The UK has recently introduced (via “guidance” rather than legislation) a permanent ban on naturalisation for people who arrive in the UK via “dangerous journeys”. The power used to block their applications is the Home Secretary’s discretion to refuse citizenship to someone of “bad character”. This new policy seemingly conflicts with the UK’s commitments under the Refugee Convention. I’ve a short piece on this at the London Review of Books blog.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
NomadUK 02.20.25 at 5:16 pm
There must be some clause in the job description of Home Secretary that requires that each and every successful candidate be an absolute, unutterable bastard.
engels 02.20.25 at 8:26 pm
Well said.
Tm 02.20.25 at 9:50 pm
Any chance the courts will set this right?
Seems like there is a coordinated international campaign against citizenship rights of marginalized minorities. We see the same pattern in the US, Germany, and now the UK. I think this tells us what our oligarchic overlords have in mind. In the nation state, human rights are fundamentally grounded in citizenship. There can be no equality without access to citizenship rights for all. The frontal attack on this foundation of nation state liberalism indicates a desire to roll back even the (unfulfilled) liberal promise of equality.
J-D 02.20.25 at 11:20 pm
That seems a bit hard on Arthur Henderson.
KT2 02.21.25 at 12:05 am
Thanks Chris.
“Bad Character”‘s have been at “The UK government’s bar to citizenship for refugees” for a long time in Australia, as you are no doubt aware. Australian conservatives have provded the blueprint, first mover – emboldening -, slogans and ’eminent’ lobbyists over to the UK. A reverse penal colonial advisor group.
Sligan “Stop the boats”. (4.)
Trigger: Tampa (2.) them down. (2.)
“Justice Tony North … says he sees parallels with the 1939 case of the MS St Louis, carrying 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.” (1.)
JQ 2004 in “Sympathy for asylum seekers” … “stirred up by a combination of racial/religious prejudice and law-and-order politics.” (3.)
John Howard ( nicknamed The Lying Rodent ) had two main acolytes, Tony Abbott (4.) & ‘Buyip Lord’ Alexander Downer. Both have been gnawing away in the UK for 11+ years to introduce such a vile, draconian and effective pitchpole (fn. pp) of both the polity and policies in the UK, and elsewhere.
“Stop the boats” (4.) & “we decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come.” The Lying Rodents’ famous dog whistle.
###
1.
“The Tampa affair, 20 years on: the ship that capsized Australia’s refugee policy
…
“Justice Tony North was the duty judge on the federal court when the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties filed an urgent challenge to the detention of those on board Tampa.
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“In a judgment delivered just hours before the 9/11 attacks, North found the 433 people on the Tampa were unlawfully held there by Australia, which had “committed to retaining … complete control over the bodies and destinies of the rescuees”.
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“North says he sees parallels with the 1939 case of the MS St Louis, carrying 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The ship was refused entry in Cuba, the US and Canada, before it was forced to return to Europe. Up to a quarter of its passengers would die in Nazi death camps.
…
“North’s judgment was overturned 2-1 by the full bench of the federal court after the government appealed.”
…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/22/the-tampa-affair-20-years-on-the-ship-that-capsized-australias-refugee-policy
2.
“Tampa affair”
“In late August 2001, the Howard government of Australia refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, carrying 433 rescued refugees (predominantly Hazaras of Afghanistanfrom a distressed fishing vessel in international waters) and 5 crew, to enter Australian waters.[1][2] This triggered an Australian political controversy in the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, and a diplomatic dispute between Australia and Norway.”
…
“Domestically, the government’s line attracted strong support, especially in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks. The Australian government’s popularity rating rose throughout the crisis.[31] In the federal election following the arrival of Tampa, the Liberal Party campaigned on the issue, with John Howard’s statement “we decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
“The Australian electorate largely supported the Government. Some television news polls in Australia showed as much as 90 percent support for the Australian government’s actions.[31] ”
wikipedia Tampa_affair
3.
JQ 2004: Note: “the Oz” is the murdocracy mouthpiece in Oz. Temporary panic seems to have become permanent for facists.
“Sympathy for asylum seekers”
AUGUST 20, 2004
JOHN QUIGGIN
“This opinion poll, reported in the Oz is encouraging, and supports my view that the upsurge in support for Howard over Tampa was the result of a temporary panic, stirred up by a combination of racial/religious prejudice and law-and-order politics.
https://johnquiggin.com/2004/08/20/sympathy-for-asylum-seekers/
4.
“Stop the boats”
“”Stop the boats” is a political slogan and pledge used by Tony Abbott in his campaign for the 2013 Australian federal election, and later by former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak from 2023 to 2024. It opposes the existence of boat crossings by asylum seekers.” Wikipedia
fn. PP. The Political Pitchpole
* Pitchpole. Note: A politocal pitchpole, by design, completely ingnores prevailing political polity.
“If a boat pitchpoles, or is pitchpoled, it turns upside down from stern (= back) to bow (= front) by accident:”
– “”to turn over, or be turned over, from end to end: A sudden gust of wind caused the kite to pitchpole.”
(dictionary cambridge pitchpole)
The sailing / pitchpole metaphor I might suggest, is a worthy physics metaphor to analyse how to change the winds and weather of these refugee perceptions in the wider polity. And effect newscorp(se), influencers and outright shoals and sharks of the bigots, Herrenvolk, and white supremacists.
wetzel-rhymes-with 02.21.25 at 12:23 am
Your excellent blog post made me think about how the White House posted a dehumanizing video earlier this week using the sound of detained immigrants being deported with the caption “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” It is like something out of Children of Men here in America. The video features a faceless person being arrested and patted down in front of an airplane over the sounds of plane engines, handcuffs being laid on the cement, and the chains on their feet clinking as they board the flight.
In a video like the White House put up, or stories about refugees whose own flight to the UK is used against them, who is the protagonist? The video isn’t for the pleasure of MAGA, maybe the sickest and most sadistic. Reading the news about my own country, the United States’ behavior towards refugees works as a kind of insistence on the viewer’s complicity in their own disappearance. As our countries enact laws and policies that people can be disappeared, so do we all. The White House makes terror videos to make us complicit through moral injury because you are either leading the person away or being led away, so just put our ashes in a Yuban can and pour them over the side of the boat. It doesn’t mean anything anyway. Anyway, thanks for the essay.
Matt 02.21.25 at 1:57 am
It’s a nice and clear piece, Chris. It looks like the UK is moving towards the long-time Australian policy of refusing to give full refugee protection to anyone who arrives w/o a visa. (In Australia this was mostly directed at “unauthorized maritime arrivals”, but all people who arrive w/o a valid visa have been subject to the same basic rule, where only a “temporary protection visa”, with significantly lesser rights and limited protection, is given. Some of these people were recently granted more permanent status, but the action was only retrospective and didn’t change the forward going rule.) It’s a bad policy and clearly in conflict with duties under the refugee convention.
I’m also glad to see you mention the vagueness of “bad character” rules. Some such rules are, perhaps, plausible, but all of the rules I know of have very signficant issues, and as you describe the situation in the UK, it’s not even a remotely plausible application. I hope it will be changed.
John Q 02.21.25 at 8:51 am
Chris, it might be worth updating your post about Americans seeking asylum. I’d have thought that any trans person would now have a justifiable fear of persecution, even/particularly if they needed a deadname passport to get out of the US. And at least for the moment, they could just turn up on tourist visas, which would rule out the “bad character” exception.
Guano 02.21.25 at 9:55 am
The UK now has three neo-liberal, authoritarian, xenophobic parties.
RobinM 02.21.25 at 6:04 pm
Are you including the SNP in your count, Guano?
somebody who remembers the second stanza 02.21.25 at 6:18 pm
best wishes and good luck to those who have citizenship and think it can’t be stripped even if they’re a disfavored minority!
Guano 02.22.25 at 4:05 pm
“Are you including the SNP in your count, Guano?”
Should I?
I was thinking of the three parties each on about 20% of votes in UK opinion polls. Given that leading lights in the Labour Party speak positively of Maurice Glasman (who has gone full-MAGA) I don’t consider them much different from the other two.
engels 02.22.25 at 5:02 pm
This where Labour is now:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/24/britain-trump-positivity-economic-growth-rachel-reeves/
RobinM 02.22.25 at 10:51 pm
As I understand it, Guano, the broad pro-independence coalition led by the SNP has broken up–even before all the shenanigans around Nicola Sturgeon. The left–left in a traditional sense, not the more fashionable cultural sense–published a number of things accusing the SNP government at Holyrood as being a neoliberal party. So perhaps you should add them to your list?