UK pushes illegal migration bill, Kylie Minogue refuses coronation gig, Preet Gill cites threat

British home secretary Suella Braverman revealed the details of the new illegal migration bill in the House of Commons this weekHow many Indians come to the UK illegally via boats? Why is there controversy about a TikTok video showing Sikhs?Why did Australian pop star Kylie Minogue refuse to perform for King Charles’s coronation?Why has Preet Gill, the UK’s first Sikh woman MP, had her security boosted?In London Live, all the buzz from BritainIn London Live, we get our weekly dose of the buzz from Britain. In this podcast, we discuss Britain’s crackdown on illegal immigration via boats, Harry and Meghan's continuing saga post Spare, and Preet Gill, the UK’s first Sikh woman MP, saying she's being threatened. UK’s new illegal immigration billBritish home secretary Suella Braverman revealed the details of this bill in the House of Commons this week. The illegal migration bill places a legal duty on the home secretary to remove anybody who enters the UK illegally, such as small boats arrivals. Anyone that does arrive illegally will be detained and then removed either back to their home country if it's considered safe or to a third country like Rwanda. If they want to make any challenges to these decisions they can only do it remotely from outside the UK. There's going to be an annual cap on numbers you can come to the UK claim asylum. There's just a small exception that this will not apply to children under 18 or if somebody can prove that suffer irreversible harm in the country that they’re sent to. The bill has caused controversy. The Labour party is against it. The UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has issued to statement saying that they are also against it and that this was actually against the refugee convention because it would deny people a chance to apply for asylum, pointing out that some not everyone has a passport or not everyone can come on the safe and legal routes. How many Indians come to UK illegally via boats?A total of 683 Indians came via small boats entering the UK illegally in the year of 2022. In quarter four, the highest number of people from India were there -- 226 males age 25 to 39 and then 172 males aged 18 to 24. Just three women age 25 to 39, and then 43 males 40-plus. In total in 2022 there were 45,755 people that came on these small boats. They often come with about 50 of them crammed into a boat with these sort of life jackets on. Some of them survive and some don't. At least 59 migrants died just off the coast of Italy about a week ago when the boat broke up. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s point is that this is highly dangerous, and also a lot of the people coming are not necessarily asylum seekers because they are able to pay thousands of pounds to criminal gangs to smuggle them here. A British news channel did an interview with a smuggler this week he said that most of the smugglers live in the UK they move around freely in cities like London and Birmingham and to them it's just a job. Apparently the cost -- what you have to pay to cross the Channel – is maximum for Pakistanis and Albanians. The cost is anywhere between 1,000 to 3,000 euro. The smuggler was saying that they buy these rubber dinghies in Turkey get them sent to Germany and then take them across in a car to France and then there is a cat and mouse game with the French police as to when they actually set off. If the police find them they slash their dinghies. A report on GB News channel showed a video of what they called a group of Sikhs from India coming across the Channel Tunnel. The video has not been verified, and a Sikh group in UK was outraged by it and issued a statement saying that it was potentially going to incite hatred towards Sikhs. The data say says that 683 Indians came in last year and India is the 10th largest nationality among illegal immigrants coming in at the moment, higher than Pakistan. Also, last year there were 3,249 asylum applications from Indians to stay in the UK but only 4% of them were successful. One of the key problems is that there is a huge backlog in the system and there is no way for these people to live so they are being housed in hotels. Many hotels in Britain now have been taken over by the home office and only house asylum seekers. It’s costing 6 million pounds a day to funds these hotels. Braverman said that potentially 100 million people could actually come to Britain and claim asylum under the current laws, which is why she wants to change. Preet Gill cites threatsShe is first British Sikh female MP. She represents Birmingham Edgbaston. She has gone up the ranks, done really well in the Labour Party and she is now shadow secretary of state for international development. She originally hails from Jalandhar in Punjab. She was born in the UK; her parents moved here in the 1950s. She gave an interview to a TV channel recently in which she was talking about her career as an MP. She explained in that interview how difficult it is for her because she's faced a huge amount of online abuse and even direct threats have come to her in the form of emails. She has had to report it to the police and now in her surgeries, which is when she meets her constituents in person, she has to have physical security. It is quite serious; the MP Jo Cox was stabbed to death in the street in 2016 by far right extremists. Sir David Amess, another MP, was killed when he was giving surgery by Islamic terrorists.In December 2021, when an intruder to the Golden Temple in Amritsar was lynched, a tweet by Preet Gill calling the man a Hindu terrorist had drawn flak, including from the Indian High Commission in London. She had then said she was getting a lot of abuse from far-right Hindu groups following that tweet. In the 2019 general election she said that there was in a concerted campaign against her. Harry-Meghan saga Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, apparently got an eviction notice for Frogmore Cottage from Buckingham Palace in January quite soon after the book Spare was published. Now they've been given until the coronation to move out. Of course, they live in California so this is just a second home but they did stay there after the Queen's funeral and apparently King Charles wants Prince Andrew to move in there but he doesn't want to because he's currently living in a bigger place called Royal Lodge, which is a 30-bedroom mansion with 90 acres of land and a swimming pool whereas Frogmore Cottage is much smaller. Harry and Meghan haven't said a lot about how they feel about being evicted, but obviously there's still a lot of tension between them and the royal family. Their daughter, Lilibet, was christened this week in California but not a single member of the royal family attended that christening although they claim they did in invite them. Kylie says no to royal gigAustralian pop star Kylie Minogue has apparently declined the invite to perform at the Coronation Concert. She has apparently read the room in Australia which is moving more in the direction of becoming a republic and giving up the monarch as the head of state. There's a whole string of other pop stars who apparently can't perform at the Coronation Concert. They include Elton John, the Spice Girls, Adele, Robbie Williams, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles. Mainly because of scheduling issues; they are on tour.Host: Sumit BhattacharyaAudio production: Sahil Gupta