Britain’s misguided approach to asylum is threatening lives

The news this week could easily have led with the deaths of 14 Afghan and Iraqi migrants in the English Channel, drowned as they attempted to reach Britain. In the event this didn’t happen, but only because their boat proved to be so unseaworthy that it capsized before they made it out of sight of the Belgian coast. All were able to swim back to the beach.

This is the reality of people-trafficking: it is a callous industry whose operators care little for the lives of the migrants to whom they charge large sums for the promise of a new life. It is only three months since 39 Vietnamese migrants were discovered dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry at Tilbury. It is luck that has so far prevented a seaborne version of that disaster, but luck will not hold. Sooner or later we will suffer a significant loss of life as a dinghy goes down or is struck by a tanker in the shipping lanes of the Strait of Dover.

Faced with a criminal racket which has killed many people and is threatening to kill many more, UK authorities have a clear duty to do everything possible to stop the smuggling of human beings. Instead, we risk encouraging it. If migrants succeed in landing on British beaches because they have been told they will qualify for an asylum claim — even if they arrive from France or Belgium — then the people-traffickers’ business model is vindicated.

The 1951 UN Convention on refugees is hopelessly out of date. The distinction it draws between a refugee fleeing conflict and economic migrants seeking a better life is irrelevant when both are ready to board the same boats and risk death in the same waters.