though.
Asylum seekers in Harmondsworth are fast tracked through the asylum procedure. They have their decisions made by the Home Office and, if their claim fails, their appeals heard over a period of a couple of weeks. If the Home Office and an Adjudicator have decided that based on the facts and objective material a person doesnt face persecution , and there has been no error of law in the determination, then there wont be a problem in returning them.
The returns wont be off the cuff decisions, but are the end of a process that the UK deals with fairly and better than an awful lot of countries out there. The people being returned have FAILED in their asylum claims, they do not need international protection, and so arent going to be in any trouble. If the country persecutes asylum seekers purely for seeking asylum (like Turkey) then that is taken into consideration and returns are a less regular occurance. If the HO is returning people to Zimbabwe then there isnt any evidence to show that they’ll be in trouble.
The comparison to British tourists isnt particularly fair.. Tourists need to know to be careful, whereever they go, but returnees are not going back to somewhere new, but their country of origin.
“but returnees are not going back to somewhere new, but their country of origin.”
Wherein a corrupt and repressive dictator is presently engaged in carrying out what amounts to a political purge.
That counts, for me, as being unsafe.
“Wherein a corrupt and repressive dictator is presently engaged in carrying out what amounts to a political purge.”
But NOT against the people who are being returned, which is why its safe for them to go back.
When someone has a genuine fear of persecution they will be granted international protection. If they dont then they wont and they dont have anything to worry about.
Supporters of Zanu-PF who migrate for economic reasons, claim asylum, and are later returned because their cases have no merit are not, according to the objective country evidence, going to be persecuted or subject to any breach of their Human Rights. Not returning them because some (not all) of their countrymen have a genuine fear of persecution seems more than a little silly.