The Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre was mentioned in a Telegraph article this week, highlighting the emphasis on closing it down and providing a more suitable and humane alternative for holding failed asylum seekers and their children until they can be removed from the UK. Yarls Wood -if you take a moment to look at testimonies on it (here, here and a full PDF on the conditions there; here) is quite simply a national disgrace for a Western democracy. I don't even mean the reports of hunger strikes, racial and sexual abuse, and the fact that these people have been detained indefinitely for committing no crime. The conventions say that anyone can claim for asylum in Britain (not to say that you will be accepted) so many of them haven't broken any laws. You can be rejected for many reasons, so we can't even say that they are committing fraud . Some I imagine are genuinely frauds, but many may not have had the resources to have a testimonial portfolio about the dangers they face. That can be tricky in a place in turmoil.
No the real stinger is the fact that children are being imprisoned INDEFINITELY!! We are the only European country that does this (how wonderful). I know immigration is a passionate hot potato. There is a hell of a lot of hostility towards what people perceive to be Britain's indulgence to immigrants. Even if it were true (a lot of it isn't) then it is the governments fault, and they should carry the can, not the immigrants themselves. Hand on my heart I don't blame people from hell holes, and places where the choices boil down to a life of poverty, or a life of having no cash, staking their hopes in Europe for a better life for them and their kids. I'd do the same in their shoes. (I'm also sure Northernbloke would go down well with the party line in Somalia and Taliban controlled Afghanistan too.) I'm not invoking a completely open door policy here either. Britain can't take everyone obviously; for a start. Also Britain has a lot of underprivileged (way too many in my view) native citizens as well. Their needs have to be factored in. It's a balancing act and will require a pan European mechanism to see how our appealing and affluent neck of the woods will deal with people from a lot of other parts of the wood where it isn't so rosy. Some of the abuse towards asylum seekers seems hypocritical, when many who do the abusing would -if the situation was reversed; do exactly the same thing if they were in that situation. For all the Mail and the Sun bang on about "people who seriously question immigration are branded racist", the level of hostility (which is NOT seriously objectifying the immigration question) they show towards people like the inmates of Yarls Wood, seems designed to go out of its way to incite anti immigrant sentiment, and it is working to a terribly successful degree.
I'd like to think that even the most vociferous "close the borders" proponent would baulk at kids being locked up (since when are they to blame for their parents decision to seek asylum?) indefinitely. That Yarls Wood should be seen as a modern day equivalent of the internment camps that Asian Americans were put in on the West coast of the USA after Pearl Harbour. That the asylum seeker father who hung himself in this very centre so that his son wouldn't be deported (as he was now an orphan) exposed a horrifying underbelly to this situation. But still we get charming comments like these on this case.
"Seems to me like a good case for immediate deportation and problem solved. Justice care solutions?* Perhaps something else we could look at saving public expenditure on.Sometimes tis better to remain silent when thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."
*Justice Care solutions is a think tank that the author of the Telegraph article directs.
"It doesn't seem any more of a hardship than my old boarding school, and I'm sure the food is better."
"Your picture of Yarls Wood looks a very modern establishment. It is not exactly Dartmoor now is it? I bet everything possible is laid on for these people's comfort."
"Most immigrants know that in the UK children are the geese that lay the golden eggs of free houses and money, more than the vast majority could even dream about from where they come from. There are even baby farms producing for this purpose, and children are handed around immigrant families for the purposes of benefits and housing. Benefits provided for children are regarded by the parents as personal reward and children are primed to say whatever is expedient to create maximum pathos, tearing at the hearts of those liberal professionals that really should be able to see through the charade."
"People who come here and are detained in such centres often enjoy the best standard of living they have ever had. A roof over their heads, clothing and regular meals are a luxury to many. They would not be making every effort to slip into the UK illegally if their living conditions were better at home - the vast majority are not fleeing injustice and persecution as they would have us believe. Any other country would place them in a detention centre and then repatriate them forthwith. Only in the UK can they stall the proceedings so long that they are allowed leave to stay or are simply able to disappear.If these children are not placed under lock and key, many will be used for thieving, begging and prostitution so this is a way of protecting them.What should ring alarm bells is the number of children sent to the UK unaccompanied, which has been going on for years now. This means that any council landed with them is obliged to fund their keep and education fully until they are 18! How about that as a law to be arasites on the hard-working taxpayers. They come here expecting to be supported and are not disappointed."
"Children must be removed urgently from wherever their safety and welfare is at risk."Absolutely.Get 'em deported ASAP.I'm sure they'll find conditions far, far more congenial in whatever benighted Third World slime pit they originated in."
"Wise words Simon. We are not running hotel standard services for transitory visitors. Too many do-gooders want better conditions than we offer our servicemen.You are spot on, get them out quicker.."
This story reminds me of a Comic Relief appeal I saw in 2005, for a charity that helped child survivors of the massacres in Kosovo come to terms with what happened to their families and neighbours. The commentator had to remind people not to be prejudiced by the coverage about asylum seekers when donating. I remember thinking to myself "That's pretty fucking bad when you grow to be indifferent (at best) to children who have done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time." But [Yarls Wood] is the logical conclusion of this nasty little campaign towards immigrants. The government wants to look tough to nasty little bastards like the commentators above (there are lots more on other discussions too. Even the wikipedia article on the centre has been vandalised by racists.) and the hostility cascades down to official channels. It's futile (not to mention immoral) to pander to this stuff anyway. People who think a centre condemned by just about every child welfare agency you can list, is fricking Clarreges, can't really be placated. So there we are.
Hopefully the Coalition will press on with closing this centre.
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