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In a globalised world, migration begets migration. Those who are well-off migrate to metros or the West to seek better career opportunities. They may invest their earnings in apartments in large cities. Their investment drives construction that drives further migration: these apartment are likely to have been built by economic migrants from Chhatisgarh or Bihar.

However, as the pandemic has shown, the two migrants arent equal: the elite migrant could retreat into Zoom calls and work from home, while the marginal migrant was left stranded. A life of dignity, always precarious for the poor, became impossible after the lockdown.

What might they do to recover their dignity? One way to do so is to vote with their feet, i.e., to stay in their home communities as much as possible and migrate only when the destination guarantees that their rights will be respected. Both options are fraught with danger, especially when the lands back home are captured by the powerful, whether local or distant and when their gram sabha and other political institutions cannot protect their rights in the destination cities.

These are some of the questions emerged from the citizens jury we called the Janta ka Faisla we organised in Raipur from July 11-July 15. The forum offered migrants the opportunity to participate in a deliberative exercise that addressed the challenges of Indian society. At a Janta ka Faisla, the jury assisted by a support staff delivers a verdict after hearing representations from experts across civil society, academia and officials from the government. The jury is in the drivers seat and actively questions the experts. As a result, the normal power relationship between migrants and elites is reversed, with the migrants sitting in judgment and experts acting as advisors.

Our first Janta ka Faisla demonstrated that migrants have a keen appreciation of their situation and the larger political economy in which they live their lives. For example, while they recognise that work sponsored by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guaratee Scheme restores some of their agency, it creates further problems: who will take care of their children while they have to travel substantial (if still local) distances for MNREGA-related work? Nutritional support for children has to go hand in hand with livelihood support for adults.

The jurors posed these questions directly to Amarjeet Bhagat, Chhattisgarhs minister of food and civil supplies and TS Singh Deo, the state health minister. Their answers are on record, but it is the spirit of questioning and judgment that we want to focus on.

Democratic life comes with rights as well as duties. Elections and parliaments are the best-known institutions in democratic life, since all citizens have the right to vote and also the civic duty to do so. Besides electoral institutions, we also have the law. In some countries such as the US, the law is an essential part of civic life, with every citizen serving on juries and delivering judgments.

Jury duty is often seen as a chore, but it serves an important purpose: it reiterates that in a democracy, the people are sovereign and it offers a visceral experience of enacting that sovereignty and of bearing witness to the acts of their fellow citizens. In short, jury duty distributes the act of representation and recognises that each of us have the capacity to represent all of us.

In India, we arent accustomed to treating migrants as full citizens. We dont protect their rights and we certainly dont allow them to represent us or sit in judgment on the actions of the powerful or the state. But the Janta ka Faisla showed clearly that a jury of migrants can not only take on the burden of being a collective witness, their perspective adds insights that are missing from the views of the powerful who are routinely represented in the media.

Take healthcare, for example. The jury noted that they keep being redirected from public to private health institutions and back for different things like tests, medicines and other services. Why cant all these services be housed in one organisation in each city? In asking these questions, the Janta ka Faisla jury exhibited the kind of platform thinking for which an IT consultant would charge crores of rupees. If nothing else, such questions enable a process of human-centred design that will help build institutions that work for all of us.

The Washington Post has a tagline: Democracy dies in darkness. While agreeing with that claim, we ask a natural follow up question: whose light will dispel the darkness? Our experience with the Janta ka Faisla suggests that the capacity to throw light on our collective affairs should be widely distributed and that members of marginalised communities are as capable of revealing the truth as the most powerful in the land.

Gangaram Paikra is the Director of Chaupal in Surguja, Chhattisgarh.Rajesh Kasturirangan is the CEO of Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom.Biraj Patnaik is the Executive Director of the National Foundation for India.

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What a peoples jury on the migrant crisis taught us about the gaps in Indian democracy - Scroll.in

In December 2018 the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, cut short his Christmas holidays to go to the Channel and stare at boats. Two hundred illegal migrants had crossed from France in the previous two months and Javid, buckling to public pressure, declared a major incident. On that basis his successor, Priti Patel, should cancel any holiday plans for the foreseeable future. The number of migrants coming in through this illegal route reached more than 2,000 in June, setting a new record. And this is just the start. The summer crossings are under way and the British government seems to have no idea what to do about it.

The figures themselves could not be clearer. The number of migrants arriving across the Channel in illegal boats last year was four times higher than it was the year before (1,844 in 2019 against 8,400 in 2020). And the number for 2021 so far has already exceeded last years total. To date more than 9,000 migrants have arrived by boat this year, and the daily record of migrants crossing was broken on 19 July when at least 430 made the journey.

There are many possible responses to this. One is to say: so what? The UK has a population of more than 66 million, so what is a few hundred extra people coming in every few days?

There are quite a number of answers to that. The first is that Britain has borders. It also has a legal immigration and asylum system. But the Channel crossings are now a parallel asylum system one that privileges people who have broken the law, paying the smuggling gangs around 5,000 each to break into Britain illegally, safe in the knowledge that once they are in (or just on a British vessel) they will be allowed to stay.

This is great for the trafficking gangs, who have a good business model going the same one that led to the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean. Experience there suggests that as the British coastguard do more and more of the smugglers job, the gangs send out less and less seaworthy vessels. The current model aids the smugglers and incentivises law-breaking.

The second reason is that contrary to the dreams of the open borders left, these people are not going to add to the wonderful diversity of Britain. Most of them will end up entering the black economy. Almost all will be a drain on the British taxpayer. Few if any will ever return in taxation what they will take out in benefits. And even if you are one of those who believes that a little generosity is a good thing, why favour such a grotesquely unfair system?

Because of all the terrible ways to run an asylum system, a first over the Channel in a dinghy competition is the worst. These migrants come from a bewildering array of countries across the Far East, Middle East and Africa. Recent weeks have seen an upsurge in arrivals from Vietnam. Some will have legitimate asylum claims; many will not. And the majority will continue to be young Muslim men, sent by their families to make money in Britain to send back home. Among last years arrivals 74 per cent were aged between 18 and 39, and 87 per cent were male. It may be easy to see how this benefits the migrants. But how exactly does it benefit Britain?

So the flow should be stopped for a whole range of reasons. Yet the British government seems stuck in some terrible indecision about the matter which is strange because it is not as though similar questions have not faced other developed countries in recent years.

Of course our political mainstream continues to find immigration and asylum distinctly icky subjects to deal with. They fear accusations of racism, or coming across as uncaring or ungenerous. Yet perfectly decent, liberal democracies have found ways to dissuade illegal migration into their countries. None of them have become totalitarian backwaters.

When Australia faced a problem with people trying to arrive there illegally by boat in the last decade it embarked on a very successful policy to stop the flow. This was based on deterring people and letting them know that if they paid the smugglers to get them in they would be wasting their money. Australia achieved this by turning the boats around and by offshoring, meaning that the migrants are put on remote islands to have their cases adjudicated there. The advantage of this system is that it prevents the problem all liberal democracies have encountered, which is that once someone is in (even illegally) they are afforded rights that basically make it impossible to expel them. Australia has solved the problem of illegal boat arrivals because the government took the necessary action.

Countries closer to home have also managed to get their illegal migrant entries down to a minimum. Denmark, for instance, passed 114 new restrictions on immigration and asylum between 2015 and 2019. Under a conservative government and now under a left-wing government, these restrictions have proved not only popular with the public, but wildly successful. When the country cut the benefits available for non-EU immigrants arriving into Denmark, it immediately cut the number trying to come in as evidenced by the fact that when the policy was briefly reversed the effect was also reversed. Denmark does not want to be a draw for migrants and it has successfully ensured that it no longer is. The number of asylum seekers trying to enter the country has fallen by more than ten times from what it was six years ago.

So what is the British government doing about our problem? Well, currently it appears to be stuck in a stasis of its own creation. Back in March the Home Secretary announced a raft of new proposals to tackle illegal migration. But, as during the last Labour government, it looks like our current leaders are talking tough to please the public while doing almost nothing. Conservative MPs I have spoken to say that the Prime Minister is prevaricating, and that without backing from him the Home Secretary cannot go out on a political limb. Meanwhile, almost 600 people were intercepted trying to break into our country this past weekend.

What should the government be considering? There should be a whole raft of measures to repel the boats. They should start with turning around the vessels at sea which is what the Greek border authorities now do. Since they started turning around boats at the beginning of 2020 they have seen a near complete halt in crossings, with no reported loss of life or injury and with no halt in the number of British tourists wanting to take their holidays in the country. Why should the Greeks be able to do in the Aegean what we pretend is so unthinkable in the Channel?

Currently the British authorities find every reason to avoid doing what they need to do. The French navy effectively shadows many of the migrant vessels until they are into UK waters and then the UK Border Force guides the boats to safety in Britain. Thus the UK Border Force has effectively become an arm of the smugglers network. The smugglers send their boats out a little way and the British taxpayer does the rest. If there is a genuine legal problem with turning the boats around then the British government should change the law, ignoring the irrelevant fringe of activists who always object to us having borders.

Instead the UK authorities appear to be going the other way. This month the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would not prosecute migrants illegally steering boats across the English Channel, which is exactly the wrong message. The message the British government should be sending out is clear: dont cross if you do you will be prosecuted and returned. At present the government likes to talk of the evils of the smuggling networks. But thats the easy part. The message must be conveyed that if you pay the smuggling gangs, you are breaking the law and will be wasting your familys money to make a journey that will always be unsuccessful.

The government should also be putting all its weight behind Australian-style offshoring arrangements to process people picked up on the boats. Every time this is suggested there is some handkerchief--sniffing among those who profess themselves embarrassed to live in a country that would even consider such a thing. But since the anti-restrictionists have come up with no answers of their own other than let them in, theyll have to put up with answers tried and tested by our respected allies.

Finally, the government should be honest about why this is happening. France could solve this problem overnight if they agreed to take back anyone illegally crossing the Channel. Presently the British government doesnt like saying this, for fear the French government will do even less than it currently does to stop the boats. But there is no reason why people should be passing through multiple safe countries, including France, and then illegally crossing to enter another safe country. This allows migrants to choose from Europe as from a buffet cart, with Britain a particularly attractive option. The fact that there is a bottleneck at the French coast should be a problem for the French authorities before it is a problem for the British.

But what this comes down to is a test of political will at the top of the British government. In fact, it comes down to the question of whether Boris Johnson is simply a political opportunist or not. If he is, then all that stuff he said in recent years about taking back control was just a handy phrase, rattled off because he thought it might help him win. If he means it, then he must get control of this countrys borders. In the realm of sovereignty, nothing matters more.

At present the government seems not to mind, or thinks the problem is too complicated, nasty or small. But the longer it delays, the worse the problem will get. If 20,000 illegal migrants crossing the Channel is permissible then why not 30,000 or 50,000? What is the tolerable limit? Perhaps we will soon see.

In the meantime the government is relying on French beach patrols to protect Britains borders, and is now actually paying the French to police their own beaches. It is a ludicrous, unsustainable situation. And it is not what the electorate expected when it voted for this Conservative government led by this Conservative Prime Minister.

Read more from the original source:
Turning the tide: how to deal with Britain's new migrant crisis - Spectator.co.uk

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very time Dr Nooralhaq Nasimi and his family approached a border on their long journey fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan to the UK, the smugglers gave his children a spoonful of liquid from a glass bottle. It sent them to sleep so they didnt make a sound, he says. The smugglers didnt ask us for permission, they just did it. Nasimi, 54, his wife and three children encountered many smugglers on their way here; as they hid in fridges in the back of various lorries (a common way that people come into this country; when it happened to Nasimi the fridge was on and he passed out), walked through corn fields for hours in the night with no food or water when the smugglers didnt drop them off where they said they would; and took their lives into their own hands on small inflatable boats, overflowing with other refugees.

Nasimi came over to the UK in 1999 and founded the Afghanistan and Central Asian association to support people as they come to live in the UK. He is watching the news now with concern. The number of displaced people is increasing dramatically and human rights organisations have expressed worries about the way the UK is approaching the people seeking asylum, he says.

The number of migrants who have come to the UK so far this year is 8,452 already more than 2020s total of 8,410, and they are from all over the world. On July 19, 50 refugees landed in Dungeness on one boat this amount of people on a tiny dinghy is not unusual, as smugglers try to make as much money as possible from desperate people. It costs around 6,000 for a place on these boats, with reports that some smugglers advertise places for up to 20,000 on TikTok. This has raised concerns that only wealthy migrants are able to come seek asylum. It is the number of people on boats, not the number of boats which is increasing. Covid is a factor restrictions mean that traditional routes on lorries or planes are not possible and reductions in ferry crossings mean gangs are relying on small boats. There is a lesson here for policy-makers closing down some routes shows that if people are desperate enough, they will find other means.

Set in a global and historical context, however, the numbers are less alarming. In 2019, 45,000 people sought asylum here a third of the number that went to France. While arrivals by boat area up on last year, they are down overall and seven times lower than the records set when Tony Blair was prime minister. But for a government that has set an ambitious target to take back control of people coming here, the boats are a strikingly visible form of immigration.

These numbers are powerfully divisive and are set to mark political debate for the next few months as calmer weather means that more people will attempt the dangerous journey. One cabinet minister predicts that over the summer, records for the most people coming over in a day will be broken repeatedly and Nigel Farage has set up camp in Kent to report on the boats for GB News.

We were put in the back of a lorry, inside a fridge, with no idea where we were or what was going on. The smugglers gave my children a liquid that sent them to sleep so they didnt make a sound. They didnt ask us for permission.

Number 10 is taking a hard line on this. The Prime Minister is working more closely with the Home Office than previously, while the Home Secretary Priti Patel is furious. She has called the surge in refugees coming over an unacceptable problem. Insiders say that she is furious at the rising numbers. She has told Dan OMahoney, the clandestine threat commander who is responsible for stopping small boat crossings, that they must come down as a matter of urgency. Boris Johnson is trying to collaborate with French President Emmanuel Macron, paying more than 54 million to France in a deal whereby French police patrol beaches to stem the number of migrants crossing the Channel.

There is also a new piece of proposed legislation, the Nationality and Borders Bill, which passed its second reading last week, which makes it a criminal offence to arrive in the UK without permission, introduces longer maximum sentences for those coming over here without a legal reason and sends asylum seekers overseas for processing (even if no country has agreed to accept them).

Dr Nasimi on an Afghan and Central Asian Association visit to Afghanistan, distributing stationary at the local mosque

In her speech announcing the bill, Patel said she wants to stop people from drowning on journeys directed by organised gangs (at least seven people are known to have died last year these boats) and to stop people who have come here illegally getting ahead of those who play by the rules and have organised safe resettlement schemes.

The problem is that there has never been a legal way to claim asylum, says Jonathan Portes, senior fellow for the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. The right to come here through irregular means and claim asylum was established after the Second World War and was thought up by politicians and lawyers. It is in the 1951 Refugee Convention, [which has its 70th anniversary this week], so the idea promulgated by ministers that people who come to claim asylum are jumping the queue is false. Whether or not they are legitimate, they have a right to have their claims investigated. Under the new bill, Nicholas Winton, who arranged for thousands of Jewish children to come to safety here on the Kindertransport would have been a criminal.

Hanan Alshami, 32, who came here five years ago from Syria on a government scheme and now volunteers helping refugees highlights how vulnerable these people are. They have risked their lives on these journeys, they dont know their rights, they come from places where the governments are [corrupt] so anyone can ask for money and they will not know that is not normal. While they wait for settled status they are so worried. Many do not speak English; when I got here I didnt understand anything and cried for a week. No one has a plan or choice. I left Syria because I was scared but I didnt know where to go. I only had two blankets and some clothes; I thought wed go home eventually. Instead we were living in a makeshift place in Lebanon with 25 other people. My mother-in-law asked why? We had a good life in Syria but it was too dangerous. Then my husband was asked by the UN if he wanted to come to London. My family are still in Syria and people are eating from the rubbish, they cant get food any other way. And my sister is in Lebanon being told to go back to Sy

The UN has described the proposals in the Bill as an almost neo-colonial approach designed to shift the responsibility for protecting refugees away from Britain. Labour Leader Keir Starmer said: The Conservatives just voted to make it harder to give a safe haven to children fleeing violence and war. They should be ashamed.

Priti Patel is furious at the rising numbers.

But this latest crackdown is not unprecedented, says Portes. It is a particularly nasty set of proposals but this is not something Patel thought up. It is the reheating of a bad idea. Processing migrants offshore rather than in the UK was floated under the Blair government and was rejected for legal, moral, political and practical reasons and hopefully will be again.

Insiders also say that the Home Office is chaotic. It is in many ways a dysfunctional department, says Portes. Judith Dennis, policy manager at the Refugee Council, says that rather than focus on people coming, the Government should look at how it is processing applications for asylum, in a system that is slow and overly bureaucratic. The total number of asylum seekers waiting to see if they have the right to remain has doubled since 2014, and many of them are kept in detention centres where Covid is spreading.

The longer it takes to settle refugees, the harder it is for them to integrate, say Amreen Qureshi and Lucy Mort, who have studied this as part of their work at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Not knowing whether they will be allowed to stay in the UK in the long term, being unable to apply for their family to join them, and not having access to the safety net of a number of welfare benefits, makes is unlikely that asylum seekers and refugees will feel integrated into their new home, which is one of the aspirations.

Many arrive traumatised. On the boats, people, mostly men, fill the decks or spill over the sides of inflatable dinghies and sometimes you can hear a child crying or the boats motor running out of steam. Some men wear masks to protect themselves from Covid, hardly anyone has luggage and they know this is a risk at least seven people are known to have died last year crossing the Channel on these boats. Few know where they are going; the smugglers who give them little information and sometimes dont allow phones on board for fear that officials will be able to track them. They have not heard of Dover or Dungeness and for many of them this is not their first time attempting the crossing.

When Nasimi eventually made it to the UK after multiple failed attempts, it was in a freezer full of sausages and cheese that was switched on just after they left Calais. He can no longer eat those foods. The smugglers shouted in Kosovan and I didnt know what they were saying but luckily there were some Kosovan people in the freezer with us who understood; we had to bang loudly so the UK Border Agency would hear and come take us out. When they opened the freezer we had all passed out.

The UK Border Agency were kind. They gave me chocolate and tea. I didnt speak English but they handed me a piece of paper directing me to the Refugee Councils office. His family have made a home here, in West London. His eldest daughter Shabnam, now 30, founded the Conservative Friends of Afghanistan, which provides a political, business, and diplomatic forum aimed at building a more meaningful and stronger relationship between the UK and Afghanistan. Rabia, 27, works at the department of Health and Social Care, Darius, 24, has a philosophy degree from Kings. Sheekeba, who was born here, is studying law. He is sharing his story to mark the anniversary of the Refugee Convention.

As debate rages on, Dennis says we cant forget the nuance. Some refugees are skilled, some will contribute to society, some are not. But they are just people in extraordinary circumstances who deserve to be treated fairly.

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Smuggling gangs, boats and political point scoring - the migrant crisis - Evening Standard

When it comes to political campaigns, one of the many faults of which I am guilty is that I tend to be too far ahead of the pack. In the late spring and early summer of 2020, I spent a considerable amount of time investigating illegal Channel crossings. I soon concluded that the sheer volume of people arriving on British soil was so great that a crisis was inevitable. A year on, and it seems the mainstream media has caught up with me.

The coverage I generated last year did achieve a certain amount of traction but, I must admit, its impact was more limited than I had hoped. The media, Tory backbenchers and large sections of the population were repeatedly assured by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that solutions were close at hand and they chose to believe her. This was unfortunate, because illegal immigration is a practical problem which has serious consequences for our nations security, its infrastructure and its finances. It is quite simply untenable for Britain to continue to allow tens of thousands of people to turn up uninvited having left the safety of France.

Since taking up her post in July 2019, Patel's rhetoric has been ramped up every time she has addressed this issue publicly. ("Patel vows to turn back all migrants boats from France" is perhaps the most effective tabloid headline that she has gained, in August 2020). However, I think her luck is running out. Millions of Brexit voters who expected British borders to be secure after leaving the EU can see that the opposite is the case. Our borders are being breached daily with such ease that is it hard to accept the idea that the government has anything approaching a firm grip on the situation. Whatever the liberal elite claims, the electorate really cares about this. It matters a lot.

Some months ago, I predicted that the number of those illegally crossing the Channel in 2021 would hit 20,000. I am pleased to see that this figure now has mainstream media acceptance. Regrettably, though, I now feel duty bound to go further. My research suggests that 30,000 people will arrive on our shores this year unless something fundamental changes immediately.

I say this because the boats transporting the immigrants are getting bigger, with 35-foot vessels capable of carrying 70-plus people now being unexceptional. I have even heard on the grapevine that new boats up to 50-foot long may soon be deployed by the people smugglers who run these operations. At this rate, the Channel will soon resemble the scenes witnessed in 2015, when vast numbers crossed the Mediterranean in response to Angela Merkel's call for Germany to accept those seeking asylum with the words We can do this!

Last week, as a reaction to the worsening predicament, Ms Patel agreed to give a further 54m of British taxpayers cash to the French government in order to prevent more crossings. Talk about throwing good money after bad. It may be true that the French will use some of these funds to recruit more gendarmes to patrol the Dover Straits, but the gangmasters will simply move further westwards. We should expect to hear of landings at Eastbourne as often as we hear of them at Dover in the near future.

See more here:
Boris and Priti seem unable to get a grip on the migrant crisis. Time to bring in Tony Abbott - Telegraph.co.uk

At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, 10 athletes, united not by nation but by refugee status, competed together as the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team. They inspired the world with their resilience and raised awareness about the plight of refugees after the height of the European migrant crisis, which saw thousands tragically lose their lives at sea. As the team returns to compete in Tokyo, the team brings a renewed sense of hope with aspirations for not only gold but to send an empowering message on a global scale.

Six of the original teams athletes swimmer Yusra Mardini, judoka Popole Misenga and runners Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, James Nyang Chiengjiek, Paulo Amotun Lokoro and Rose Nathike Likonyen will return for the Tokyo Games alongside 23 new athletes representing the Refugee Olympic Team. The athletes will now compete across 12 sports.

The team of 29 was selected from a pool of 56 athletes participating in the Olympic Scholarships for Refugee Athletes program, which was established by the International Olympic Committee to provide funding following the success of the 2016 team. A statement issued by the IOC revealed sporting performance, refugee status and personal background were prioritized in the selection process to ensure balanced representativity in terms of sport, gender and regions.

Although no athletes from the 2016 team were able to make it onto the Olympic podium, this years team brings new medal aspirations. The teams most promising chance comes from 23-year-old Kimia Alizadeh Zenozi, who in 2016 became the first woman to win an Olympic medal for Iran when she took home the bronze in the taekwondo 57 kg weight class.

Though this historic feat was celebrated, Alizadeh Zenozi fled her native Iran in January 2020 and was granted refugee status in Germany. In Tokyo, she will aim high and look to improve on her third-place finish to bring home a gold medal for the Refugee Olympic Team.

However, the success of the Refugee Olympic Team is measured by something far greater than medal count. Coming from 11 different countries of origin and 13 different host countries, the athletes serve as a symbol of peace and togetherness, defying national borders. The team serves as a beacon of hope and symbol of solidarity for the 82.4 million people including 35 million children who have been forcibly displaced from their homes around the world.

In a statement congratulating the athletes on their selection to the team, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi highlighted the athletes strength of character and emphasized that they serve as an example of what refugees around the world are capable of when given the chance to succeed.

Surviving war, persecution and the anxiety of exile already makes them extraordinary people, but the fact that they now also excel as athletes on the world stage fills me with immense pride, Grandi wrote. It shows what is possible when refugees are given the opportunity to make the most of their potential.

Regardless of the final standings and medal count, the athletes on the Refugee Olympic Team are the strongest embodiment of the three values of Olympism: excellence, friendship and respect. Each athlete has shown an extraordinary and inspiring amount of determination, grit and resilience to compete at such a high level in spite of the unimaginable disruption to their life. In doing so, they raise awareness about the unique challenges displaced people face and advocate for inclusion, acceptance and tolerance both in sports and in society as a whole.

Carrie McDonald is a rising sophomore in the College. Tokyo Talks appears online every other week.

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MCDONALD | Refugee Olympic Team Sends Powerful Message of Inclusion in Return to Tokyo - Georgetown University The Hoya