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Britain must not let Brexit distract us from being horrible to two boys who escaped the Taliban

You can understand the Home Office playing hardball. Boys often run away across continents and almost suffocate, pretending terrifying regimes have taken control of their house

Mark Steel
Thursday 31 January 2019 19:00 GMT
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Taliban kill more than 100 Afghan security forces in suicide bomb attack

While the Brexit chaos continues, and many of us look forward to taking back control of our borders from wily Poles and Romanians, it’s important we don’t forget our traditional bigotry, and moan about immigrants from Asia and everywhere else as well. Because if we only yell ill-informed shite about European immigrants and ignore the black ones, that’s quite racist.

Luckily the Home Office is putting in the effort, with stories such as the tale of Jawad and his younger brother Ahmed, who was aged seven when they fled their area of Afghanistan as it was ruled by the Taliban.

They were smuggled into Iran, walked across it into Turkey, boarded a flimsy boat that at one point capsized, got to Calais where they were teargassed, and were placed in a lorry that made it to a service station in Leicester, where they were suffocating. So one of them sent a text on his mobile phone to a charity worker, and she alerted the police, who heroically rescued them from the truck, and now they’re in a hostel claiming asylum.

One common response to this will be the natural emotional reaction, “That’s OUTRAGEOUS. How are they asylum seekers when they’ve got a mobile phone? And it must be a good one if you can get a signal in the back of a lorry, we’re being taken for MUGS.”

Politicians from most parties have repeated that immigrants come here to “take advantage” of our system. And this is a typical example. I expect they have shared use of a kettle in that hostel. If I want a kettle I have to go to Lidl, I wish I could wangle a free shared one with a bit of suffocating.

So the Home Office disputed their claim for asylum, in particular insisting the boys had psychiatric tests, to verify the boys had suffered “trauma”.

It’s reassuring to know the Home Office is careful. Because all kids play up from time to time, pretending they’re upset to get their way.

Any parent knows that trick, when you fall for those false tears, saying “oh darling, are you sad about the teargas, and the moments when you thought you were dying because you were gasping for breath in an airless lorry”. Before you know it you’ve been taken in and bought them a Magnum ice cream.

Luckily the Home Office is smarter than that.

I expect the officials watched The Man with the Golden Gun, and reassured each other that James Bond has several brushes with death and doesn’t seem too bothered, so there’s no reason why a couple of Afghan lads shouldn’t feel the same.

Maybe the psychiatrists concluded that when the boat tipped up, it was like a water slide, and being teargassed was a smoky version of hide and seek, so there was no cause for trauma.

The Home Office also doubted the report on the region the boys had fled from, that stated it wouldn’t be safe for them to return.

You can understand them questioning this, because boys often behave like this. They run away across a couple of continents and almost suffocate, pretending the Taliban have taken control of their house, as a dare.

Eventually the Home Office accepted the report was true, but you can’t be too careful.

Some people might think that as we went to war with the Taliban, declaring them the most evil scum that ever lived, it’s peculiar that now we suggest it’s safe to be around them.

But there’s a simple explanation, which is there are two Talibans, in the same way there are two versions of the Eurovision-winning band Bucks Fizz. There’s one that’s annoying and blows things up, and one that won’t do any harm and makes scones.

The boys face a hearing this week which will rule on whether they’ll be allowed to stay, or be deported.

These rulings can appear harsh, but we can only accept the handful of immigrants who will be of use to the country. And it’s hard to see what use someone will be, when they’ve shown no sense of spirit other than fleeing a bunch of murderers, walking across Iran, crossing the odd sea and making it to Leicester at the age of seven. What if he gave up that easy while working in a nail bar? We’d be left bailing him out.

This is why asylum seekers aren’t allowed to work for the first year they live here, and even then only if they are skilled in a job on the “shortage occupation” list, which includes “classical ballet” and “geophysicists”. Because we’re sick of immigrants running away from places like Syria and expecting to live here, when they only know Romantic ballet, and we’ve already got plenty of them.

It’s calculated that if half the current asylum seekers waiting for a decision could work, the financial benefit to the country would be £31m in tax on their income. And who would be expected to count all that up? WE would. They’re taking the piss.

If you’re cynical, you might wonder whether this attitude towards characters such as the Afghan lads was connected to the fact the government set up what they called a “hostile environment” policy. They were horrified when it was revealed this had treated families who came from the Caribbean with disdain, threatening British citizens with deportation.

It certainly was a puzzle, how a “hostile environment policy” could lead to an environment that was hostile in any way.

But this hostility is serving an important purpose, as it can bring different sides together. Nigel Farage, Theresa May and Tony Blair all continue to agree robustly on the need to reduce immigration.

Because the country can’t afford to allow in people with no skills other than defying tyrants with the tenacity of Indiana Jones, it needs those who can enhance Britain’s reputation; people who can make us loved across the world, just like Nigel Farage, Theresa May and Tony Blair.

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