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The United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has said that being gay or a woman with fear that they could be discriminated against in their country of origin is not enough reason to seek asylum in the UK or any Western country.
Braverman, who said this in a bold speech in Washington D.C., warned that uncontrolled immigration is an ‘existential threat’ to the West.
She argued that multiculturalism had ‘failed’, adding that many of those migrating to the Western world were not in peril.
According to her, uncontrolled immigration fuels crime.
She, therefore, called for an overhaul of United Nations (UN) refugee rules and warned that unless governments found a way of controlling their borders, they would ‘not endure’.
Mail Online reports that the UK Home Secretary who branded the system “unsustainable”, further argued that it creates “huge incentives for illegal migration”.
She insisted that being trafficked as a sex slave is completely different from paying a gang to smuggle you across the Channel, and therefore raised the prospect of rewriting the UN’s 1951 treaty to raise the threshold for asylum claims.
According to Braverman, the UN treaty played a key role in the crisis that has seen nearly 110,000 migrants cross the Channel on dinghies to reach Britain since 2018.
She said, “The vast majority have passed through multiple safe countries, and in some instances have resided in safe countries for several years. In this sense, there is an argument that they should cease to be treated as refugees when considering the legitimacy of their onward movement.”
Braverman noted that the UN Convention defines refugees as those with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Speaking further, the UK Home Secretary said, “However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from persecution, in favour of something more akin to a definition of discrimination.”
Braverman added, “A similar shift away from a ‘well-founded fear’ towards a ‘credible’ or ‘plausible fear’.
“The practical consequence of which has been to expand the number of those who may qualify for asylum, and to lower the threshold for doing so.
“Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay or to be a woman.
“Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.
“But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.”
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