UN refugee agency rejects Suella Braverman asylum comments | BBC News |

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is facing criticism after she said the international asylum system was no longer fit for purpose.

In a speech earlier, Mrs Braverman said fearing discrimination for being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify for refugee protection.

But the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) rejected her calls for the rules to be "tightened".

It said the 1951 Refugee Convention "remains a life-saving instrument".

The convention forms the basis of the UNHCR's work and provides an agreed definition of a refugee and minimum standards for their treatment.

UK's Suella Braverman says LGBTQ+ persecution not enough for asylum claims | Politico |

Braverman's comments have already sparked a backlash from refugee support groups.

Sonya Sceats, chief executive of the NGO Freedom from Torture, said: "LGBTQI+ people are tortured in many countries for who they are and who they love, and their pain is no less than other survivors we treat in our therapy rooms. They deserve precisely the same protection too. For a liberal democracy like Britain to try to weaken protection for this community is shameful." 

I think there's Democratic support for major border security reform. But we have to attach it to Ukraine. To those who say we need to fix our border, you're right. To those who say we need to help Ukraine, you're right. To those who say we need to do the border, not Ukraine, you're wrong. The vast majority of Senate Republicans would support a combination of border security Ukraine funding and disaster aid.
[...]
The key to Ukraine funding is to deal with a broken border. 107,000 Americans have died from fentanyl poisoning from fentanyl coming across the southern border. We haven't lost one soldier in Ukraine. So America is being invaded from a broken southern border. To my Democratic colleagues, you need to take border security seriously.
[...]
Yeah well here's what I'll say about President Trump. He did not pull the plug on Afghanistan, even though he wanted to. The biggest mistake we made since the war on terror is withdrawing from Afghanistan, to President Trump and anybody else. If we pull the plug on Ukraine, that's 10 times worse than Afghanistan. There goes Taiwan. To stop funding Ukraine is a death sentence for Taiwan. Putin will keep going. You missed all of World War II if you don't know how this movie ends. To the Republicans who say, Ukraine doesn't matter to us, you're wrong. Respectfully, you're wrong. The war gets bigger, not smaller. There goes Taiwan. If Ukraine can beat Russia, China's less likely to invade Taiwan and Putin gets stopped.