West faces existential threat if global asylum rules not tightened

The Home Secretary said during a speech in the US that millions of asylum seekers were being incentivised to ‘try their luck’.

Transcript

00:00 Seeking asylum and seeking better economic prospects are not the same thing.

00:06 Seeking refuge in the first safe country you reach or shopping around for your

00:11 preferred destination are not the same thing.

00:15 Being trafficked, i.e. transported against your will, perhaps to be sold into sex slavery,

00:21 and being smuggled, i.e. asking someone to sneak you into a country, are not the same thing.

00:29 The extent to which the global asylum framework enables the obscuring of these

00:35 categories creates huge incentives for illegal migration.

00:41 This legal framework is rooted in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

00:46 It was created to help resettle people fleeing persecution following the horrors of World War II

00:53 and the Holocaust and was, initially at least, centered around Europe.

00:58 It was an incredible achievement of its age.

01:02 But more than 70 years on, we now live in a completely different time.

01:08 Jet travel has transformed the cost and comparative ease of moving around the world.

01:15 The internet has made people acutely aware of how different life is

01:20 and how much higher wages are in other parts of the world.

01:24 Smartphones enable smugglers to facilitate operations with great ease and smooth communication

01:30 between those who have undertaken a journey and others who might like to.

01:35 When the Refugee Convention was signed, it conferred protection on some 2 million people in Europe.

01:43 According to analysis by Nick Timothy and Carl Williams for the Centre for Policy Studies,

01:48 it now confers the notional right to move to another country upon at least 780 million people.

01:56 It is therefore incumbent upon politicians and thought leaders to ask whether the Refugee Convention

02:03 and the way it has come to be interpreted through our courts is fit for our modern age or in need of reform.

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