Suella Braverman says too many asylum seekers are fake and “using our laws against us” (File/AFP)
London:
Former UK home secretary Suella Braverman has slammed several churches across the country that facilitate false asylum claims on an “industrial scale” by falsely authenticating non-Christians.
The Indian-origin Conservative MP, who became a backbencher after being sacked from the cabinet by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year, wrote in the Daily Telegraph this weekend about her dismay at Britain’s distant future. ‘Angry’ at not taking back powers to control Britain’s borders despite ‘landmark restoration’ of sovereignty after Brexit.
The immigration hardliner took particular aim at churches that demonstrate that asylum seekers face certain persecution if they return to their Islamic countries of origin after befriending pastors.
“Take churches for example. While working at the Home Office I became aware that churches across the country were facilitating false asylum claims on an industrial scale,” she said in an opinion piece in the newspaper.
“They are well known in the migrant community and migrants are directed to these churches as a one-stop shop on arrival in the UK to support their asylum claims. Attending weekly mass for several months and becoming friends with the priest,” writes in diary Make a note of your baptismal date and, bingo, you will get a cleric’s signature that you are now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain consequences if transferred to your Islamic country of origin. Persecution. It has to stop. We have to address this issue wisely,” she said.
The lawyer, who has handled many such cases for the Home Office in the past, said she found the “extortion” of false asylum seekers was not only continuing but expanding in a number of ways.
“Today, adults claim to be children, Muslims pretend to be Christians, straight people pretend to be gay, healthy people claim to be mentally ill, economic immigrants pretend to be refugees fleeing persecution, and those who chose to come here claim to have been Trafficked.” as slaves, or those masquerading as political dissidents. “
“Many asylum seekers are genuine and when their reasons are just, we are right to help. But too many are bogus and use our laws against us.”
Ms Braverman has issued a clear challenge to Rishi Sunak under pressure to reduce illegal immigration by calling for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to address the issue.
She claimed that the Strasbourg-based court’s jurisprudence, which is binding in the UK, takes an “ever-expanding” approach to the human rights set out in the original text.
“For decades we have tried to work within its confines, but this approach has failed,” she declared.
Citing her immigrant origins as the daughter of a Goan father and a Tamil mother, the former minister insisted that her aim was not to “demonize” those seeking a better life abroad.
“My own parents had the same deep desire when they immigrated to the UK legally from Kenya and Mauritius in the 1960s. People could come here legally and in an orderly manner. But the illegal immigration we are talking about is deceptive, criminal, and the game that defines the institutions of our asylum policy in the 21st century,” she said.
She added: “We can waver around this issue for years to come, but the fact is that short of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, there will always be a limit to what our governments can do.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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