I’ll stand up for Refugees
The Government’s latest attempt to distract us from their domestic failings by demonising refugees must not be allowed to work. I will stand up for refugees whatever mud the Home Secretary wants to fling. Because the principles that led the UK to help draft the UN Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention are more important than playing politics with peoples lives.
Yes, the Government’s ‘Illegal Immigration Bill’ won’t work because the Government has nowhere to send the refugees it seeks to criminalise. But more important than the unworkable nature of the bill is the fact that it smashes to pieces the values that we have held onto as a country for so long.
Criminalising the victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. Indefinite imprisonment without trial. Denying the right of refugees to seek safety in our country unless they are invited to do so.
This Bill, which breaches several international laws and treaties, places the UK in a small group of three countries who criminalise refugees depending on their method of arrival. The other two countries in that group are Russian and Belarus.
That is not a path I want to see our country go down.
We must target the criminal gangs that profit from human misery and not the humans whose misery they profit from. We must reaffirm our commitment to the international norms that protect refugees across the world. We must open up safe routes for refugees who seek safety in our country, because that is the only way we will stop those refugees from risking their lives crossing the channel.
It makes me incredibly proud to think that the UK is a place of safety for people who have experienced horrors that most of us couldn’t even imagine. The Tories want to whip up hatred against those people. As your MP I’ll always reject that hatred and proudly stand up for the rights of refugees.
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