More on the delightful Straw from Spiked:
Long arm of the Straw
by Josie Appleton
UK home secretary Jack Straw's new proposals for a Europe-wide rationalisation of asylum law are designed to show he is no soft touch. But while shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe calls for asylum seekers to be incarcerated in their thousands, Straw wants to keep the problem at arm's length. Straw suggests an EU resettlement programme - refugee camps set up in countries (like Pakistan) near trouble spots (like Afghanistan) would process asylum applications. 'Genuine' asylum seekers would then be distributed among European countries, according to pre-agreed quotas. Another proposal is that EU countries draw up lists of countries - 'safe' countries, like the USA or the UK; 'intermediate' countries, like China, and 'repressive' countries, like Iraq or Afghanistan. Applications from safe or intermediate countries would be dismissed or deprioritised. These measures have attractions for the UK government - not only reducing the economic burden of keeping asylum seekers, but also lessening the political and moral discomfort caused by this issue.Asylum policy has an obvious racist dimension that is all too visible in voucher systems and detention centres; liberal broadsheets have run many two-page spreads on the indignities suffered by asylum seekers. By shifting the process to distant countries, the UK can do the job without getting its hands dirty. Rather than having to deal with people clambering out of trains at Dover, the UK government could turn them back in Pakistan - or summarily dismiss their application on the grounds that they come from the wrong country.Establishing a standard, Europe-wide procedure would distance the UK government from the politics of asylum. Asylum policy would become less the political decision of the UK government, with all the controversy and responsibility that entails, than an objective, agreed standard.But while the liberal establishment might be able to sleep more easily at night, the lives of asylum seekers will be even more degraded by these new proposals. The 1951 Geneva Convention gave individuals the choice to claim asylum in the country they decided upon. That country was then obliged to look into their case. The 1997 Dublin convention on asylum limited this choice, allowing asylum seekers to be returned to the first country that cleared them in the EU.Straw's new proposals go further: asylum seekers would not be able to choose which country they should be cleared in. The lucky few who succeeded with their application in Pakistan would be allocated a country by bureaucrats.According to these proposals, 'genuine' asylum seekers, it seems, are simply flotsam washed up by the tidal wave of persecution. They have no opinion over where they reside, so long as it is 'safe'. There is an assumption that a genuine refugee would be glad of any offer of residence - after arriving in Italy they would have no desire to persevere to England. A genuine refugee would be willing to submit themselves into the deciding arms of European bureaucrats.This is not just demoralising - it is dehumanising. Refugees are being prevented from making choices, however small, about how to improve their lives. The only asylum seeker that fits the bill is an empty shell of a person, forced to jump ever-higher hurdles to prove their persecution.But even 'genuine' asylum seekers do not lose their desire to make decisions. Somebody who has endured the vicissitudes of war or persecution may be all the more determined to seek the new life they desire. And they have every right to do so.