UK Home Secretary Warns West Faces ‘Existential’ Threat From Uncontrolled Immigration

British home secretary Suella Braverman has warned that uncontrolled immigration is an ‘existential’ threat to the West as she spoke out about against the ‘absurd’ rules for international refugees.

In a brave speech in Washington DC Braverman said the things that everyone esle iseems afraid to say.

Warning that unless governments found a way of controlling their borders they would ‘not endure’ Braverman pointed to the huge inflows being seen across Europe and the US and called for a reform of the outdated international system.

She also said that being gay or a woman doesn’t give you an automatic right to asylum.

The United Nations’ refugee agency and Sir Elton John are amongst those who have rebuked the home secretary for daring to claim that the current asylum system is no longer fit for purpose.

The Mail Online reports: She also delivered a stinging rebuke to those who dismiss people alarmed about immigration as ‘idiots or bigots’, arguing that the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism was evident from the streets of Paris, Brussels and Leicester. She insisted migrants could no longer be allowed to come to the UK and ‘live parallel lives’ rather than integrating.

The intervention came as Ms Braverman called for an overhaul of the UN Refugee Convention to help end the Channel crisis – and took another swipe at the European Convention on Human Rights.

She branded the system ‘unsustainable’, complaining that it creates ‘huge incentives for illegal migration’.

Insisting being trafficked as a sex slave is completely different from paying a gang to smuggle you across the Channel, Ms Braverman raised the prospect of rewriting the UN’s 1951 treaty to raise the threshold for asylum claims.

Taking aim at advocates of multiculturalism, the Home Secretary said she supported immigration, having been the child of immigrants herself, but claimed that uncontrolled migration risked a threat to nationhood and national security due to a lack of integration.

She said migration had been ‘too much, too quick’ to the UK in the past 25 years, with ‘too little thought given to integration and the impact on social cohesion’.

‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades,’ she said.

‘Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.

‘And in extreme cases they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society.

‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today. You can see it play out on the streets of cities all over Europe. From Malmo, to Paris, Brussels, to Leicester.’

Mr Braverman added: ‘If cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted — eventually it will disappear.’

Pressed on how her views square with her background as the child of migrants from Mauritius and Kenya, the Home Secretary said: ‘What you’re suggesting is because I’m the child of immigrants, I have to adopt a position which is pro-migration and pro the status quo, and I totally and fundamentally refute that.

‘I think that is totally at odds with the challenge that we are facing today, unprecedented levels of people coming into our country illegally with no right to be here. They are gaming our system, pretending to be refugees, pretending to be fleeing persecution to come to the country illegitimately.

‘I think that cannot be how we conduct this conversation. We need to be honest with the British people and we need to be honest about the challenges and the solutions. Just because I have an immigrant background does not exclude me from this conversation.

‘My job as Home Secretary is to be honest with the British people to tell them that the system as it currently stands internationally is not working. We need to start working towards a solution that is sustainable and fair.’

Ms Braverman pointed out that would-be refugees once had to show they were facing ‘persecution’ but now they must only prove ‘discrimination’.

She suggested the UN treaty is ‘an incredible achievement of its age’, but highlighted its role in the crisis that has seen nearly 110,000 migrants cross the Channel on dinghies to reach Britain since 2018.

‘More than 70 years on, we now live in a completely different time,’ she will say.

‘According to analysis by Nick Timothy and Karl Williams for the Centre for Policy Studies, it now confers the notional right to move to another country upon at least 780 million people. 

‘It is therefore incumbent upon politicians and thought leaders to ask whether the Refugee Convention, and the way it has come to be interpreted through our courts, is fit for our modern age. Or whether it is in need of reform.’ 

Ms Braverman – who has been accompanied by a TV crew on her trip to the US – said in her speech: ‘Nobody entering the UK by boat from France is fleeing imminent peril.

‘The vast majority have passed through multiple safe countries, and in some instances have resided in safe countries for several years. In this sense, there is an argument that they should cease to be treated as refugees when considering the legitimacy of their onward movement.’

Ms Braverman admitted the European and UN accords on refugee rights could be a struggle to update due to the unwieldy task of getting member states to agree on changes.

But she said there was also a ‘more cynical’ reason for not broaching reforms, arguing there was a ‘fear of being branded a racist or illiberal’.