Borders Are the Problem, Not the People Crossing Them
Dividing up the "good refugees" from the "bad migrants" is a false distinction rooted in inhumanity. Whether people are fleeing their home countries because of violence or poverty, they should be welcomed with open arms.
Migrants arrive in port aboard a Border Force vessel after being intercepted while crossing the English Channel from France. (Leon Neal / Getty Images)
When Priti Patel and Boris Johnson offered their words of condolence after thirty-nine people were found dead in the back of a lorry in Essex at the end of last year, I thought about how different the reaction would have been if they’d survived.
I didn’t have to wait long to have my suspicions confirmed. Over the past few days they’ve been telling us “illegal immigrants” crossing the Channel must be stopped from coming to the UK.
It’s been almost exactly the same for at least twenty years, if not longer. Warnings about “illegal immigrants” and the people who bring them here — smugglers, who are always presented as the only ones who have done anything wrong. This is one of the lines successive home secretaries repeated during the New Labour years and it’s what Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and Chris Philp are saying now.
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