fail comments never fail
This is disgusting. Unelected judges getting to make up any rules they like.
to parody themselves 😀
Quite like Triple Cooked Chips... As for Cockapoos well that's so un-darwinisim 😉
BR
JeZ
The target used to be to process 98% of straightforward asylum claims within 6 months. In 2017, 99% of all such applications were processed within 6 months. It was abandoned completely in 2019.
It’s 10% now.
Manufacture a culture war problem, spend time and effort 'combating' it in the nastiest way to appeal to your support base, lose in court, claim you are implementing the will of the people and being stymied by The Blob of remoaners, wokes, lefties etc. Much easier than actually fixing stuff.
There was quite a bit of exposure last week on the Brexit episode with roof lady etc. So some might not want to shove their head above the parapet.
Devils advocate.
Don't forget the more immediate (and terrifying) proposition for anyone who did stick their hand up - being asked why.
It's one thing being exposed as a racist, another to do the double and be exposed as a (inevitably) thick racist.
😉
And why does it take 6 months to process a straight forward asylum claim
Because asylum claims are rarely ****ing straightforward! I'm assisting (not very effectively, to be fair, other teammates are much more experienced and effective and more directly involved) on one at the moment where the applicant is from an obviously "difficult" country and what you would probably imagine as "straightforward".
But that's not enough - you need to prove that the applicant in particular has a well-founded fear of persecution etc. And usually that is difficult to prove. In most cases, an oppressiv3 government doesn't give you a little certificate to say "we came around to threaten you and your children, and steal your possessions, because of your ethnic identity". So there is a lot more research and fact gathering - usually in foreign languages, from unstable and poorly documented places, in complicated situations involving people with messy histories.
With the best will in the world, despite ghe extensive information available for free online about this stuff, people have totally unrealistic expectations about this stuff - that if you somehow throw enough money at it, you can have quick decisions made at the airport to let the good ones in and send the wrong uns back.
That is not, of course, an excuse for the Tories choking the system of funds or expertise or strategy.
politecameraaction is right that processing asylum applications is quite hard, for those circumstances. Although part of the reason it is hard is we set the bar high, eg we could simply say “you are a woman from Afghanistan” you meet the criteria, or “you are a gay person from Saudi Arabia” you meet the criteria. We made it fairly easy for Ukrainians. It’s a political choice how high we set the bar and what level of proof we insist on to back up claims.
And why does it take 6 months to process a straight forward asylum claim. Be good to know what exactly is involved.
The rejections should be quick to deal with, the accepted will take a bit of time but that’s alright because the claim has been accepted so the claimant will be living in UK anyway, just a matter of time to sort out the logistics.
imagine how much better it would be if we said, walk into any British Embassy / Consulate, fill in a form and we will process your application whilst you are still in your own or a 3rd country. If you want to do checks you could do them before people arrive. If you want to reject people it would be easier as no need to remove them. You could limit this only to people who have a direct family link to a person in the U.K. and the means to cover the cost of safe travel. Although it’s probably cheaper to fly the successful ones in - hey we would probably do it a bit like a student loan where you recover the cost from future earnings because from day 1 they would be entitled to work and pay tax.
Demand for illegal smuggling would virtually disappear.
Demand for illegal smuggling would virtually disappear.
It wouldn't, but you could pretty much guarantee that those coming in illegally would have already had claims rejected elsewhere, making deportation easier, confirm ID, confirm already rejected, place on plane to Rwanda;-)
And why does it take 6 months to process a straight forward asylum claim. Be good to know what exactly is involved.
Austerity and starving the Home Office of funding thus not having sufficiently trained staff to do the job effectively and in a timely manner.
kerley
Free MemberAnd why does it take 6 months to process a straight forward asylum claim. Be good to know what exactly is involved.
Straightfoward is relative, as politecameraaction observes. But when they say "straightforward" it is in the context of asylum claims, not in the terms of shopping lists, even a straightforward claim is still a relatively complex thing.
Though just to rehash, it does not take 6 months. It used to in 99% of cases, now it takes more than 6 months in 90% of cases. 6 months was the overwhelming norm and now looks like an impossible dream.
There's various reasons of course. There's 3 really big, self inflicted ones. Over the years the process has been made more and more complicated as part of the hostile environment, in an attempt to dissuade applicants. And not just complicated, but ever changing. That's obviously aimed at the applicants but affects the processors too. Throughout Theresa May's time as home secretary I was working in a different area of immigration, student visas and the major policy directive was "churn".
It was commonplace for applications to be rejected because of policy changes or more importantly changed interpretations of policy that happened after the application was submitted. I saw an applicant rejected because the course he applied for was put into a special sensitive category 2 days before it would have been approved. By moving him to another, functionally identical course we got him approved on the second attempt but by that time the term was started, his flights had expired, he'd had to cancel his accomodation- task failed succesfully, a perfectly good applicant who'd have paid tens of thousands of pounds into the economy was deterred (but not prevented) from coming to the UK.
We paid actual real money to have a premium help service which was staffed by a home office person who also just found out about the new rules today and also didn't know what they really meant, so I had a conversation with her that went "OK so, we've got this new dictat and it's not very clear, but our best guess is that it should be interpreted like this. Is this correct?" "Well, that seems like a reasonable interpretation, I would say go ahead" "OK but, if we go ahead on this basis and it turns out we're wrong, will we and our student be penalised" "Yes" We sometimes had to reject students entirely because their tier 4 application contained some rules risk that could place the institution's highly trusted status at risk, not because of any fault of theirs or ours but because the rules were written ambiguously but the responsibility for ambigious decisions was placed on us and them.
And that's smart people with reasonable english (eh, well, officially) applying from their stable first world countries with money in their pockets to institutions that can afford to pay people- me- to make it all work, and it was still engineered to be a potential minefield. But the same approach applied to everyone- to someone that just stumbled onto a beach with only what they could carry, or as we saw, to people that'd lived and worked in the UK all their lives, all the people who didn't have that priviledge of skill and time and opportunity and money
Number 2, staffing. Braverman claims they're adding staff but turnaround is 46% in every calendar year among decision makers. 46%! This is a skilled, consequential job. It takes typically 12-18 months to train a decision maker, for a bunch of that time they'll be a net drag not bonus. So that's meant a steady and mathematically unavoidable loss of experience and skill. It's completely unsustainable. But they're "fixing" it by, uh, hiring more people who will quit and feeding the attrition.
These first 2 combine with other stuff to mean that on average every decision maker processes about half as many claims as they used to. Taking that and the attrition into account that means that every staffing increase Braverman has announced has added up to a net reduction in the number of decisions. It also means that more first decisions than ever are wrong- succesful appeals over the 20 year period are about 25%, for the last few years it's been around 40%. Obviously the slowest possible thing you can do is make a wrong decision.
Number 3, prescreening. I actually was going to post about this earlier, because I'd literally just found out about it and it's insane. Remember that they introduced to great fanfare a process to intercept ineligable applicants and fasttrack them out? Since then, at the last set of stats 19000 notices of intent have been served, telling applicants that they're going to try to reject their application at the first post. And of those, 84 had been rejected. 10000 had been approved, everyone else was still in the process. So that's an extra step that happened to 20000 people before they even get into the normal system, that for at least half had "fasttracked" them into a slower track, and for .4% had effectively fasttracked. This from a department that already couldn't remotely cope with the casework of the normal system. Even if every single pending case ends in a rejection, which it won't, it's on average a slowtrack. That's the home office, that's how they work. But all the headlines were about this tough new rule targeting only the most obviously ineligible claims.
(brilliantly, there's also a "presumed good" application process which is supposed to fasttrack the really open and shut applicants, but to get into it there's a massive form you have to fill in, which is only available in english)
Now, it's not all about that. Covid did play a part (though arrivals also fell). Quantity has an effect all of its own. It's likely that on average claims have become somewhat more complex in themselves (ie not just because the system has been gamed to be more complex) though that's not something that's been reliably evidenced- it doesn't seem like there's any attempt to, especially since the government just make shit up to back their arguments. There is a pretty reliable suggestion that applicants have become better prepared for this shitshow too- that for instance, rather than presenting ambigious or helpful documents, more people from similar backgrounds turn up with nothing at all or with less, making it simply harder to process them. Again not sure if that's been evidenced but it does seem plausible.
And there's built in complications. Every day that an application isn't processed makes it more complicated. The facts change, the documents age, the person's own circumstances change. An application that if picked up and processed quickly was simple, might need to be massively redone. So just inherently, a lagging system makes things worse for itself, and a greater proportion of year-long applications will be "complicated" than if the exact same applications took 6 months. A decision worker with 30 cases on the go over a year can't be as on top of them as if they had less but could clear them faster.
So there's all these brutal multipliers. If you wanted to destroy a system without just walking in the front door and firing everyone or setting it on fire, that's how you do it.
Great post - thanks
The economics of our shiny new offshore prison hulks seems to make sense.
https://twitter.com/MarinaPurkiss/status/1681940609227956225
That can't be right?
£2.6 billion????
/5 = £520,000,000 per barge
£520,000,000 / 730 = £712,329 per day!!!!
/400 people = £1781 per person per day!!!!!
I knew it wasn't going to be a cheap option, being afloat is always more expensive than being on dry land but if those numbers are right, than that is either corruption or incompetence on whoever chartered those barges!
I wonder if the CTM being an Australian firm have any connection to Alexander Downer the former Aussie Minister with a hand in their Island of migrant misery.
IIRC He was bought in by Priti to advise on "Border controls" waaay back in 2022, that stroke of genius eventually spat out the Rwanda policy which Cruella took up with such Gusto...
than that is either corruption or incompetence on whoever chartered those barges!
Not just the barges. There is a reason quite a few hotels are switching to be hostels. Fewer staff plus large payments equals healthy profits.
Britannia hotels were reported to be making 100k profit a day from it last year.
There are also the booking agencies (its rather unclear why these are needed) who sit in the middle and are raking in the cash.
£1781 per person per day!!!!!
'wE CaNT AFOrd tO PUt tHem Up iN lUXurY hOTels...'
I've just checked and to book Travelodge london waterloo right now it's £130 per night INCLUDING:
- All you can eat breakfat
- 2 course dinner
- Wi-fi acess
- 1x domestic pet
£1781 per person per day!!!!!
Someone is making a lot of money out of this.
Even if they trippled the price to hire extra security and other 'hidden' hasslesd due to them being 'asylum seekers' it's a far cry from £1800 per night, especicaly as they'd probably give you a discount if you are booking for months at a time.
Look, there may be much cheaper options.... but do they look uncomfortable enough to appeal to the "don't care if you're making our lives worse, as long as you're making their lives much worse still" contingent that the government want to motivate to turn out and vote for them?
“don’t care if you’re making our lives worse, as long as you’re making their lives much worse still” contingent that the government want to motivate to turn out and vote for them?
I think we all know the answer to that!
Just to put the prices into perspective, you can rent a 4 bed villa with a private pool for only €300 per night
https://blueseavillas.co.uk/?id=15936125334&idioma=EN
but do they look uncomfortable enough
They are actually perfectly comfortable for a few weeks. All offshore accommodation has to fulfill minimum standards, which includes size, noise, ventilation and basic facilities.
They are actually perfectly comfortable for a few weeks. All offshore accommodation has to fulfill minimum standards, which includes size, noise, ventilation and basic facilities.
though it's said that they've "doubled" occupancy
though it’s said that they’ve “doubled” occupancy
That's pretty common. These sort of things have modular "accommodation systems", basically you can bolt in or out to the client requirements. A few minutes to turn a single cabin into a double.
Although, living in such close proximity to others, takes some getting used to and is in some ways a skill in itself. I know that ship's crews now have "social responsibility" training every 5 years. Basically "don't leave your shit lying around and clean the toilet after using it".
However, when the gammons cry out that "barracks are good enough for our squaddies, why not brown people?" They are missing the point that those squaddies are generally motivated and disciplined, with jobs to do. With offshore workers, you sacrifice some of the normal way of living in order to earn your offshore salary.
I would imagine a few hundred men living on top of each other, with nothing to do, will create a pretty horrible environment.
I would imagine a few hundred men living on top of each other, with nothing to do, will create a pretty horrible environment.
Which raises a good point - this is all costing so much because there doesn't seem to be any rush to actually process asylum seekers and either grant them asylum or fly them back out on the next plane to wherever they came from.
So we now have a huge backlog of claiments in limbo for months on end, and the waiting list appears to just be getting longer.
Surely another cost saving initiative would be to actually process them properly instead of doing nothing other than buying some barges or whatever the next racist, tory, hair brained scheme is created to pour tax payers money into the pockets of thier mates.
Surely she took it up with great gutso.
Surely another cost saving initiative would be to actually process them properly
Nope because that would show, shock horror, that a high percentage will actually have legitimate asylum claims and then, SCREAMY SUN HEADLINE, we will have to fulfil our obligations under international law.
And besides, they love all the current headlines about the cost, the number of unsettled claims, all that. Because sadly, people are idiots and simple and loud is more important than true and media bias gives them carte blanche, so they can spectacularly fail at the job of governing and win votes by it.
It's the same with crime, with hospital waiting lists, with inflation, they're failing succesfully.
She really is quite evil.
Among the cases in which the asylum seekers struggled to provide basics for their children owing to delays in support payments, the judge said one faced an existence “which was in many ways wretched, particularly for a young child who went without on many occasions” and in another suffered “very saddening circumstances” where the parent was “reduced to asking in shops for leftover food” and the children became “lethargic” and “visibly thinner”.
I am not sure whether she is actually evil or whether she is desperate to prove that despite her ethnicity she can be just as hostile and bigoted towards people from overseas as some of her white Tory colleagues, and in the process ends up behaving worse than them.
Perhaps psychologists will eventually recognise a new phenomenon and call it the "Braverman-Patel Syndrome", and place it in a similar category as the Stockholm Syndrome.
A bit from A and a bit from B seasoned with a bit of dimness IMO
Further updates on our 'value for money' prison hulks.
https://twitter.com/BarbaraSutton15/status/1685195213386485760
Spending insane sums of money to house precisely zero asylum seekers would normally be a resigning matter, but times have changed.
Sweet Jesus! You couldn’t make it up!
The only thing that outshines her utter malevolence is her rank incompetence
And the award for the least surprising development goes to... Unusable mega-barges!
The only thing that outshines her utter malevolence is her rank incompetence
Its not necessarily incompetence.
Firstly I am sure there will be some tory friends profiting from these.
Secondly even if they were in use they would be bugger all use as they would remove the need maybe for a couple of hotels. So thats maybe a couple of towns where they could tell the locals look you didnt get a hotel repurposed.
As it stands they can blame the woke left elite for blocking them and so tell all the towns tory clubs that otherwise their hotel wouldnt have been used.
Sweet Jesus! You couldn’t make it up!
I think someone might have. I can't find any evidence that the barges are not going to be used because the Home Office doesn't have permission for them to dock.
The latest information that I can find, which is from yesterday, is that the first 50 refugees will arrive at the Bibby Stockholm in Portland probably this coming Tuesday.
So which tory shill/associate/spouse has a shell company called 'BoatRefurbsRus.ltd'?
That's the real question here.
I've recently formed 'EliteJetties'. Based in the Caymans.
My professional team is awaiting your call!
Well the transfer of people to these prison hulks is delayed because of fire safety concerns - who would have thunk it?
Who would have thunk it?
Most people.
Why? It didn't occur to me that there might fire safety concerns. From the reports I have read and the comments made by the local fire brigade, which raised the concerns, I got the impression that they were reasonably minor and would probably be resolved in about a week.
I have no idea what they were mind, the fire brigade didn't specify, but they did suggest that they had the legal power to enforce them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-barge-bibby-stockholm-move-b2385110.html
“The letter doesn't say it's a boat,” said one charity worker, who did not want to be named. “It doesn't give a date either, there’s no names or reference numbers. They're picking people up from different places.”The man, who is helping confused asylum seekers receiving the notices, said cursory communications are common with the Home Office.
“This happens all the time, they can just come to you and say ‘pack',” he added. “If you say no they can evict you.”
This is just loveley.. what are they going to do, kick them out onto the street to add to the already growing homeless population?
All of this is like some kind of dystopian 80's horror film, but the year is 2023. And it's real.
So much for flying cars and StarTrek style food replicators.
Problem solved!
You don’t have to worry about fire safety or permission to dock when you’re in a tent
https://twitter.com/politlcsuk/status/1684696693084655616?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
Blue sky thinking, right there!
Well the transfer of people to these prison hulks is delayed because of fire safety concerns – who would have thunk it?
I'm surprised.
Fire protection systems on offshore rated accommodation modules are generally a lot higher than a hotel or similar.
However, everyone onboard would have had basic fire fighting training and a smaller number with a higher level of training. So maybe this is being taken into account?
Based on the suggestion that it the issue should be resolved quickly I am assuming that it isn't a design or structural issue but something relatively minor such as lack of fire extinguishers or poor signage.
