Are We Charging The Brother? If Not, Why Not?

The BBC is taking out an onion for illegal immigrants again:

Obada and Ayser were among five people who drowned, a few metres from the shore, on the coast of northern France that night - the first to die while trying to cross to the UK in a small boat in 2024, a fortnight into the new year. To try to understand how a child could be put in this situation, the BBC reconstructed Obada's journey from Syria - using videos, messages and interviews with the brothers' relatives and others who accompanied them. Our aim was to explore the wrenching decisions involved at every stage.

Oh, that was your aim, was it? 

In his bedsit in west London, another of Obada's brothers, Nada, 25, kept glancing at his phone. It was 01:00 in London, 02:00 in France. A few hours earlier, Nada had called the whole group as they sat warming themselves around a fire at their makeshift camp under a canal bridge in Calais. They'd seemed confident about the journey ahead. Nada had made the same dangerous crossing two years earlier, ignoring his father, at home in Daraa, who had initially urged him to be patient, suggesting the war in Syria might soon end. Nada had chosen to travel to England because an uncle had already made the journey almost a decade earlier and been granted permission to remain. Both men had come illegally because, Nada said, there was no alternative.

And how did he repay this country? By encouraging more illegal immigration, of course. And now he has a foot in the door our own laws allow him to bring relatives legally. 

In October last year, Nada was granted refugee status and permission to remain in the UK for five years. He recently found a warehouse job near Wembley. He's now taking an English language course and hopes to bring his wife from Syria soon - something he is allowed to apply for as a refugee - and eventually to resume his law degree in England.

Which is the same aim his brother had:  

A neighbour from Daraa, who was with Obada the night he drowned, backed that up. "He would reach Britain and reunite with his brother and soon after would bring his mother and father. That was the whole point of them leaving, so his father could seek medical treatment abroad," said the man, who asked us not to reveal his name. In fact, the plan was flawed from the start. Given that he already had an adult brother in London, Obada would not have been in a position, as a minor, to arrange for his parents to follow him legally.

Well, thank goodness for that! As it happened  he never made it, but why has the brother's asylum not been revisited in light of his collusion? If he's broken no laws in encouraging the child and failing to alert the authorities, it's an utter travesty. 

The following evening, about 100 locals from Calais and a handful of migrants gathered in the town centre to hold a minute's silence for the five dead and to add Obada's and Ayser's names to a long scroll listing those who have died trying to cross the Channel in recent years.

"The biggest fault is the laws of Europe who make the life of the refugees impossible. Who give them not any rights. Who make their life here in Calais and all over the borders impossible. And we have to remember that. It is the fault of the European laws," a local French woman told the sombre crowd.

Sounds like France has its share of idiots too. Just like the UK.