The Dubs children abandoned by Britain now sleep under bushes, at the mercy of people smugglers and riot police. This is how we care for their best interests Call it shameful, call it cruel. The UK now has an effective refugee ban of its very own, targeting the most vulnerable of the vulnerable: unaccompanied children. In the House of Lords yesterday, the minister for immigration, Robert Goodwill, announced the abandonment of the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act. This was passed last May, after being designed by the peer and refugee Alf Dubs, who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child, one of thousands rescued in the Kindertransport effort. Lord Dubs and his supporters had suggested the UK could potentially help 3,000 of the most vulnerable children in Europe - there are estimated to be 90,000 unaccompanied migrant children across the continent as a whole, including thousands who wait in the camps of Greece and Italy, described by Unicef as “alone and extremely vulnerable”. In itself, 3,000 was a modest and achievable number. But now, it emerges, we will be taking only 350 – including 200 who have already come over from the refugee camp in Calais – and we will then slam shut the door. Continue reading...
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