With mention in the BBC’s recent article ‘Are migrants who cross the channel sent back?’, Sheona York, Solicitor and immigration and asylum specialist of Kent Law School, expands to comment in more detail on the laws and processes of migrant entry to the UK.
‘Entering the UK by landing on a beach or from a rescue boat is entering unlawfully. What happens next is determined by UK and international law, including, currently, EU law. Whether arriving by boat, by paragliding, by hiding in a lorry or under the Eurostar train, or by landing in a small rural airfield, no migrant can be ‘sent back’ until all relevant legal procedures have been followed, and unless the proposed receiving country will accept them.
If they claim asylum, as most do, they are then processed under the UK’s asylum procedures. While the UK remains in the EU, an asylum-seeker discovered to have already claimed asylum in another EU Member State may be returned there under the Dublin Regulation, but only a few hundred people a year are so transferred. Those who do not claim asylum – a tiny minority – are subject to administrative removal straight away, but this still requires establishing their identity and persuading their national authorities to issue documents to them.
And, despite the dramatic responses to these arrivals, there is no legal or political significance in arriving by boat. Asylum-seekers and those assisting them may be resorting to boats as a result of increased security measures in the ferry and Eurotunnel terminals, but the method of arrival has no bearing on their legal treatment once here. As visa restrictions have tightened worldwide, forcing more asylum-seekers to travel unlawfully, the Home Office has over the decades stigmatised asylum-seekers as ‘bogus’ if: they arrived on visit visas; if they presented false documents; if they claimed asylum ‘in country’ rather than formally at passport control; if they did not claim asylum ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’: but, as major legal proceedings showed, none of these have any connection to the genuineness of a claim. Dangerous methods are adopted by desperate people.’
Sheona York is a Solicitor who supervises the academic and practical work of students working in Kent Law Clinic at the University of Kent. She focuses her research on issues arising from recent and current UK immigration policies such as the aim to reduce net migration, to discourage unlawful migrants through the ‘hostile environment’ and to deport foreign criminals. The main legal issues of interest are removability and statelessness, fresh claims for asylum and the effects on families of the narrowing interpretation of article 8 ECHR.
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