Priti Patel cannot pick and choose between asylum seekers

Editorial: ‘Safe and legal’ routes are not always easily accessed by refugees – it doesn’t matter how they get to the UK, a refugee is a refugee

The home secretary proposes to ‘expand safe and legal routes’ for asylum seekers (Getty)

Superficially, the home secretary’s proposal to “expand safe and legal routes” for asylum seekers, with a view to them eventually settling in Britain, is a reasonable, even attractive one. It suggests an end to the appalling people-trafficking across the English Channel that has caused so much misery, and which, as the weather improves, is likely to grow in the coming months. 

It is certainly a more constructive approach, and one that suggests that the government at least concedes the principle that the country has a moral and legal obligation to give shelter to those fleeing for their lives. That, scant as it is, counts for progress in a government which, left to its own devices, would probably prefer to abolish the whole concept of asylum. By contrast, asylum seekers who enter Britain through non-approved, unofficial routes will be treated harshly, deemed to have forfeited the right to asylum, and deported to the nearest country willing to take them. Not all asylum seekers are equal or deserve equal treatment in Ms Patel’s view of the world.

The main problem with what might be termed the Patel Doctrine is that it is illegal under international law. There is nothing in any of the international treaties and conventions about “approved” routes out of persecution. The right to asylum is absolute, whether the “host” country likes it or not (as long as that country wants to honour its international treaty promises, something the UK is less reliable about these days). It doesn’t matter whether someone walks into a British embassy or High Commission with an appointment, or tumbles out of the back of a lorry on the A2: a refugee is a refugee.