BRITISH taxpayers who work all hours to make ends meet have every reason to feel angered by a TikTok video posted last week by Parwiz Hanifyar.
He is the Afghan migrant who gloated about his journey to Britain and his stay at a four-star hotel.
Parwiz Hanifyar live streamed his illegal boat journey to Britain to encourage more to followSupplied
Parwiz has destroyed the notion that many who seek asylum are ‘desperate’ and fleeing for their livesSupplied
They have even more reason to be disgusted by a video clip which has subsequently emerged of him appearing to advise men who want to kill their estranged wives to drink heavily first, in the belief that it will lessen their sentence.
But in one sense he has done us all a favour. He has destroyed once and for all the pretence that all migrants who come to our shores to seek asylum are “desperate” and fleeing for their lives.
That is what we are told continuously by refugee charities and advocacy groups: That they are deeply traumatised people who have fallen victim to people-traffickers because they cannot see any other option to save their lives — and we should all be generous to them as a result.
I don’t know much about Hanifyar’s situation, other than the reports I have read suggesting that he has spent the past few years living in not-very-war-torn France and Germany.
I can’t say he looks all that traumatised to me.
Were he genuinely fleeing from danger, you would expect him to be deeply grateful for the help he received from Border Agency officials who scooped him and his fellow migrants from their boat mid English Channel and sped them to Britain.
You would think he would want to show his appreciation to the people of Britain.
Instead, the tone of his now-defunct TikTok channel is one of gloating — and taking the mickey out of people whose taxes are funding his new life.
“Tell your friends to come,” he said to his 70,000 followers. He then went on, appearing to advertise the services of people-smugglers:
“Why are you so stingy? Being stingy is not good for God. You see, I risked my life! Why don’t you come? My wish was to come to this hotel and live. I came here just for this.”
Showing us all around his room at the Crowne Plaza at Heathrow, with its freshly pressed sheets and puffed-up pillows, he then says:
“This is dedicated to those haters who were happy thinking we either drowned or ended up dead.”
Since his video was removed from TikTok, a darker side to Hanifyar has emerged.
Taken for a ride
In an earlier clip which seems to have been made in Germany in recent weeks, he put himself in the hypothetical situation of wanting to murder his wife.
“Before I kill her I drink a bottle of alcohol,” he says. “When the police comes, they say, he was drunk.”
I disassociate myself from anyone who wishes harm to Hanifyar or any other migrant, but police must now investigate what he posted, just as they — rightfully — do people who have called for attacks on migrants.
A functioning asylum system would dismiss out of hand any claim by someone who has advocated violence.
The reaction to Hanifyar’s videos needs to go further than that. This, finally, needs to be the moment of realisation that Britain and its high-principled asylum system is being taken for a ride.
Parwiz streamed a dangerous video in which he discussed violence against womenSupplied
Listen to the refugee charities and you would think that no economic migrant ever tried to cheat the asylum system by posing as someone fleeing from danger, either by faking their nationality or by falsely claiming to be Christian, or gay.
You would think that no migrant ever came here to commit a crime or involve themselves in terrorism.
Sadly, we know that there are many migrants who have done just these things.
Worse, our asylum system, which cravenly defers to the human rights establishment, so often refuses to deport them.
The tragedy is that our failure to weed out the criminals, liars and chancers makes it much harder to help those who are genuinely fleeing for their lives.
Like everything else in a democratic society, the asylum system ultimately depends on public consent, and cases of migrants fooling the system are utterly poisonous to public opinion on asylum.
No one should be taken in by the swift action of TikTok, encouraged by the Prime Minister, to remove Hanifyar’s video.
In some ways, I wish it had stayed up so as to symbolise our pathetic borders policy.
Even if this individual ends up being removed from Britain — and I am not holding my breath for that — there will be many others of his kind who will be waved through.
Even if this individual ends up being removed from Britain — and I am not holding my breath for that — there will be many others of his kind who will be waved through
We are not going to have a sensible borders policy until we can wrest it back from the human rights lawyers and become serious about what are supposed to be the rules — not least that if you want to claim asylum, you must do so in the first safe country you reach.
We should be deeply suspicious of the motives of any asylum-seeker who has come here from France, unless they can claim a need to flee from Emmanuel Macron’s government.
Of course, we must help genuine refugees, but we will be better able to do that if we stop frittering our resources on the boatloads of mostly young men who are sticking their fingers up at Britain.
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