UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has been busily trying to convince us that the UK can easily outsource its decision-making when it comes to asylum claims by people who cross the English Channel from France in makeshift boats. These people will be made “illegal” when Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Nationality and Borders Bill becomes law, though at the moment they’re not. Once the Bill is passed, even those who satisfy the Home Office that they need asylum won’t actually get it. They will get a second-class temporary leave to remain, with very limited rights (not including family reunification) and will be regularly assessed for removal elsewhere or for return to their country of persecution (which is illegal) – all this as a punishment for daring to come here by the only route they could find. Patel suggested when she launched these new proposals in the Bill that the government wanted to send these asylum seekers to another country where they would be assessed by UK officials. Unfortunately for her, she had not been able to get any country to sign an agreement to do this job. So no agreement, no outsourcing.

Suddenly today, The Times reported that Albania was being groomed to do it and success might be just round the corner:

Raab didn’t deny it when he was interviewed by Times Radio: “We are looking at international partnerships that can take the processing out of the UK in order to try and reduce the pull factor which means people think they can successfully take advantage of these routes.” Well, that’s what they’ve been doing for months without success, so if Albania has stepped forward that must be a relief – although a friend has pointed out that Albania is one of the countries that readers of the Tory-supporting Daily Mail and Daily Express love to hate. Still, those readers will probably say that if the Albanians are willing to do this instead of flooding across our borders, they will be satisfied. Later, when asked on Sky News specifically about Albania, Raab seemed to be more sure of the plan: “Well, that’s one country,” he said, “but we are willing to look with partners at whether it is possible to do this international processing.”

But Raab and the readers of the Mail and Express may yet be disappointed. Albania’s foreign minister, has dismissed the Times story as “fake news” (The Guardian, “Albania angrily denies it could process asylum seekers for UK”,18 November 2021). We’ll have to wait and see what happens. But anyone who cares about refugee protection will take no comfort from  Raab’s words to Times Radio. They make no sense in terms of examining asylum claims. Flying people out to foreign parts is simply a way of getting rid of refugees and then either sending them somewhere else (where?) or returning them to their persecutors, which is illegal. I don’t believe there is any intention of allowing them back here once they’ve been flown to Albania, Belarus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which was, I believe, an earlier suggestion) or anywhere else. This, if it is successful, will be a dumping operation.

It may be that this whole package will turn out to be illegal in terms of international law. Personally, I still think we will soon either remove our signature from the Refugee Convention or, probably, get chucked off it. This will be recycled as virtue because we’ll have “taken back control of our borders”.

Labour must vote against this Bill, not just abstain, and they must also commit to repealing the Act when they become the government. The Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, emailed me to reassure me that Labour “will vote against this awful Bill”. I thank him for that. But Labour is often tempted to abstain on Bills for all sorts of puzzling reasons which we outsiders find difficult to understand or accept. They did it on the Welfare Bill in 2015, they tried to on the Immigration and Social Security Bill in 2017 – but changed their minds after their inboxes were flooded with protests. Firm up Thomas-Symonds resolve by writing to him and your local MP, of whatever party. And find an asylum support group near you and join it.

It’s a wicked world. Is another world possible? Let’s hope so. But we will have to fight for it.