What this country really needs: small boat refugees denied citizenship

I think it's safe to say that a quick scroll through my Instagram feed is enough to give anyone whiplash. To give you an idea, this is how it tends to look: skin care trend I’ll never try; babies murdered in Gaza; Glee meme; disaster caused by climate change; skinny blonde girl telling me to drink chia seeds; the US is becoming an authoritarian plutocracy; ad for a festival! Frankly, it’s a shitstorm out there.

But fear not. The Labour government is working tirelessly to make our world a better place. That’s why they’ve recently brought in a new rule that refuses refugees citizenship if they have arrived illegally having made a dangerous journey.

Of course, I’m being facetious. Depriving asylum seekers of citizenship does nothing to better my life, or anyone else’s. Targeting these people is instead a blatant and morally repugnant attempt to gain support from the far-right. There were 82 people who died or went missing in 2024 attempting to cross the English Channel. So why, with this knowledge, are people still trying to come to the UK on a dingy?

When a person fleeing war and persecution makes the heart-wrenching decision to step onto a dingy, they are doing so out of desperation. Desperation to feel safe, to find a better life, to give their family security. Maybe, in the words of poet Warsan Shire, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”.

It is not illegal to claim asylum. Seeking asylum is a legal right: under both article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Crucially, the Refugee Convention contains no obligation to claim asylum in the first safe country someone reaches.

Despite this, the UK makes it extremely difficult for people seeking refuge to come here. You cannot apply for asylum if you are not physically in the UK, and there is no asylum visa that allows refugees to enter. ‘Safe and legal’ routes in the UK have extremely restrictive criteria and are limited in number. Not only is this contradictory to international law that the UK co-drafted and signed, but it is also morally repugnant.

Refusing citizenship to people that have come to the UK via a dangerous journey is not nearly the worst attack refugees have faced. But it is part of a larger trend of dehumanising and stigmatising people that are not and have never been the problem. If the UK government really wanted to reduce the number of refugees making dangerous journeys, then they could open safe routes. The fact that vulnerable people are being punished for the government’s failure to provide these is deplorable.

Refugees are people with real lives, stories, and families. The only difference between you and someone having to risk death to come to the UK is luck.