Priti Patel’s loopy migration idea isn’t quite as cruel or unusual as it looks
Priti Patel has been widely condemned this week after it emerged that she explored the idea of setting up a migrant detention centre on Ascension Island, an overseas territory more than 4,000 miles away in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The idea of shipping Channel migrants around the world to be processed was denounced as “truly nasty”, “utterly heartless” and evidence of a “humanity bypass” by her political opponents.
The criticisms are a bit unfair. The notion of processing migrants offshore, rather than allowing the continuation of a Hunger Games-style race to reach the UK and enter the asylum system, is advocated across the political spectrum. Jonathan Portes, a promigration policy adviser to Tony Blair, even revealed that the Ascension Island idea was floated in a Cabinet Office report in 2003.
More recently, a host of charities that look
‘The notion of processing migrants offshore is advocated across politics’
after migrants in Calais have campaigned for the establishment of “safe and legal routes” to claim UK asylum without forcing people to risk their lives getting here. Picking people up and taking them to be processed on a remote Atlantic island could technically meet this demand, although if the plan were actually modelled on Australia’s Christmas Island, as reported, then migrants could expect a hellish stay in the detention centre once they arrived.
The EU, too, has explored the idea of setting up offshore asylum-processing centres in North Africa in order to stop migrants casting themselves into the Mediterranean on dinghies. The most humane and practical approach during the Syrian civil war was actually taken by David
Cameron’s government, which assessed claims in an orderly way while the claimants were staying in refugee camps in the region. This had the added advantage of keeping families together, rather than incentivising lone males to go on ahead and make the risky journey without their wives and children.
The ultimate problem, though, is that European countries do not want to take in as many people as want to come. Wherever you process the claims, that truth won’t change.