LONDON

- British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is facing a storm of criticism against the background of her statements in which she said that her country is being "invaded by immigrants", a statement that many described as drawing on the terminology of the extreme right, and some British government ministers were embarrassed to repudiate these shocking and unjust statements. precedents.

The shocking remarks by Soyla Braverman came in her first session of the House of Commons to talk about the policy of the government of Rishi Sunak in dealing with the flow of migrants by sea, which the government says has reached record levels this year.

The statements of the Minister of the Interior - with immigrant origins - increase the complexity of the immigration file in Britain, especially as they coincide with the discovery of the accumulation of thousands of migrants in a reception center that was designated when it was established for security inspection, before it turned into a shelter where refugees spend long days.

The file of immigrants returned to the fore in Britain after official data revealed that this year recorded the largest increase in the number of immigrants arriving in the country through the sea channel from France.


racist remarks

And the position of Home Secretary Suila Braverman has become significantly threatened after her statements, which the British opposition described as racist, when she said that her country was facing an "invasion of immigrants", an expression that no former British minister had previously used, prompting British Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick to say that "one When he is in a position of responsibility, he should pay attention to his statements,” expressing his opposition to the statement uttered by his colleague in the government, stressing that he “will not demonize immigrants and refugees.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan expressed his anger at the Home Secretary's comments, describing them as "extremely ugly, divisive and anti-immigrant", noting that this language is "used by the far right".

Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn described what is happening with migrants as a humanitarian crisis, adding that conditions in reception centers are "an inevitable result of decades of dehumanization of refugees, and we should describe it as a humanitarian crisis, not an immigrant crisis."

The Minister of Interior is trying with all her might to maintain her position, with the rising voices calling for her dismissal, which prompted her to raise the ceiling high in adopting an anti-refugee rhetoric, to win over the right and populists to her side.

The new British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is also of Indian descent (Getty Images)

The numbers are increasing

British government data indicate a record increase in the number of refugees who have arrived in the country this year;

It reached 39,000 people, compared to about 28,000 migrants who arrived last year, and the number is expected to reach more than 44,000 refugees by the end of this year.

And the Ministry of the Interior had previously announced that it is processing more than 100,000 asylum applications that are still on the waiting list, and the ministry justifies this number by two factors: the first is the high number of refugees who have arrived in the country, and the second is the closure that the country has witnessed due to Corona, and in 2022 alone there is 63 thousand asylum applications are still waiting for consideration by the Ministry of the Interior.

The longer the asylum application process takes, the more refugees are waiting to know their fate. They are distributed between reception centers and hotels. The number of migrants distributed in hotels reaches 13,000 asylum seekers, which costs the state treasury $6 million per day.

Thousands have arrived in the UK this year after crossing the English Channel (Getty Images)

exaggeration and exaggeration

Despite all these numbers, a study by the Oxford University of Oxford Migration Monitor showed that Britain is the sixth country among European countries in terms of receiving asylum applications, with Germany topping the list of receiving more than 190,000 asylum applications last year.

The study also reveals that Britain is one of the least welcoming European countries in terms of population, with the number of refugees reaching about 8.4 immigrants per 100,000 people, which is a small number compared to Germany, which has a ratio of 22.9, and in France this ratio reaches 17.8 per 100,000 people. 100 thousand people.

Despite the British Ministry of Defense announcing the arrival of 1,000 refugees in one day to the British coast, this does not prevent the continuation of the exchange of accusations between London and Paris over responsibility for the continued flow of refugees to the United Kingdom, as the British government believes that France is not doing what is necessary to prevent boats Migrants from leaving the French coast to reach Britain.

And the pressure on the British Home Office to expedite the processing of asylum applications is increasing, after the scandal of the “Manson” center, which was dedicated to security research only, before transferring asylum seekers to accommodation centers, and the government’s plan was for more than a thousand asylum seekers to cross from this center a day and then transfer them to places However, investigations revealed that the center is now sheltering more than 3,000 asylum seekers, including families who spent more than a month waiting, a situation that violates the law and puts the government of Rishi Sunak under pressure to solve this crisis.