EU Referendum: more media incompetence

03/08/2015

Given this, no reasonable person could dispute that this is a subject which should be handled with the greatest of care by the media, with a strong emphasis on accuracy and dispassionate reporting.

Sadly, neither of these properties now seems to apply to the British press. The last few days, on top of weeks of slanted and disjointed news and opinion pieces, it has delivered a torrent of misinformation. So bad has it become that United Nations special representative for migration Peter Sutherland has been moved to accuse the British media of exaggerating "beyond belief" the accounts of recent migrant and asylum seeker movements.

One would not disagree with the thrust of Mr Sutherland's complaints, but what was of special interest was his view that, "distinguishing between a refugee and a migrant is absolutely fundamental". He goes on to explain that a refugee "is a person escaping persecution", then telling us that: "Under a 1951 convention legally we are all obliged to keep a refugee and not to send a refugee back to the country where he or she was being persecuted. So there's a huge difference between the two".

On this, though, the former EU Commissioner is wrong. Refugees are migrants – in the strict technical definition of the word. What distinguishes them is that they by-pass normal immigration rules by demanding "international protection" under the aegis of the 1951 UN Convention on the Treatment of Refugees, and the 1967 Protocol.

On the other hand, Sutherland is absolutely right to stress that those who claim protection cannot be deported from the country where they seek asylum and, if they qualify for refugee status, normally they must be given permits to reside in the countries to which they have applied. Only in special and legally-defined circumstances can they be transferred to another country.

The distinction most marked, however, is between the economic migrants presenting as asylum seekers but who do not qualify for that status. These become "failed" asylum seekers and may be returned to their country of origin, but subject to so many caveats that many remain and eventually acquire citizenship.

The distinction between the two categories, however, is not clear-cut. Some asylum seekers do qualify as refugees, but are also economic migrants. Having removed themselves from immediate danger to a first country, they then move on, often passing through several other countries before arriving at the country where they claim asylum.

These complications are recognised by humanitarian and French politician Bernard Kouchner who, in an interview also warns of confusion between the migrants, in general, and asylum seekers.

Those people leaving from a war, a dictatorship, those who cannot come back home without risking their life, being jailed or tortured, he says, should be accepted, under the terms of the Geneva convention (1951). Those seeking job, however, are economical migrants and not protected by the Geneva Convention.

Nevertheless, even if migrants are fleeing for economic rather than political reasons, we cannot refuse to rescue them if they are drowning in the Mediterranean. And even after they come to Italy or to France or to Spain, we cannot just let them die.

Kouchner's first answer to this problem is that we should share the burden, not to let them stay in Italy by the thousands and tens of thousands. We have to share the migrants round all 28 countries of the EU.

It is his second answer, though, that is more interesting. Immigration is a problem, he says, so we must come up with new answers, changing the Geneva Convention? It will be very difficult, Kouchner says, but we should do it.

This is by no means the first politician to recognise this. He is preceded by Tony Blair and Michael Howard, from different sides of the British political divide. And anyone who has carefully studied this problem will come to the same conclusion. At the root of the problem is the Geneva Convention. Designed for the aftermath of the Second World War, it is no longer fit for purpose. It must be changed.

But, for the UK, perhaps a greater problem is the inability of the legacy media to identify the source of the problem and its staggering incompetence in reporting on and discussing the issues.

And while, in choosing examples of media dereliction, we are spoilt for choice. One of the more egregious examples can be found in yesterday's leader from the Sunday Telegraph.

It starts going off the rails when it opines that "it would help if the erroneous description of many economic migrants as 'asylum-seekers' was stopped", thereby demonstrating an alarming ignorance of the state of play.

Defining certain migrants as asylum seekers simply reflects, in an entirely non-judgemental way, the fact that they are seeking asylum. Their right at this stage is to have their claims properly examined and to have determinations made. There is no error in describing economic migrants as asylum seekers, if that is what they are doing.

Compounding its own error, though, the newspaper goes on to tell us that, "Under the Dublin Convention, immigrants into the EU can claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, but only there".

As an aside, it is long time since 20013 when what are now colloquially known as the Dublin Regulations replaced the Convention. Now cast as Dublin III, they are embodied in Regulation 604/2013, applicable since 1 January 2014.

Where the Telegraph goes seriously wrong here is that the Regulations do not impose any general requirements on migrants. Rather, they impose requirements on EU Member States, "establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person (recast)".

Crucially, unequivocally, therefore, the claim that asylum seekers can only claim asylum in the first safe country they reach is not true. In this and many other documents, the UNHCR affirms that: "There is no duty in international law for an individual to seek asylum in the first country that they enter".

Under EU law, there is Asylum Procedures Directive and its Article 26 refers to the concept of first country of asylum but, we are told, it is a permissive provision and Member States are not required to apply the concept.

Now in the Telegraph we see the culmination of their errors, with the paper wrongly stating that: "Few of the migrants entering Britain from Calais – or many other places – can therefore be said to have legitimate refugee status".

Asylum seekers have status as asylum seekers. That is why they are called asylum seekers. Most of the migrants entering Britain from Calais have a right to have their claims processed and determined. Then, if they qualify as refugees under the terms of the 1952 Convention, they become "legitimate" refugees, irrespective of where they lodged their claims.

However, the Telegraph, in its ignorance, would have us breaking international law, wrongly telling us that "those who have no right to asylum in Europe" should be rapidly returned home – where possible from their first country of arrival.

Strangely, it doesn't seem to have occurred to the paper that, if it was that simple, we'd have already done it. But then it probably believes we're so simple that we believe its trash. Media incompetence combined with arrogance, is leading its readers astray and, doubtless, we're supposed to be grateful.