After at least 27 people lost their lives in a Channel boat crossing, readers discuss the government’s culpability in closing off safe routes for refugees
Boris Johnson describes himself as appalled at Wednesday’s Channel tragedy (Tragedy at sea claims dozens of lives in deadliest day of Channel crisis, 25 November), and is elsewhere reported as accusing France of letting human traffickers “get away with murder”, but it’s the asylum policy of his and previous governments that has created the conditions in which trafficking can flourish and tragedies such as this can occur.
There are no options other than “irregular” ones by which asylum seekers can now enter this country. The Home Office requires physical arrival in the United Kingdom before an asylum application can be lodged. Its current nationality and borders bill, by criminalising all means of entry other than official ones that are impossible to access, is clearly intended to bring an end to finding asylum in this country. It won’t, however, bring an end to the displaced making their desperate attempts to reach our shores.