Tuesday, September 08, 2015



False generosity

Last night UK Prime Minister David Cameron bowed to public pressure and announced that the UK would accept 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years. Its far fewer than expected, but there's worse: they'll all be deported after five years or when they turn 18:

Britain will resettle up to 20,000 refugees who have fled from the conflict in Syria, the Prime Minister announced, but some may not arrive until the end of the decade and could face deportation after they have been in the UK for five years.

[...]

Mr Cameron claimed the UK’s new resettlement scheme would ensure that vulnerable children – including orphans – are a priority, following in the tradition of the Kindertransport programme that helped Jewish children escape from Nazi Germany.

But it later emerged all those accepted under the scheme will only be given the right to remain in the UK for five years. This, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Lord Ashdown suggested, could mean orphans and children being deported at age 18 having made a new life in Britain. A government spokesman said that after the five-year period refugees could apply for indefinite leave to remain.


Which they won't get, because they're Syrian. So the entire exercise is a PR scam, letting people in publicly to make the government look good, only to deport them secretly later. As in New Zealand, its appearance without substance, PR rather than policy. UKanians should not fall for it.