Small Boats and Slavery
At the start of March, a new bill was introduced in the Commons that will “prevent and deter unlawful migration” by unsafe and illegal routes. The Illegal Migration Bill, introduced by Rishi Sunak as a means of fulfilling his pledge to stop boats crossing the Channel, will require the removal of people who enter or arrive in the UK in breach of immigration control. We’re mainly talking about people crossing the English Channel to find safety in the UK.
Immigration is a heated political topic at the minute. Headlines on the front pages of newspaper vary widely around immigration views, as do the opinions of the British people. One thing most can agree on though is that our asylum system needs work, it needs fixing.
The majority of people seeking asylum in the UK do so because they want to live somewhere safe, with 75 percent of initial asylum decisions processed in 2022 resulting in a grant of asylum or humanitarian protection.
Yet, these vulnerable men, women and children are fighting through a system that has made it pretty clear it doesn’t want them here. They can wait for years for a decision, can’t work while their claims are being processed, and are languishing in some pretty terrible housing conditions. Children are going missing from hotels. Adults are fighting their cases from detention centres. People are facing threats of removal to Rwanda by the Home Office. And all these issues are on top of the myriad of challenges asylum seekers fleeing trauma already face when they come to the UK.
Small boat crossings are another huge problem within our asylum system.
Over 45,000 people crossed the Channel to the UK last year. The number is high, and the journey is dangerous. And our Government thinks that the best way reduce these numbers is to criminalise and deport people, as evidenced by last year’s Nationality and Borders Act and the most recent Illegal Migration Bill.
While the Nationality and Borders Act is already set into law, the Illegal Migration Bill isn’t. There is time to fight it.
And that is exactly what charities supporting modern slavery victims are doing because of the huge impact that the Bill would have on modern slavery and human trafficking victims.
Say a boat of people arrives on the shores of Dover. Under this new legislation (which is still going through lots of changes), unless a person immediately identifies as a victim of modern slavery and volunteers to help the police, they will be unable to access Government support and instead, will be removed from the country at the earliest opportunity.
The gigantic problem with this, which the government has been told on several occasions, is that victims of trauma are very rarely about to disclose or identify what has happened to them quickly. It takes long-term care and support to decide to share trauma and possibly support investigations into modern slavery.
Here is what the Salvation Army, a charity working heavily with modern slavery victims, said about the Bill:
“Automatically detaining and then removing people as they arrive will deliver vulnerable people back into the hands of the criminal gangs who have exploited them. This does nothing to break the cycle of exploitation or help victims break free. Rather, it feeds the criminal networks who profit from the lives of vulnerable people. It is essential that genuine victims of modern slavery aren’t refused the right to seek our help.”
Regardless of how a person arrives, a person who has been exploited is entitled to support. Full stop.
But this hostile environment being created for modern slavery victims and survivors will definitely harm some of the most vulnerable in our society by preventing them from seeking help, emboldening traffickers, and threatening them with deportation and arrest.
We need to figure out how to reduce Channel crossings, no doubt about it. Charities in the asylum and anti-slavery sectors are calling for safe, viable routes for people to get to the UK so they aren’t forced to cross the Channel. One thing is for sure, this bill isn’t the way to support modern slavery and trafficking victims and survivors. It’ll do the opposite, and force them back into the hands of their exploiters.
By Lauren Medlicott