Read on Twitter
This is a fascinating thread by @_edwardcrawford, mainly in the way it spectacularly mixes fact and fiction to try and seem reasonable while selling a bogus account of not only the law, but also refugees lives. 1/ https://twitter.com/_edwardcrawford/status/1296029833928081408
To clarify, I'm a former foreign correspondent who covered refugees, among other things, before retraining with a specialism in international relations, immigration and economics and then doing an MA in refugee protection and law. 2/
I particularly like the way in which @_edwardcrawford makes out he is an expert because he takes pictures. I covered camps and spoke to refugees, I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to make out I understood the law to the nth degree until studying it in depth. 4/
Yes, majority of asylum seekers are aged between 18-34, not unreasonably. Being a refugee is perilous and expensive. Families can often only afford to send one member, so choose one with best chance of making it and who may also be able to earn enough to help others escape. 5/
I particularly like this tweet. Not only does it completely misrepresent the UK asylum system, but manages to get that key phrase beloved of anti-immigration advocates "jumping the queue" in. It's quite a work. 6/
https://twitter.com/_edwardcrawford/status/1296032889134555136?s=19
https://twitter.com/_edwardcrawford/status/1296032889134555136?s=19
Then again the next tweet really is a doozy. Which conflates the Special Immigrant Visas which are, woefully under, used for Afghan and Iraqi interpretor, and asylum, which can only be applied for in the jurisdiction of the potential host country. 7/
Throughout this thread we see a misunderstanding, to put it politely, of how the asylum system works, loving the whole of one Afghan is persecuted in Pakistan are all line by the way which completely ignores the case by case basis most asylum claims are based on. 8/
There is also an allusion to "first safe country", which does not exist under any international law instrument. Let's not forget though @_edwardcrawford mastery of being able to determine rights of all asylum seekers based on seeing a few, a skill @ukhomeoffice would love. 9/
Where @_edwardcrawford is correct to be fair is that this is a complex situation which really should be left to people with knowledge of it to explain. Rather than insulting other journalists for being "biased" he may have wanted to take his own advice though. 10/
As per usual I apologize for typos and grammatical errors.
